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I'm no autopilot expert, but I did operate a KAP 150 for a number of years. As I recall the pitch behavior on mine seemed a little wonky (technical term) if I played around with it on the ground as you've described but it worked fine in the air. For my preflight checks I pulled the yoke back about half way, approximately to the cruise position, and engaged to A/P to confirm it would initially hold it there. I'd then hit the trim switches on the yoke to disengage, re-select A/P and HDG and twizzle (another tech term) the HDG bug back and forth to confirm the yoke moved appropriately, and use the big red button to disengage. Other than running the trim both directions manually and with the yoke switches, that was the only ground check for pitch that I did. With the airplane sitting on the gear in it's classic Mooney nose-high attitude the A/P is going to command pitch changes it thinks are needed to maintain level "flight", and that's what I attributed the A/P pitch inputs on the ground to. Using the rocker switch on the KC-191 with only A/P selected is telling the A/P to change the pitch up or down, so since the airplane isn't moving in pitch I think (?) the computer will continue to command a pitch change in the direction you told it to go until it hits the stop. Is that what you're seeing? Bad on me, I didn't check the left/right trim switches independently, or exercise the panel rocker switch as part of my checks. I trusted the computer self-test caught everything I didn't physically manipulate. Hopefully one of our King A/P gurus will be by shortly to provide you with a more complete answer and assessment of what you've reported. The delays and trim wheel behavior you describe don't sound familiar.

Beechcraft has a better owner group than we do. They are organized and pooled their money to offer over $500,000 to a company could would produce new ruddervator below certain price point.

But the prices have gone up 40% since pre-Covid so I’m not totally sold on this. I guess when the door seal gets to be $500 we can talk about it again. All of the price increases by the Hartzell family of companies (Arcline) was not related to supply and demand.

Two stories re this topic. One, when I picked up my plane at purchase it was in AZ and we (my non-Mooney instructor and I) flew it all the way home to MN. An annual had be badly done in AZ, and on takeoff the door came open even though it was latched. Landing and closing the door did not help, same result. We tried the procedure in the POH and could not close the door. The good news is that the slipstream is strong enough that nothing is going to happen, no one is going to fall out, it is held very strongly in place. In the paper days you had to make sure one of your charts did not get sucked out, but that is the worst that can happen. The bad news is that the slipstream won't allow the door to close either. We flew over Raton at 16k, it was cold and somewhat noisy with the door in that condition, and all the way to Garden City where we convinced the door to latch and held it in place during takeoff. It was subsequently discovered that the latch was not adjusted properly and I have not had a problem with it since then (2009). So I completely agree with 201er, forget the door. If you get in a bad situation as a result of the door coming open that is because you panicked and failed to continue to fly the plane. As for the baggage door, I had a friend and famous aviator decades ago who took off from a field in ABQ that is not there anymore (Coronado) to fly his family to Taos for some skiing. It was a twin with the baggage door forward in the nacelle. The door came open on takeoff and they did not survive. The pilot tried to return to Coronado to land, but was unable. There have been several "the baggage door came open in flight" incidents on this forum over the past 14 years since I joined it. I recall one in which the door departed the fuselage and made the rest of the trip lodged in the horizontal elevator. He made it all the way across the Atlantic in a the first ever balloon crossing only to perish about three or four years later in an avoidable fixed wing accident. So here is my rule. I always, always include the door in my pre-flight, and no one except the pilot is allowed to close and latch that door. I always lock it, and check that I locked it, following advice from a couple of the instructors at Mooney PPPs. I had one girlfriend years ago who would get very offended that I would not allow her to close the door, and she would purposely try to open and close it herself. Not my girlfriend anymore (not the only issue). Don't worry about the safety on the inside, that will work when you pull the pin even if the door is locked. The chances of getting back there and out the door in a forced landing situation are not that great anyway. As we all - I hope - learned in beginning pilot school, one of the very important items on the off field checklist is to open the main door while still in the air and shove something in it to keep it open so it can't jam shut on impact. Then you won't need the baggage door anyway.

