ANN’s Jim Campbell spoke with Jake Mottram, Manager for Mini-Max USA, and when Jim said he was glad to see Mini-Max back in business, Jake said he’s heard the same thing from plenty of people and it’s been awesome to hear during their week at the 2025 EAA AirVenture Air Show and Fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
This is their first AirVenture as Mini-Max USA and Jake said the wealth of knowledge they’ve picked up from their customers during the show has been amazing.
The company is keeping the production in the Niles, Michigan plant, where they have a laser cutter and they’re working on pre-fab parts now, and Jake’s goal is to take the entire kit to a pre-fab kit even though the airplanes are quick-build kits as they are.
The kits are advertised as taking 250-300 hours for the 1100R model and their goal is to get it to under 200 hours with the company pre-fabbing most of the metal parts and laser-cutting most of the wood parts of the airplane. Production will go to a full pre-fab kit in the next 60 days, which most of that is in place, and then kits will be shipped from the Niles plant.
All of the original Mini-Max models will be available and supported, and the company is working to finalize the kit for the AeroMax, which was brought out in 2008. It is a full kit and ready to go now but they are going through the plans and making some final revisions.
The company isn’t ready yet to provide the few T-Mini-Max models that were released until they’ve been completely through the plans that they are deep-diving on to revise anything that’s missing and then re-drawing the plans.
Customers can currently get any Mini-Max model from the 1030F Max-103 up to the 1700R Hi-Max as plans or order sub-kits or full kits. The Epic Sport is on the back burner for now but will be released in the future. The company is working on a tundra tire option as well as a float option for all the aircraft.
Construction is the same as it’s always been – all wood and fabric. The plans being used now were drawn in 1992 and they’re not revising them, just redrawing them as needed to be higher quality when printed. The 4 or 5 airworthiness directives that have been in place since 1984 and they are now just built into the plans.
Jake said that everybody that came by the booth has had a smile when telling him about how the Mini-Max provides just a sweet, simple, uncomplicated flying experience for a couple hours, it’s the greatest joy.
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