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I was looking forward to this year's Mooney Summit. Really bummed it was postponed. Nevertheless, I still wanted to hold the presentation I had planned to do, but virtually. I don't have a solid date and time yet, but thinking Thursday, October 21st at 8 p.m. EDT...will post the official time here once I can solidify my schedule. I'll be more than happy to do this assuming I can get a good number to attend (say 30 or more). If there's very little interest, I won't bother. So, please add a "Thanks" or "Like" to this post if you are interested so I can get a feeling for the number of you that might be willing to attend.

Well it appears you can teach an old dog, new tricks. At 72 I just got my commercial (yesterday) in my J. Not going to do anything with it (unless that position at Uzbekistan Air, opens up), but I wanted to keep my brain housing group sparking. This isn’t about me though; I just wanted to thank all who posted commercial info on the forum. As you know the info out there is geared to Piper and Cessna. With your help I got entry speeds, power settings, etc., geared to a Mooney. We all know this is a great resource for all things Mooney, thanks again for the help.

Before After

Might I suggest a compromise for you and your wife?

@Junkman and @mike_elliott, you continue to impress me with your leadership and transparency throughout this process. Postponing an even that you have put your heart and soul into must have been gut wrenching but you are modeling the exact behavior that makes you such excellent educators and champions of safety. If only more pilots displayed this behavior more consistently I’m sure the GA accident rate would be much lower. You have my respect and admiration.

Sure sounds like my 1st marriage

Hey folks. 2 years ago I acquired a 1966 Mooney M20E and since then everyone on this forum was very helpful while I was accumulating knowledge but I didn't really get a good chance to contribute. Last year was challenging and I didn't meet many pilots in person. Some of you might know my airplane paint is far from perfect and I knew I will have to address it the same day. I was told that I need to fix surface corrosion ASAP and many folks recommended me Art-Craft Paint in Santa Maria. I partnered with them to make a series of videos about airplane repaint. I will use this thread to share my videos and you can get to know me and my airplane: If you like the video and consider Art-Craft Paint for your paint needs please use this link to claim a discount: https://artcraftpaint.com

Greetings all, Mooney Summit VIII is postponed to an as yet to be determined date. As communicated previously, COVID-19 has continued to be a major concern as infections have declined and surged throughout the past year and a half. While we find ourselves in a different position this year than last, the nature and timing of the current surge has made it impossible for us to forecast a responsible execution of the Summit in October. We’re very disappointed in reaching our thoroughly considered decision to postpone the event but know it is the right call for the Mooney Summit and our fellow Mooniacs. We hold these events to save lives, and have applied the same decision making processes we use every time we fly to ensure we have considered and mitigated all identifiable risks to the best of our ability. Our mitigations fell short, so we made the decision to postpone. All registered attendees, presenters, and sponsors will be receiving a separate email with details on options for dispositioning registration fees and contributions. Thank you for your understanding and continuing support of the Mooney Summit. Fly safe and stay healthy. Rick

Today at KCCR: Me: Good Afternoon Concord Ground, Mooney 9148W, Sterling, ready to taxi with Bravo. Ground: 9148W Concord Ground, taxi to Runway 19R via Lima, Alpha, Cross 32L, Cross 32R via Alpha. This was said in rapid fire ATC speak. Me, not wanting to embarrass myself: Ground, tell you what, request Progressive to 19R Turns out Lima is striped but part of the non movement area and not well marked. If you fly out of there, it's all not much of a problem, but if you haven't, you could easily screw it up. It had been quite a while since I had flown into Concord. In the interest of saving time and not screwing up, Progressive taxiing took off all the pressure. I needed to fly back there later in the day. The second time I had everything written down, and Progressive wasn't necessary.