Decided to put two more squares of cloth weave to clean it up and give it a more finished look. Final results with the vacuum bagging layers removed. Still had to remove the sealing tape. I had it sitting in the sun for the heat to accelerate the curing process but the sealing tape became very sticky and needs to cool before removal.

What isn’t 30% more expensive that it was in 2020? Most things are a lot more than 30%! Everything in the grocery store is double or more, and they have cut portion sizes.

Just to clarify, you are saying when you engage MET, (1) it takes 3-5 seconds to do anything and (2) once it starts, it won't stop? The only time I've seen something similar, it's been with a KAP 140 and it was a servo issue. I've flown with the KAP 150 but have not come across this, so I'm not sure how similar they are. As an aside, I no longer do AP overpowering tests beyond holding the yoke in place for the brief time it takes to disconnect. I picked up the rationale from the more recent Garmins. In the case of real runaway trim it will fight you and make the out of trim condition worse, and I can't help but think that overpowering when not necessary can't be all that good for the system.

Me, too! The ‘trick’ where it differs a little from Maxwell’s technique is cranking a few second BEFORE moving the mixture from ICO. This ensures the mixture is lean, first!

Question for any of you who have ever flown behind a KAP-150. I'm creating a PFT (Pre-Flight Test) checklist from the Pilot's Guide, and getting behavior that I don't understand. K-model sitting in the hangar. GPU plugged in; Master on; Radio Master on; Elevator Trim on; Standby Vacuum Pump on; GNS-430 on; give the gyros a few minutes to stabilize. Tap the Test button, all annunciators on both the KC-191 and KAS-297b light up; flashes and beeps five times; AP annunciator blinks; Trim annunciator goes off. AFAIK all these automatic gyrations are expected. MET (Manual Electric Trim) on yoke: Left side up and down, wheel doesn't move BUT I can't overpower the MET using the wheel. Right side up and down, wheel doesn't move, and turns freely. Wheel does not turn when holding AP DIS/TRM INT button on yoke. Again, AFAIK all is well (except for being able to overpower the MET when left side of trim button is used). Turn on AP ENG button on KC-191 (pitch hold/roll level mode), and box the controls to assure I can overpower autopilot -- all okay. Add HDG on the KC-191, and the yoke turns left and right to follow the Heading bug on the KI-525 HSI -- all okay. Now, after about 5 seconds, the trim wheel starts creeping slowly nose up. Takes at least a minute to get all the way nose up. I'm not sure what it's headed toward, but in flight this would not work. Also, if I use the Up/Dn rocker on the KC-191, nothing happens for 3-5 seconds, and then the trim starts to move. If I take my finger off the rocker, the trim CONTINUES for at least another five seconds, or until the trim is against the stop either up or down. Again, in flight this won't work. Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but I'm hoping someone familiar with this autopilot can suggest something to look at.

Being a Buckeye, when I was breaking in my new engine I decided, why not do it with a little style? SCRIPT OHIO:

I've been doing this too (basically the Maxwell procedure) since the last discussion on MS. I used it yesterday. Works great. Haven't found a need recently to go full throttle with mixture off, then reverse the two when it starts. I do sometimes advance the mixture too fast though; gotta ease it in. Funny though; I'm still as puckered up with hot starts as I've always been even though I'm having no issues. Some sort of hot start PTSD.

Well, show us how easy it is.

If this would guarantee me parts when I need them, no problem! Sign me up. I wonder if this is a factual statement. Perhaps it matters how documentation is submitted. I have no idea but just going off of my personal anecdotal experience in life that when I need to pass through a bureaucratic process I seem to have less difficulty than others when I come with well prepared documentation. Perhaps this is an exception but, like I say, I wonder if that's really true.

excellent!

