A Piper Cherokee 140... good first plane?

xyzzy wrote:

As someone with experience as an owner, could you (or other owners who
have experienced that) expand on that?

Back in 1994, Maule put their aircraft on sale. I discovered that I could buy a
brand new MX-7 with 160 hp for $45,000. So I worked out the financing and bout
one. By the time I got a few avionics in it and a gyro panel, it could haul 806
pounds.

I figured that was fine; I weighed 150 and I was single. I ordered the plane.
Mission: mostly boring holes with a few long-distance vacation runs every year.

By the time I picked it up I was engaged to a lovely woman who weighed less than
I and had a 7 year old who weighed 40 pounds. Still good to go, but it really
would've been nice if it had occurred to me that we might need a bigger plane.

The next year, we took our one-and-only aerial vacation trip to Sanibel,
Florida. During the next three years, we took a few trips to Tennessee for short
family visits, but vacations were pretty much out of the question by 1998.

By 2002, I weighed 180, Peter weighed 190, and Elisabeth weighed more than she
did when we married (but still less than I). We could not fill the tanks, get in
the plane, and be at or below MGW. We made one day trip that year to see the
Blue Angels perform at Schenectady. Partial tanks, of course. That was the last
time Peter flew in the plane.

I sold the Maule last February.

In one sense, that's not mission creep, since the mission (take aerial
vacations) didn't really change, but the mission really used to be to carry 150
pounds of people plus a week's worth of luggage and that certainly changed.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.