During run-up yesterday at KCHA I was unable to achieve RPM drop with the prop control - control would go full out with no loss of RPM. After a taxi tour of different businesses at the field I ended up at Crystal Air. Tremendous operation and can't say enough good things about the MX team there. The cable had come disconnected from the actual governor and screw threads had started backing off due to a lack of a cotter pin being installed. This was all remedied at a very reasonable price and with prompt service and a smile. Everything worked A-OK on the 5.5 hour flight back to KEWB. Figured I would pass along... AZB

You know, life is so short and you probably shouldn’t attempt to dissuade her from her desires. Let her know you support her in this adventure and also tell her to please write occasionally, letting you know all is well !

Finally got to kitty hawk today! It was awesome! And very convenient for flyers. Got some tshirts. Plus I was a fantastically interesting conversationalist on the way down.

You must be new to the internet. Welcome.

I remember so many great saying from my surgery rotation such as: “eat when you can, sleep when you can and don’t (mess) with the pancreas” as well as “just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD.” I’m sure you can find someone to lend you the money and get a plane, but as @KLRDMDpointed out, having access to a plane may not improve your life expectancy. If you’re new to flying and have places that you “need” to get to then you will probably put yourself in some dangerous situations. With small planes, you always need a Plan B. Personally, I commute to work in my plane and 90% of the time I end up flying. But not at night, or after seeing patients all day, or if I’m tired, or if the weather is bad, or if I don’t feel good. Get-home-itis isn’t a real medical disease but it’s one of the leading causes of death of pilots. Sorry to turn your financial question into unsolicited life advice but I like having vascular surgeons answer the phone when I call so I’d like to keep as many around as possible.

Nothing spectacular, 6R3 -> T82 (Fredericksburg, TX). But what was so special about this flight is that it is my first IFR flight! I passed IFR checkride yesterday and could not resist to get on top of the cloud layer. Flight back on Sunday, already filed IFR FLP for the return home.

As I was preparing for a student tomorrow, I came upon an article I wrote for the MAPA Log in 1993, a year after I bought my airplane. Have times ever changed! I thought I had the greatest panel ever devised for a GA airplane at the time--and I did. But compared to what I have today, it was nearly the dark ages with only the most primitive of displays. I had praise for the MAPA Safety Foundation back then, and even now look back fondly on taking the PPP because I was introduced to Bob Goldin, my mentor instructor, and a person who single handedly changed the course of my life, although I don't think it was intentional. Some people just have that impact, though. Through his mentoring and encouragement to become a CFI and CFII, I changed my life's orientation from Real Estate to Aviation. Of course Real Estate continues to be important in my life but Aviation has taken center stage. Bob recommended me as an instructor for the PPP and I enjoyed teaching for them for eight years until the management changed with the death of Don Bymaster. Bob was forced out due to age and after I tried to make some recommendations for improvement to the Program, I was out. I am not a fan of politics. Luckily, I make my own path in life. Through flight instruction I have met so many interesting people I never would have met otherwise. I've attached that article for anyone who wants to take the time to read it. It's funny to see how excited I was over things that seem so trivial today. Also, I've totally changed my opinion on the use of speed brakes, and have written on their use in another article on my website. Time does march on. Mooney N9148W Mooney of the Month.pdf

OK. I don't need to comment which is which.

Today was drop off day for our youngest son for his freshman year. In Rhode Island - hurricane cleared out in time today. Here I am flying home - seems like cool sunset picture between layers - and you can see the GI275 in reflection in the window.

On paper, this is designed to be the best Summit yet. Rick has worked tirelessly to really put a pro event together. When it happens, it will truly be a "dont miss" event. Save a few vacation days and take off work to attend. Those that have prioritized it in the past have been glad they did. Thanks Rick for your diligence and tenacity in this organization.

Powered up today!

Fly more hours so your cost per hour is less......problem solved.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is the chart of the past 22 years (including this year) of aviation insurance costs for my airplane. Currently ATP, CFII Master Instructor, 12,000 hours TT, 10,100 Mooney Time, and 6,500 Instructing.