It's not about skill, it's about having a little fun.

during annual in March we discovered a small elevator bellcrank that caused excessive play between the elevator halves, small handmade part riveted together from three sheet metal plates, bushing, bearing the whole thing about 4" long. As a quick and legal fix we replaced the loose hylock fastenters with monel rivets. Consensus was that this part would be $2500 to replace if it were a Beechcraft part. The Mooney part had a lead time of 13 weeks and a price of $800. When I got the part I was amazed, Mooney had re-engineered the part to be integrally milled in one piece. No doubt they lost money on that part. Soo, parts prices will go up because they have to. About the same time I was approached by an MSC wondering if I was ready to fund parts production at Mooney with a fixed amount per year, lots of questions, nothing ever came of it and now Lasar stepped in. Problem still remains, parts production needs to be funded to build up inventory, by how much? probably by the amount of 6 months of parts sales. So, instead of moping, who is ready to step in? 300 owners at $3000 a pop makes $900k, enough the get things moving funds to be released to Lasar and/or Mooney for inventory buildup by a board of the the 3 largest donors? The whole thing blows up, guess what fonds perdu as the French say. In the end gotta pay the piper! Whoever is interested in being part of the solution, please pm me.

Once you take the time to research the process, and the FAA requirements and involvement, it will make more sense to you. What "should/could be" and what "is" are two completely different things. Change/streamlining of the FAA process will not happen quickly or through actions or abilities of the users of the system. Until the FAA formally changes the PMA requirements and approval process, no amount of technical savvy on the part of an applicant will make any difference in the time or expense required to accomplish the process.

Sure that makes sense. This less so. In today's age with computers, especially now with quite useful AI this paperwork stuff should be an easy problem. Perhaps it's not attempted by people who excel in this sort of stuff but by people that are savvy in other relevant areas. Hopefully Lasar knows how to get these steps done cheaply enough so that the manufacturing process itself can be feasible. This parts problem is another huge concern of mine regarding the future, like AVGAS phase out, that makes me very motivated to only think about how I should find a way to drive a turbine Piper asap.

Parts support, combined with the aging out of the ownership population, will be the death of this brand.

That sounds exactly like what Arcline/Hartzell and other various Private Equity that are consolidating General Aviation businesses & FBO’s think and say….

If you do an internet search on "what does it take to receive FAA PMA authority" you'll find the information and reference data that will help answer your questions. In addition to cumbersome and slow, the process is expensive, especially for a shop that doesn't already have a documented formal quality assurance program. And that assumes the shop can obtain the production engineering data from the original manufacturer, or have the capability to reverse engineer the data to the FAA's satisfaction. Then there is the cost/benefit analysis that accompanies any business decision. Economy of scale is difficult or impossible to realize in our niche market, so a business needs to recoup all of the administrative, testing, tooling and setup costs in the price they charge for the limited quantity of end product. This price needs to allow the manufacturer to be profitable while remaining affordable for the end customer. We've just seen this with new production of no-back springs for the gear actuators. Affordability is in the eye of the consumer. And altruism isn't a trait commonly found in significant measure in a successful business, so if in the C&B analysis the part(s) can't be produced at a cost that allows for an affordable price, it doesn't get produced.

For an “in current production” example- my friend’s SR22T was AOG for 1 YEAR when he needed a new nose gear strut. Nobody is completely safe from parts availability issues. We should support Lasar’s goal to keep our planes in the sky!

I just sent mine to aero accessories based on what I've been reading here. I get my plane back on Monday, so we'll see how it goes. http://aeroacc-vny.com/

Its calle Its called "traceability" and PMAs And yes it is cumbersome and time consuming and costly to get the approvals And the market for the investment is only 7000 possible customers I see it took 9 months to get PMA approval for the SRS Beech skins plus 10s of thousands of dollars And the approvals came just last July. Learned something new. Up until then Bonanzas were paper weights if the ruddervators were junk. Less$$$$ maybe but still $7100 just for the part - A piece of stamped magnesium sheet metal If its so easy to make parts why did it take so long. ANY decent stamping plant should have been able to do it - right? If we don't have parts how will we get a "stretch formed" wing leading edge skin if we bang into a fuel truck? Who will pay the $$$$ involved to set up a PMA SYSTEM to stretch form wing skins for a few airplanes every year? How much do you think those would cost?