After selling my Tripacer, several months had gone by as I looked at a few planes here and there. Others were junk or flew 100 hours in 10 years. The few I was interested in sold before I could look at them, and I was planeless for about 3 months while looking for the right plane for our family.

A few weeks back I found a Six I liked. Took a day trip to fly up commercially and take a peek. It was well suited for our needs.

The problem was that I am in Idaho, the plane was in Alaska, and the seller was closing on his house a week after I looked at the plane which means the plane would lose its comfy hangar near Chugiak. There were other details like I had zero experience with CS props, needed dual in the type for insurance, was now overdue for a BFR, and needed a HP endorsement.

So I’ve always wanted to make that flight, not necessarily under these conditions, but what the hell... miraculously I found a CFI to come along where the timing worked for everyone and we met up in Anchorage the day before we hoped to start the journey back home.

Sunday morning we headed out to finish up the paperwork, load the plane with all of our gear (lots of extra airplane parts, survival gear, suitcases, food, etc.). Whole rear cabin was pretty much full. with full fuel we were about 100 pounds shy of the ~1400 pounds useful load.

Weather was crap, MVFR and looking to get worse later in the day. Basically we had a chance to get out in that morning, after that we would be trapped for a few days waiting for better weather.

Long story short, we departed that morning, weather gradually improved as we went east. We overnighted in Watson Lake, flew the trench route and made it to Nampa from Anchorage in two days. Somehow the weather and smoke gods aligned to make it possible in short time.

So we’ve got our new hauler home. It’s a PA-32-300, factory reman lycoming installed 2015 and new prop, both with about 240 hours on them now. Airglas nose fork with 8.50 mains and an 8.00 nose. Standard basic panel but room for all!




Here she is, not a beauty queen but flies great. Need 2 hours solo now for insurance and then I can take my wife and three kids for a flight in the new wagon!

(photos coming, tapatalk is erroring out)

Nice! I’ve always liked the Cherokee 6. Looks bad ass on the big tires.

Fantastic Story! Great airplane

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aircraft-ownership-value-perspective-dave-irvin/

The Six-300 is a beast (I like it)!!
I have only a couple of hours in one but u can load any amount of weight in it and passenger comfort was crazy good.
Downside is they aren’t much fun to fly and they are sloooow but so what.
Enjoy the crap out of it and take lots of family pics.

Edit to add: love the avocado interior!!!
Badass!!!!

Slow is relative it is more than 33% faster than the tripacer was, so if you don’t know it js slow it is fast!

I love the avocado interior really classy. Hard to beat those ginormous doors for sure congrats!

I had a memorable trip in a 300 hp Six back in 1975. Rode along from West Point VA to Bar Harbor Me. to haul a load of blood worms back for fish bait. The two front seats were in and everywhere else was stuffed with cardboard boxes of worms and sea weed. It was a gorgeous day and could see forever and we made the whole trip in one day.

Yep she is a load hauler for sure. The thought of being able to carry the whole family plus baggage and fuel will open up a lot of doors for us. First trip is planned for September down to universal studios area in California. So far love the capability of this plane.

Awesome Scott! Great choice, I always liked the Cherokee 6. Looks like it fits the mission profile perfect!!

They suffer greatly at altitude. Best air taxi money maker that was ever built though.

You'll need some orange (or harvest gold?) shag carpet to go with the avocado upholstery!

I love that the whole side opens up (like a Maule ) for cargo, too! Do all the Cherokee 6's do that or is it a specific model or STC?

My understanding is that all but a few early models have the rear baggage door. Started out as an option then quickly became standard.