With regard to modern surgical residency: Hard to say working 75-80 hours a week for 5 years with 4 days off per month is being treated too softly. The reason, in my opinion, that residents are limited to 80 hours per week and a minimum of 4 days off a month is because abuse was occurring, but I wasn't around then. My father and grandfather were doctors / surgeons. Every one of my senior surgery mentors has told me that our care and education is much better than they were in the old days. When I go home at night the residents take turns covering for each other so we can get a little sleep and take better care of our patients during the day. The volume of work has not changed since the duty hour rules, its just been shifted to be more efficient. When I take call sometimes I operate for 20 hours non-stop bouncing from room to room. I have a 60 bed ICU with ECMO and transplant and cardiac units, a level 1 trauma center and an average of 300 in-patients who I am personally in charge of as the chief resident, not to mention the emergency room which often sends us more then 30 consults in 24 hours. I do this without an attending in the hospital - but they are 15 minutes away. The scope of the General Surgeon has also changed significantly from what it once was. No longer do many surgeons do abdominal, chest, vascular, transplant, aortic, pancreatic trauma etc like the old days. Additionally, 80% of our grads do a fellowship for additional years to sub-specialize. My personal opinion is that if surgical residency was more focused on education and training instead of doing non-educational paperwork to make the attending happy and if advancement was based on skill not an arbitrary timeline, we could cut out an entire junior year of training and probably be well trained in 4 years... especially if going on to fellowship. That being said, I managed to get my PPL during residency by being efficient with my time and priorities. sometimes after working for 28 hours, sleeping 6 hours I get up to go for an evening lesson then come home refreshed to study surgery for a bit before going back to bed. The year I got my certificate my national exam scores actually went up by 22% compared to my peers because I was giving my brain a bit more time to recover and was more efficient with my time. Anyways... this is way off topic! I found myself a really nice Mooney M20c with a full upgraded panel / GPS/ autopilot/ bladders in the tanks, no corrosion, good engine with 1000hours and current annual good for another year. We settled on a price and got a really extensive pre-buy from Byron at RPM aviation (thanks to this forum for the recommendation!) and that went well. Hoping my loan from one of the finance companies mentioned on this thread gets approved early next week and I can close soon after! Sounds like the monthly payment will only be 320$ a month for a 20 year term, so much cheeper than expected if it works out. Will post pictures when / if the deal is done!

The perfect day came with LIFR ceilings at Brunswick GA (KBQK) and IFR at FHB for me to go "play in the clouds" and see how low I could go at KBQK. Could I get down below DA without actually seeing the runway? As it turns out I could have landed but opted to do the missed approach at KBQK and fly back to KFHB after one turn at the hold. Had to do an RNAV into KFHB. Great IFR day!!! Chris Koppel

New mini announced today. Complete re-design. Narrow borders, larger 8.3 inch display, but same overall size as older ones. Retina display. 40% jump in CPU performance, 80% jump in GPU performance. They showed Foreflight on it at the introduction. USB-C connection rather than lightning. 5G on cellular models. Supports 2nd Gen Apple Pencil. Looks like most of the features of the iPad pro in a mini size. Starts at $499. Orders start today, available next week.

Houses should be near water. Not in water.

You will just have to ditch the Mooney and get one of these:

Tell her the rules are if it flies, floats or fs, rent it is cheaper. Tell her you never make more than two mistakes and you'll sure miss her. Me? Three time loser.

Oh, you poor, poor bastard. Not sure what to tell you. I, personally, would go look for a new wife, if you truly needed one.

I found a few in my tool box. These two are screwed to a 6-32 stud, with a tywrap so I don’t loose them. PM me a mailing address and I’ll send them to you. Clarence

I’ve got just as many horrors coming from other shops. We finished a 100 hour yesterday on an Ovation four months out of annual by a big US shop. The shock discs were original and so compressed that they never did expand fully after a week on jacks, in fact they were so compressed that the top washers on both main gears had rotated to a new position and got bent. The engine mount was so corroded in one spot we had to have a tube welded, luckily we didn’t have to pull the engine to repair it. The muffler had three cracks, the longest was six inches. There was excessive play in the elevator controls, the aft walking beam was falling apart it required repairs similar to what Don described in a recent post. The fuel injectors hadn’t been cleaned in hundreds of hours, the engine fuel pressures and mixtures were way out of spec. The electric fuel boost pump pressure was way too high. The mags hadn’t seen any maintenance in 1000 hours, requiring replacements. On and on it went, luckily the owner has a sense of humour and is thankful to have it maintained properly and this is only the first round. Clarence

