All Activity

When I did my panel upgrade I removed the annunciator panel. I no longer have vacuum, so that light is gone. The G3X can provide a number of other alerts. I had warning lights installed for the other needed alerts - see photo:

Wow, your Mooney is beautiful!

I did my private in a Cherokee. It’s the Ford Fiesta of airplanes.

This was MooneySpace owner and admin @mooniac58’s Mooney back in 2008 when he started this site. Very cool. I remember the tail number. GLWS! Jim

Apt for a short body. The mid body is an excellent family hauler so it does not quite fit.

Porsche 914

I'm very curious about this. Is there a write up of the technique somewhere? Would be some good insight and practice for me. Especially for less hurried transitions out of an instrument approach. I've been heavily biased to full flaps to have less distance on roll out and less time to worry about wheelbarrowing.

That is a better comparison...and the C172 is the for Taurus of aviation. Honestly the vintage Mooney is more like what Saab was prior to their demise. It's not big but it's big enough. It's not the fastest but it's it's far from slow. It's economical. It's quirky but well engineered. Generally designed to do more with less.

this is a very slight nuance "getting up to flying speed" last I check, you are already at flying speed on the approach. I don't go much above level while adding some power. It should not take much. Gear up. keep adding power, trim, get wing to flying then climb out. This is the same as take off where take off, go level get gear up, build speed, get wing flying, then climb out and get flaps.

@ArtVandelay this is like one of those pictures where you don't notice a guy with half a mustache because of a good looking girl in the foreground... took me 5 minutes to understand what you were talking about. I honestly thought my previous Cherokee was the Honda Civic of airplanes...

Hey, that’s hitting close to home.

Either you don't have many makes in your logbook or you are deliberately trolling. Civic is a poor analogy. A K model will only really outrun a similarly powered NA Mooney above 10K. An Ovation is faster than a 200hp bird for sure but one has to talk themselves into caring about 15-20 kts. If you need to go faster than get a turbo and a nose hose. Below about 12K it's mostly bragging rights.

Mod Works had a mod that worked really well. I’d try to find someone with pictures of it and copy it.

Blasphemy!!!!! But I kinda agree

….and it continues to happen. The following is a link to a C340 accident on Sunday at KDWH resulting in 2 fatalities where preliminary info suggests a door opened shortly after takeoff. The only access door to a C340 is at the rear pilot side of the cabin, a 2-door clamshell design with a smaller upper door on top and a larger lower door below that are secured together when closed. I don’t know whether the upper or lower door let go or whether either would induce a controllability problem, unless the upper door let go and struck the horizontal or vertical stab. Back in the day during a high speed descent in a Piper Chieftain (PA-350) that has a similar rear door setup to a C340, the lower door unlatched (due to a faulty locking mechanism) and fully opened. I had no controllability problem and neither the door hinge nor the door itself were damaged. When open, the lower door is secured on both sides by covered strong cables that also act similar to handrail supports when entering or leaving the cabin. Apart from the noise, it was a nonevent. I was glad I had no pax on board.

I’ve done ‘slurry’ over foam with a transition, bid/uni/triax ‘tapes’, peel ply, then ‘stipple’ out the excess when doing repairs. Worked well with the Velocity I did. May be option if you want another acceptable approach… -Don

I’ve been curious about this too.

If it were me I would either learn to be content with what I had or buy a K model or an Ovation. A vintage Mooney is the Honda civic of airplanes. It fills its role nicely but it isn’t a sports car. If I needed to buy a new prop because something is wrong with the old one then yeah, I’d spend more to buy the faster version, but planes are already expensive to own so why blow money trying to squeeze out a few knots out of a perfectly functional plane. Next annual you could check rigging and make sure your gear doors are nice and tight. The step being down will cost you 2-3 knots. Do you have the retractable step and is it functioning correctly? A clean and waxed plane is supposedly a couple knots faster, is the plane all polished up? Weight kills speed…are there things that can be taken out of the plane to save weight? An aft CG helps with speed. Have you tried putting everything you can in the baggage compartment? In cruise move your seat back? None of these things will make a big difference but you might be able to pick up 5 knots without spending any real money.

I used to be wowed by the 170-180 knot cruise of my Missile while burning 13.5gph, but the difference in travel for my mission was 15 minutes. Not that big a deal. 1.45 vs. 2 hours. I enjoy the journey so 15 minutes more flying is a pleasure.

"The the biggest delta between the two is operating cost, purchase price and ramp appeal."-Shad With a big part of the operating costs being fuel burn...

To add to my post above in terms of speed differences, a beautiful 2011 G36 took off behind me last week. He also did a day trip and taxied by as I was closing up my hangar after my return. For S's and G's, I just computed the round trip block speed of his 649NM trip...154.52kts. I have two trips in my spreadsheet from the last 5 months that are comparable: 706NM with a block speed = 147.08kts 708NM with a block speed = 147.5kts. Less than 8kts delta, but some folks would fall all over themselves talking about superior performance of that Bonanza when practically speaking, the difference in performance is negligible. The the biggest delta between the two is operating cost, purchase price and ramp appeal. It's getting easier to be happy with what I have.

I would agree with the notion that you should get the plane on jacks so you can evaluate the landing gear. You won’t be able to determine what kind of play there is unless you do. In my case the first annual I had to go through the whole system and replace lots of parts to get it airworthy again. That was very time consuming.

The girl at the desk asked if I was a member when saying for fuel heading to Tampa, so I made sure to join before going back afterwards. No discount on parking, though.

I should have said. I am not looking to purchase a Mooney Missile. Very happy with mine. I am original owner of an MSE 1991 / Missile 1997 Conversion. Very happy with the airplane. I thought there would have been like 150 Missiles in the USA. About 55, huh? My once new airplane has become rare and kind of vintage.

If it ain't broke...