Hi Gents- I know you have been through this before, but really would like your input. I'm a middle 50's guy with about 1800 hours, SE & ME land, instrument, commercial and CFI with no tail dragger experience. My time is about 600 hours civilian and 1200 hours in the service. Haven't flown in quite awhile and I'm really wanting to get back in the air in a tail wheel aircraft for the challenge of something new and nothing but pleasure flying. So here are three different scenarios that I'm considering and would like your input. My dream aircraft at the moment is a Maule M7-235 and I've been through all the insurance threads and talked to several insurance people and believe I can get past the hurdles. Also should mention that I have a good instructor in my area with good tail wheel experience and Maule experience as well.

First scenario is to go ahead with the Maule and fly dual with an instructor until the insurance company is satisfied. Perhaps 25 to 50 hours. Still would expect a premium in the stratosphere until I'm able to build some time. Then fly solo with careful consideration as to type of flying I do and conditions until I feel I'm getting the proper experience with the airplane. All still mixed with some additional dual instruction in less than perfect wx conditions etc.
Second is to go in partners with a buddy on a Super Cub or similar plane and fly the pants off it and then transition into the Maule. Perhaps 8 months to a year envisioned with this.
Third is to get into a real nice Cessna 140 I've looked at and build time. While it's a nifty little plane, I've been told it might not really teach me much with respect to a larger, faster plane such as a M7 or Cessna 180 etc.
Thanks, and I've really enjoyed lurking and reading through a ton of your posts already. Great site and great bunch.

Oh, I think almost any airplane ( esp taildraggers) can teach you something useful. One thing about learning & building time in a marginally-powered airplane like a 140 or similar, is that there's no big gobs of power available to bail you out of trouble. Several years ago, Budd Davidson wrote in his column in Plane & Pilot (?) about a 140A (the "Desert Dog") that he & his wife bought. He talked about being apprehensive on crosswindy days, as he didn't have the Pitts' high wing loading and big horsepower to save the day like he was used to.
Nothing at all wrong with a 140 or similar. A Supercub or similar is more STOL capable for backcountry-type use. You might consider a 170,Stinson or Pacer as a compromise-- all three are nice 2+2 type 4 seaters that are fun to fly and not bad to operate in the great outdoors. Maules & simlar are fine airplanes, but spendy to own & operate (and insure,as you note). You might be better off kinda easing back into flying with less airplane.

Eric

I dont see how you could go too far wrong with a nice Cessna 170. If you think you need more power later you can sell it no problem. But you might find its all you need. Very good taildragger trainer, good over the nose viz and not as squirrelly as a cessna 140 IMHO. Comfortable and roomy and fun to look at. The stock 145hp engine can run on car gas and has a nice meaty 6 cylinder growl. Shop carefully, they are all old.
Tracy A
cheaper to insure than a Maule

I'm with Eric, and I will say that a stinson with a engine swap is still cheap and will flat perform. Or you can stay with a 165 in the front and learn to fly the darn thing. They have been going to the back country for 60 years, they are dependable, rugged honest airplanes.

Most do not realize what a good value they are, you can buy a very nice one for around 30k with low time engine, and they have a very good useful load. My plane had 1400 TT with 20 smoh and a recover job that was less than 3 years old. My plane has a useful of 1150 lbs.

Not bad for the $.

Dane

Hi Scoot: I am similar to you. I’m 48. Back in October I bought a 2000 Maule M7 235C. I am a low hour pilot and had no tailwheel time. I had a easy time transitioning to the Maule. I like the power. There is a little more safety with power to save the day. If you want the Maule and money isn’t an issue, I say go for the Maule. Avemco required 30 hr dual. I did most of it in the pattern and had 200 landings when I got signed off. There's a picture of my M7 in my photo gallery. Cheers…Rob

My dream aircraft at the moment is a Maule M7-235

If this dream is not going away and money is not an issue, buy the Maule. Otherwise you will always wonder what it would have been like if you had bought the Maule.

If your not stuck on the M7-235, buy something less expensive.