Not everyone wants to or are capable of doing aircraft maintenance. I’ve got lots of customers who tell me that they’re better off working at their job, while I do my job. Clarence

Respectfully, I think that is a poor analogy. The jury is NOT going to view an aircraft accident (painted as a RICH aircraft owner) in no where near the same way that they view an auto accident. And, with my umbrella policy I'm covered for way more than my aircraft. (Note well that umbrella polices specifically EXCLUDE any liability for GA accidents). I do NOT fly anyone but family members on trips and pleasure flights... my wife and I have worked too long and hard to put our net worth at risk for a HOBBY. I looked at a smooth policy and the squeeze wasn't worth the juice of taking friends for rides. The old 'life is too short to worry about such things' just doesn't cut it with me. YMMV

Wanted to let everyone know that this deal closed yesterday evening, and the aircraft was successfully delivered to its new (and very happy) owner in Maryland. As is customary, I’ll leave it to them to post their experiences and/or additional thoughts if they choose. Over the last several months, I’ve looked at - and turned down - several other airplanes for my next endeavor, so my search continues. Hopefully in the next few weeks, something will materialize. In the meantime, I wanted to thank everyone for looking at this, communicating with me about it, and sharing your observations. They are all very much appreciated. I’ll pass on more about the next new ship when I get closer to a candidate.

So, let’s review a few basics. The Surefly has two settings: engine timing should be set to TDC and the dip switches set to (in your case) 25 deg BTDC (assuming that this agrees with the data plate on the engine). The dip switch setting can be verified by the flash sequence of the LED. The Bendix mag has an internal timing (efficiency gap, or E-gap) and engine timing. When the mag is new or overhauled, the E-gap is set. During installation, the engine timing is set. As the mag wears in, the E-gap can change slightly and this can be compensating by “bumping” the engine timing. Properly, the amount and direction (advance or retard) of each bump should be logged. When the cumulative changes in one direction exceed a few degrees (perhaps someone here remembers the spec.) the E-gap should be reset. A ten degree timing error is HUGE. Either the mag wasn’t originally timed properly to the engine, or there is an issue within the mag. Also, a 150 rpm drop during a mag check is pretty big. Most airplanes I’ve flown drop around 100. Skip

I found PilotBank in Florida. I'm a physician with other loans (home and school), and the bank AOPA pointed me to offered 7.5% 15 years for 20% down. I called PilotBank directly and asked what they could do (I saw an ad for them), and they offered 4% 30 years for 20% down, so I went with them. Application was pretty easy and quick, and no significant impact on the buying process. As an early-career physician, financing stuff makes total sense. Few other career people are in your situation where you are cash-poor now but have a long-term stable career with high security. On the other hand, if you don't have your ticket yet (or are planning on an IFR rating), I would recommend against buying a plane now. Your training WILL happen in fits and starts during residency, and you will find IFR training as intensive as studying for the boards. The amount of reserve brainpower you have for flight training will be dictated by your medical training, and that means your flight training will take longer and be unpredictable. That's probably not a good setting to be buying a plane. Also realize that any attempt to use GA as a "practical" means of transportation should be disposed of now. It's a (expensive) "hobby" that sometimes, occasionally, maybe, turns out to be helpful on trips and is almost never financially equivalent to flying Southwest. A Mooney and an IFR rating will increase the chances that it's practical, but you'll also have to spend the mental energy on flight planning, ADM and flying. Every vacation will include daily (or more) weather checks and flight planning which only counts as vacation time if you enjoy that sort of thing.

