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Just make them a deal....you and your wife will fly commercial as long as they buy you first class tickets. If they balk tell them to buy a NetJets share.

Went to pick up my airplane at Wickenburg today after some work and my buddy got this pic on our way back to Deer Valley.

Okay folks so I’m posting this for two reasons: 1) get it off my chest and not have any anxiety over it and 2) so maybe someone will get something out of it. lessons learned on my 6 hour x-country today: 1) do the f{*}+# pre-flight right. No matter how caffeinated you are or ready to go, do every god damned step and thoroughly. 2) seriously consider the options when doing VFR over the top. 3) when you’re re flustered... stop and relax. So at 10:30 am today, right on schedule, I pop the panel, pull out the dip stick and look briefly. It says just over 4, so I drop it in and go. The rest of the preflight was complete. I buy 4 quarts of oil for the road, just in case, and hit the air. im headed west and over the mountains. So I go VFR over the top at 8500, next stop KDCY in 3.5 hours. It quickly becomes totally overcast below me but that’s okay. For once in my life I had this urge to give flight following another try. So I’m on flight following since I departed northern Virginia. About an hour and fifteen in I get this hunch. A literal voice said “check ALL the instruments” I had been scanning my 6 pack but decide to check it all a bit more in depth. I notice the oil pressure is lower than normal. Not bad, but low. I keep an eye on it. I’m watching and it’s slowly dropping. I call flight following and ask them how far this cloud coverage goes. They gave me a hole about 100 miles away, I didn’t want to go that far so I asked closet. Another pilot game on and said there was some in the area. I found the nearest airport, 48I, and was determined to find a hole. I did some circilling, explained the situation, and oil pressure was getting close to the red line at 25. I found a hole and saw the layer was very thin and I headed for the hole. Couldn’t get it 100% but remembered my training. Eyes on my artificial horizon, keep it level. Even descent. It lasted about 30 seconds of IMC out the front windshield but my wife told me after that she could see the ground through side window the whole time. Punched through and booked it to the airport. Called that I was inbound and needed immediate access to the runway. Got on the ground and called the manager, he said said that the approach had called twice asking if I made it. He sent someone out to help me out and my dipstick ready around 1 quart. I filled her up and and ran it up to make sure it wasn’t a leak. It checked out. we took off and I was flustered. After a bit I couldn’t get the engine working right. So I turned around and told my wife we were headed back. On the way back I realized I was working the RPM and manifold pressure backwards. All out of being flustered and frustrated. The rest of the trip was uneventful. Less learned. Don’t skimp. Actually wipe down the dipstick, and check the oil. Be very careful in going VFR over the top. Afterwards, take some time and calm down. Don’t get flustered.

With all of the posts I've been reading over the last couple of years about battery life, I took action to maintain my batteries as best I could. The batteries in my airplane were installed in 2014 and are still going strong, verified again at this year's annual, and I credit that to consistent use of my BatteryMinder. But it was a pain to hook up, and I wanted something easier. Here's the installation I implemented for my BatteryMinder connections, inspired by Don Kaye's installation in his O2 filler port door. I went in through the TKS filler port door, which provided a very convenient place to cleanly mount a BatteryMinder Airframe Interface Kit connector for each battery. With the "Y" connector for the BatteryMinder, I can connect to both batteries simultaneously for a continuous maintenance charge and desulfation. Or I can charge each battery individually to get them both evenly topped off before putting them on a simultaneous maintenance charge, as recommended in the BatteryMinder documentation. Openning up the TKS filler port door and plugging in is a heck of a lot more convenient than what I've been doing, which required removing the left battery access panel, reaching in to pull back the boots on all four battery terminals and connecting the battery terminal clips to the terminals. Then removing the clips, putting the boots back in place, and replacing the access panel. Plus it saves me a fair amount of time, and has the look of an OEM installation (thanks to Tom, the world's greatest A&P I/A who transformed my idea into the finished product). My hope is that this inspires ideas for others thinking about doing something similar. What have other folks done? Cheers, Rick

LOL... American's are not known for their grasp of geography... especially anything outside the "lower 48".

Flying GA isn't as safe as flying commercial, but it's got to be a hell of a lot safer than 8 hours in a car with holiday traffic.

My in-laws of about 10 years, gave up complaining about 9.5 years ago when they realized we weren't about to concern ourselves with their worries. While not exactly the same thing, they were always worried about their daughter's travel to "interesting" places around the globe. And always tried to convince her of the dangers. Then she met me, and the travel just accelerated. It's been 62 countries and all 7 continents in these last 10 years. They didn't like the Mooney either, but we've been all over the US in it anyway. They've just given up and thrown in the towel on trying to control what their fully grown children are doing. After all, it's none of their damn business anyway.

