I’ll bet a dollar you beat the 2 year mark….

Inspired…

hotrod180 wrote:235 horsepower & only 1464# empty?
That thing oughta kick ass!
Looks great too-- I've really enjoyed your posts as you built it.

Thanks! I'm pleasantly surprised by the weight. I suppose it makes sense though, it was weighed in 2014 at 1498 lb. Left the factory in 1982 at 1525 lb. Max gross is 2500. Made a W&B for when I'm on 31's and baby bushwheel, that sits at 1512 lb.

Forgot to post this a couple posts ago. I wasn't stoked with how the lightweight Skytec spun the IO540. After asking around, it sounds like this is normal, but I still didn't like it. Bought a Skytec NL series starter which is a couple pounds heavier but spins the engine much better. I hate sending a working starter back as a core if anyone wants to buy it...





Got the fuel senders "calibrated". They're still the stock resistive senders so I'm not putting much weight in this calibration. With 4 tanks, I can't afford all new CIES ones ($2500 total). I generally use my fuel totalizer more than anything.

The last couple days were spent flying out to Cut Bank MT to get an M6 checkout with Rick Geiger (Montana by Air) for insurance. Was a fun trip and was good to get my first Maule specific instruction. I had about 50 hours in my M7 but never got any training other than reading technique on the internet. Despite the legends, I feel that Maules are no harder to fly/land/handle in a *mediocre* way than any other similar sized tailwheel I’ve flown, but it was really nice to hear the tips to get beyond mediocre from a pilot with thousands of hours in them. Hopefully will be a good foundation to figure out my own plane.

Would highly recommend going to Rick if anyone wants Maule specific instruction. His prices were very affordable. Getting to Cut Bank from Kentucky… not so much affordable.

Where else can you rent a fire breathing M5 converted to M6 with an M7A long wing, MT prop, etc etc for the same price flight schools are renting 182’s.

That's just over the hill from me. That's also evidently a pretty sweet conversion combination....I have one that I do the annual on that's the same thing, just with bigger tires. I really hadn't spent much time around Maules until this one and the M4-220 I annual, and I have to say, there's a lot of things I really admire about them! I wish everything had the factory support that Maule does!

That’s cool to see Rick's plane with the extended gear. I bought the stock gear off him a few years back!

My IA showed up right when I got back from Montana and we started in on the annual yesterday morning. Being a rebuild, some things go faster than a usual annual, some require more time than usual. Overall it went very well though. Thankful for a thorough, knowledgeable, and supportive maule-centric IA who rebuilt his own M6 in similar fashion a couple years ago.





The result is that the plane is flying! Great first flight. The rigging ended up being good which I was surprised by - I'm not going to touch it. Engine ran great but had a hot EGT on cylinder 2. Landed, found a plugged injector, flew it again and all good. Thankful for 6 cylinder engine monitoring. Would've had no idea otherwise. I think I may have a small pitot leak or error, my airspeed seems a little low. Nothing crazy, but feels low on climbout/approach and math doesn't quite add up in cruise. Will look into that. ASI matches AV30 pretty well so I'm suspecting pitot lines/plumbing, not instrument.

Overall, I'm pretty euphoric. Weird to have a flying airplane after this long in project mode.



Surely someone will find something wrong when I show these detailed pics.. hit me:





My dad showed up in time to get this video which comically goes out of focus. A perfectly dad move.

Congratulations! great job, its been fun to follow.

Maybe I missed it in the last 14 pages, did you considered the extended HD gear?

Fantastic! Im not gonna pick it apart, it’s sweet! However, those EGT’s seem high especially for only 52 percent power. Congrats!

Kurt

Nice seeing all your efforts paying off. Beautiful workmanship Asa. Stop in and show it off on your way north!

Rod
UpNorth

Asa, very nice workmanship...I bet it feels good to be done!

Now, how long until its up for sale and you are on to your next project? You do have a track record to live up to after
all. ; )

Rob

Congrats! I really appreicate your effort to document and post the entire process. It has been really fun to follow along.

When do you head to AK?

Joe

Fantastic Asa! Congrats !
May the euphoria stay with you...

Battson wrote:Maybe I missed it in the last 14 pages, did you considered the extended HD gear?

I considered it, ordered it, waited for it, received it, and installed it. That's the black gear in the pics.

G44 wrote:Fantastic! Im not gonna pick it apart, it’s sweet! However, those EGT’s seem high especially for only 52 percent power. Congrats!

Kurt

Thanks! That was leaned to at or near peak EGT. The CHT's I'd prefer a little lower but they are okay for now. When the injector was plugged, I was seeing EGT up to 1550 at full rich and all six of the CHT's were up significantly, around 380-390. Like I said, very thankful that the engine monitor can help diagnose something so fast. Planning to do some shakeout flights this weekend and get more data. So far all I did was two 15min flights.

UpNorth wrote:Nice seeing all your efforts paying off. Beautiful workmanship Asa. Stop in and show it off on your way north!

Rod
UpNorth

Thanks Rod, and I may take you up on that. If nothing else to see what progress you've made on your property since last time I was there.

RC5280 wrote:Asa, very nice workmanship...I bet it feels good to be done!

Now, how long until its up for sale and you are on to your next project? You do have a track record to live up to after
all. ; )

Rob

It's been for sale this whole time. Why the hell do you think this thread exists? It's called marketing and I'm proud of my slutty track record. After we landed from the first test flight, Andy Young who was in the right seat with me asked "So are you going to list it today or tomorrow?"

twflyer wrote:Congrats! I really appreciate your effort to document and post the entire process. It has been really fun to follow along.
When do you head to AK?

Joe

Thanks! Planning to start making my way up in early April.

Shit hot! Well done ASA!!

JC

Congrats. Really enjoyed following along.

Very happy for you. Just hard work plugging away and you got there. I have learnt a lot, including that maybe I am not patient enough to build an airplane.

Thanks everyone! Have about 5 hours on it, it's doing great!

New engine cover from Mac's airplane cover + oil sump pad = 100deg oil in the morning



Flying greenhouse. It's more window than airplane.



Flew to a nearby state park lodge for breakfast with friends this morning. It's been a couple beautiful days in Kentucky.

Wow, a Northstar in that picture, cool.

Asa, if I may…. I would paint that cowl in the closest to match silver. That would look good and later if you or a new owner wanted to put a trim decal stripe on it would be easy to do. Cool project, it was fun to follow along, thanks for taking the time to post.

Kurt

Awesome Asa! Great to see it flying. You know there room for you to camp at my place on your way north as well.