It’s with extremely mixed feelings that I put my Bravo on the market. Unfortunately, some other personal reasons are leading to the sale but it definitely won’t be my last Mooney! I’ve spent the last 3 years upgrading it significantly as well as meticulously maintaining the aircraft. Rather than put everything here, see below for the trade a plane listing: https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Single+Engine+Piston&make=MOONEY&model=M20M+BRAVO&listing_id=2394200&s-type=aircraft

I use this:

I took some pictures of my D/C aircraft with the trim full down then take off then full up trim. Mark

I spent hours reading manuals and planning my G3X / GFC 500 / GTN 650Xi panel. This included scamming copies of Garmin’s top secret installation manuals and emailing Garmin tech support to ask about unclear passages or mistakes I uncovered in the manuals. I knew I’d miss something. Turns out the GNC 255A Nav/Com only has one RS-232 connection. So, if I want it to show up on the G3X (I do) then I can’t connect it to the GTN. This kills the navigation database frequency lookup feature since the GNC has no position information. It’s not a big deal, but it’s another indication that trying to build a coherent system from Garmin bits, designed by different teams at different times for different markets, can be a challenge. So far, this is the only surprise. Skip

Don't use any tint that has an adhesive. You want to use the static cling stuff. I've had a writeup on it on my blog since 2017. It is still the most viewed page on my site. If you don't want to tint the front windows just keep a few smaller squares of the tint in the seat back. Toss it on the dash, it gets warm, and then stick it to the window wherever you need it to keep the sun off you. On descent just pull it off the window, fold it up, and put it back in the seat back for next time. https://intothesky.com/window-tinting/

A) This is false. IRAs are also protected by federal law up to $1,362,800. C) work-related IRAs (eg Rollover IRAs) have unlimited protection as long as you don't commingle your rollover IRA with another IRA (in which case, if you have an IRA with a balance over $1.4M, you'd have to sort out what came from the 401k/Rollover and what didn't.). In any case the limits are so high that for most people their IRAs will be fully protected regardless of what state they live in. Moreover when you file bankruptcy you can choose to use the federal or state exemptions, whichever is more generous. For most people who switch employers or retire, rolling your 401k into a Rollover IRA is a good idea as there are usually no IRA fees (whereas 401k can be quite costly) and the investment choices are much greater. Signed, --A lawyer, but this isn't legal advice.

Alex, this is something I typically do with clients on Flight reviews. Go up to a safe altitude say 4500' on a cardinal heading, climbing at Vy, upon reaching the altitude, chop power, count to 5..this is your brain trying to process you just lost an engine. Say to yourself "this belongs to the insurance company", Now 45deg bank into the wind and pitch for best glide at your weight. If you don't know might I suggest using 95 kts. After you turn 180 deg, continue straight ahead for about 3 sec then 45 the opposite direction for 90 deg. This simulates a base to final turn. Upon reaching the completion of the 45, roll out to level and note the altitude. If your good, it will be less than 800' in a Bravo. but in real life, your use of 1K feet is good. Meanwhile, while doing this maneuver, simulate changing the 3 things that make an engine run. GAS, AIR and SPARK. dont try to figure out which in a real situation as figuring takes precious time. Just start changing them all, hopefully she will breath fire again. start with boost pump, then change fuel tank, then add alt air, then change mags up. You can practice this on the ground in the hangar with the engine off, develop a flow and muscle memory. Prior to launching at any airport, figure out what your plan is if you have an engine out in the kill zone (below 1K feet AGL) Where will you land? After 1K you have more options, can lower the nose to cruise climb 120kts and start breathing again. Just like the Cirrus guys, develop a habit of "turnback active" when doing your 1K AGL checklist (don't have one? get one together,,,you know, things like double check flaps up, landing light off, cruise climb settings etc)

For anyone following along... Took the written today, got a 98 so thats nice. I start flight training next week via one of @StevenL757 contacts.

Close guess, 31-0001 was the development plane for the Acclaim, known as "captain Mikey's plane". It was tweaked as well as it could be. Here is a before and after pic, and a shot of N218TA's speed for those whos BS detectors are mis calibrated