
Lately I have been doing a lot of armchair flying and browsing the web for "my" perfect plane. Turns out I really have two mission profiles. On one hand I need 4 seats and lots of useful load, short field capabilities and decend speed, on the other hand I am fine with a two seater for the bulk of my missions that burns minimum gas and goes slow, but extremely safe. For either mission I'm on the low end of the price range. I like to fly, but I don't like to feel like the bank is riding shotgun.

So here they are, my two choices for my perfect planes. The first is a Maule MXT7-180. I checked the accident records and there are surprisingly few. It's a safe reliable plane with an incredible useful load and a sensible panel. I actually appreciate that Maule's panels at least to now have the old gauges, but make good use of Garmin GPS. It's a clean and effective layout. The Maule treats passengers right. It comes with a right back passenger door that together with the baggage door makes for a huge opening.
The two seater is an ErCoupe. What a cute little plane. It sips gas and has a reputation of being downlight simple to fly. I just love the trainling link gear.