Either way, you have found a website that is, IMO, growing exponentially. Welcome

Bill

My recomendation is if you want to fly a Maule and need Maule time to smooth out the insurance then you are gunna need the time one way or the other and it don't make sence to get duel with the instructor TWICE!! Besides if you start in the Maule you will know the bird inside and out by the time you get your required lndgs and duel time, but with a sports car like the 235 M7 you better watch your P's and Q's so she don't bite you when you least expect (that can happen in anything I know)

I started in the Maule and wouldn't do it any other way! Good luck and either way you go get in and fly the paint off !! (fly the wings off just didn't sound good )

If money is an issue, the 140 is a great way to go. They are cheap and will teach you all of the tailwheel flying basics. For about 25K you can find a primo 140, or for 15-20K you can find one that needs a little TLC. Insurance is very affordable too. When I bought my 140 I was a 250 hour TT commercial pilot with about 30 hours of TW time. My premium was 1000/yr with a million dollar liability on a 20K valued airplane. That was many(12) years ago so obviously things will be a bit more now, but I doubt it'll be a whole lot more. For the money, it's hard to beat. Good luck.

I'm with Wup. It sounds like you've really already made up your mind, but you may be looking for wiggle room.

There is no high science to flying a Maule or any of these other buckets of rivets. If it is your intent to get into a Maule at some point, just bite the bullet and do it now.

It sounds to me like you've already asked the right questions, and done the research on this. Get some good quality dual with TWO good Maule instructors, preferably. One of them may in fact have all the answers, but it's always good to look at this stuff from a different perspective as well.

The Maules are great performers. They have a lot of power, and they can be a little snaky in a gusty wind, but that's life, and it's all just physics, which is manageable. Personally, I think one of the reasons insurance costs have been driven up on these airplanes is that a lot of folks with almost no experience have gotten into what amounts to a real hot rod, with only Chevette experience, if you get my drift.

Continue to do what you've obviously been doing--ie: do the research and fill all the squares, and enjoy the dream.

MTV

Thanks for all of the input. And I tried to hide my "leanings" towards scenario one. I'm going to keep my mind pried open for awhile longer and consider all the advice I'm getting. It's invaluable to hear from people who have already gone down the road I'm looking at....and a real fun part of the process.
Bottom line is that the last thing I want to do is bend an airplane up when my real goal is to fly for the fun of it.
And good get to fly with at least two different instructors.
Thanks again, and keep the input coming.

mtv wrote: Personally, I think one of the reasons insurance costs have been driven up on these airplanes is that a lot of folks with almost no experience have gotten into what amounts to a real hot rod, with only Chevette experience, if you get my drift. MTV

Great observation...that seems to be the case with most of the accidents.

I am writing an article on tailwheels and insurance for our Spring edition of Aviation Insurance & Risk Management Magazine based off of many questions and concerns that I have seen on this forum. It is as much for underwriter enlightenment concerning tailwheels as it is to help inform TW owners about the insurance industry. Hopefully it will help to clarify some common misconceptions within the insurance industry concerning tailwheel operations and training.

Scoot- Go with the Maule if that is what you want. Get your dual instruction from a TW CFI that has MAULE TIME and fly it like a Maule, not like a Supercub, Cessna 170, etc. etc. The Maule is not hard to fly, it just likes to be flown the way it was designed to be flown. Never stop learning and only push your limits in small steps once you are very comfortable with the step you are on.

I love our Maule, it does have it's Pro's and Con's, but it fits the bill for my uses perfectly.

-Chris

If it helps, I paid $1600 a year for million dollar liability and 28K of hull insurance on a cessna 140 when I had zero tail wheel time (and a whole lot less total time than you have). Insurance required ten hours duel and ten hours solo before I carried a pax.

A friend of mine has a cessna 120 and a cessna 180, and he is of the opinion that if you get a little cross-wise in the 120 it's possible to get it back in line, where as with the 180 the margin for error is much smaller. I can only assume a big Maule would be similar.

You might want to think about how you'll feel putting all those hard training landings on a high dollar plane...I'd feel a lot better abusing a airplane I knew I was only going to keep for a couple years. Not to mention what your insurance is going to be on the Maule if you have to make a claim...

Unless you won the lottery, money is always an issue! Tailwheel time is about landings, which means endless circuts around the pattern. Why on earth would you push an expensive, highpower Maule around the pattern for a hundred hours when you will learn just as much in a little trainer which costs a fraction to own and opperate?

just my humble, cessna 140 owning opinion

A bigger airplane has more inertia when it starts to get it's swerve on. But they usually have more power to get you out of trouble. I wateched Kurt abort a landing gone bad due to rapid (!) wind shift/sheer in the Yellow Peril, shoving that knob in is what saved the day. A lesser airplane might not have had the beans to do that.

Eric

Sounds like you are using a heck of a lot more sense than I did when I bought my M5-235.

I purchased the plane with no TW time at all.

I got about 30hrs of dual before I did a solo landing.

First solo landing was into Moon City Airport just out side of Huntsville, AL and it was a grass strip with power lines at the approach end. The "If you eat a live frog first thing in the morning nothing worse will happen all day" theory.

I then did a cross country w/ an instructor from H'ville to Seattle to work on IFR.

At the end of all this my insurance company was pretty happy and wrote me a decently priced policy.

While other tail draggers will give you good input, I think all of them have quirks and you would be well served to build time in the Maule and learn it. A CFI w/ lots of Maule time is a big plus. I have flown w/ CFI's w/ no or little Maule time and they scared me more than once.

TD

Scoot:

I know I am biased because I learned in a Super Cub at 49 and it is still my favorite plane to fly if you are just flying for the fun of it. I flew my Cessna T182T today and it is a very nice airplane and will take you and three others somewhere relatively fast. But I immediately hopped in the Super Cub and it is just plain fun.

The PA-18-150 has all the power to get you out of a lot of trouble and you will learn tailwheel. Just way more fun to fly, in my humble opinion, than a Maule. I was originally going to purchase a Maule, because it was faster and would carry more, but I am very glad I got the Super Cub, because all of my time flying it is just for the pure amusement of it.

37tHandH

Sorry, Guys, but a Super Cub or a Cessna 140 isnt' going to prepare you for a Maule. Oh, sure, you'll get a bit of the drift (pun intended), but the Maule has a lot of inertia, a LOT of power for its size, a boatload of left turning tendency, gyroscopic precession, AND it's short coupled.

Oh, yeah, it has a very long nose and you sit low.

Now--there is nothing there that should scare you, or that is too tough to manage, but the point is-as some others have noted, a Super Cub is not a Maule.

There is an instructor around who "has boatloads of time in Cessna 170's). Ground looped a Champ and a Cub recently here. The Champ was on grass .

Sometimes the most dangerous folks are the ones who THINK they have it down pat.

I'd still start in the Maule. You aren't going to hurt that thing doing landings and takeoffs. Just don't do like we are here, and do em at -20.

Get the Maule, is my vote .

MTV

mtv wrote:Sorry, Guys, but a Super Cub or a Cessna 140 isnt' going to prepare you for a Maule. Oh, sure, you'll get a bit of the drift (pun intended), but the Maule has a lot of inertia, a LOT of power for its size, a boatload of left turning tendency, gyroscopic precession, AND it's short coupled.

Oh, yeah, it has a very long nose and you sit low.

Now--there is nothing there that should scare you, or that is too tough to manage, but the point is-as some others have noted, a Super Cub is not a Maule.

Get the Maule, is my vote .

MTV

Yep, it is not a bad thing...it is just a Maule thing.

When we got our MX-7-180 I had most of my TW time in a PA18-160 with quite a few hours in a Stearman. I could safely handle the Maule after a quick checkout, but I was not really comfortable in it until I had about 30 landings or so. It just has it's own way it likes to be treated...you Maule fellows will know what I am talking about.

I will also say that there is considerable difference between the M5-235 and the MX-7-180 when it comes to the last 10 seconds of the landing. Much like the difference between the Supercub and the Husky. Cut the power on short final and flair to early in the M5-235 and you will land like a cow patty. In the MX-7-180 you have less weight up front, a longer wing, and a higher glide ratio to help round out the landing flair.

-Low

Low,

So, by that definition, most of my landings are Maule-like, or at least Maule 235-like. Cow patties, hmmmmm....

Well, a couple yesterday were a little better than that.

MTV

Low, Cow Patty isn't gonna like it that you're bad-mouthing her landings.....

I did not know that anyone had that screen name. Oh well if indeed someone has that name there was no offense intended

MTV-

You known what I mean, a Maule 235 tends to plop onto the runway until you figure out how to smooth out the flair. I guess Maule Like would be a better way to describe it. It had been a long day and I was thinking cow patty since you plop onto the runway and think to yourself...man that was a crappy landing.