Ignore them. You both should just live your lives. They shouldn't be living yours for you.

Happy Thanksgiving to all the Mooniacs out there!

I spent some quality time with Blake, He will be a fine steward of his Mooney and an excellent pilot. Welcome!

No lines at the airport for Mooney Drivers. It's a good travel day

Then there is the smart wife that ask for new shoes and outfit for that special trip to Sun n' fun. And you happily spend $200 on new clothing. But on the day of the trip she says "Honey I am not feeling well, I am getting my period and don't want to make a mess on your plane. But go by yourself and have more fun" So much for new clothing. Beware of these tactics. She got me three times but no more after I met Sofia, always ready to fly.

Yep... I think it was about a year ago as I was crossing over Austin on my way to a landing at home in San Marcos. There was a solid cloud deck at 4000 ft. and it was about 2000 ft thick. ATC calls out traffic to me, a 172 searching for a hole. I responded that I had the traffic in sight and wished him well at finding that hole. As I descended through the layer to an uneventful visual approach into San Marcos, I couldn't help but worry just a bit about the poor guy stuck on top. As soon as I'd landed and taxied to parking, I switched back to Austin Approach to monitor the situation. It was good to hear when he did find a small hole, got down, and then scud ran home to put the plane away and probably change his shorts.

My step daughter (17yo) was not allowed to fly with us for probably 6-8 months after I got our plane. Her father was afraid of letting her fly with me. (Truth be told he doesn't like me much... ) My wife didn't press the issue with him, we just let time go by as we took trips without his daughter while she was at his house. Multiple trips from Southern California to Arizona, Utah and Idaho later (involving real mountains, no disrespect to those who fly back east) he decided to let her fly with me. It helped that she really wanted to to fly and would talk to her dad about wanting to go. Her first flight with us was from Salt Lake to Southern California, she enjoyed it.

The handful of long vfr over the top legs I've finished have been the most harrowing flying I've ever done. I was lucky to have a good instrument-rated mentor on board for the first one I did. The most helpful and relevant advice was to be very flexible on the flight plan and continuously adjust the route to keep the ground in sight somewhere at the periphery of the route. There should always be a clear out. In once case I flew a few hundred extra miles just to achieve this, and that's when I started to really feel the absurdity of flying without the instrument ticket in certain conditions. I'm finally making some good progress in that direction.

The local IA in my old hometown took my call today. I’m #1 on Friday but he suspects based on consumption that I’ve either had a cylinder go bad and I’m blowing oil out based off some of the pics it looks like the prop (with the AD), both of which he’s handled before. He’s going to have a diagnosis for me tomorrow. It’s gonna be a fun drive back to VA

Thanks and you don’t sound like the annoying quarterback at all. You provided the advice (which I now know) but also based on your experience, vs saying “I would’ve never done that”. I appreciate it, and it was more or less the intent of the posting. Mistakes happen, we all make them. Putting mine out in the public may help someone avoid it. When I want “that was stupid I would’ve never done that” I’ll go to a different forum. oh and the NASA report was already filed.

make sure you file a NASA report. While nothing should come of this action wise, you just never know with the FAA. Glad you are safe and we dont have to write "the letter" https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/report/electronic.html

Glad you made it alright! I also had one experience getting "stuck" with undercast, I was very happy to get in the ground. Left the pla e there for a week until I could get back to fetch her on a clear but very windy day. On your preflight, unless I was warming the oil to change it, I won't fly with less than 5 quarts. It only takes a second to top off the oil. I prefer to start trips with 6 quarts, and always carry a full quart in the back (even if I already have a partial quart there, I add another one). Take this to be motivation to work on your Instrument rating.

Hangar before: Hangar after: My girlfriend thought she could pull the plane out but she forgot the tow bar slips sometimes In other news, shoutout to @Sven for the persuasion to redo the wing walk material. I couldn't find the aluminum tape at my local Lowe's, so I used masking tape. I'll have more tomorrow afternoon.

I think I filed two VFR flight plans as a student pilot, and none since. But I always got flight following! With a flight plan, they will start looking for you if you are overdue; with flight following, ATC knows where you are all the time, and is a button push away if you have a problem. It took a while for me to become a serious Instrument student. Bought the Mooney five weeks post-PPL, and planned to fly a year learning the plane and getting comfortable. That turned into two years, a few cancelled trips, a couple of flights over the top that worked out, a couple I turned around, got stuck between layers once before finding a hole and spiraling down . . . The last straw was heading to pick up Mom for the family reunion, flying towards mountain obscuration in E. KY that was forecast to dissipate but hadn't; it was about the only time that I was dropped from Flight Following instead of being passed on. When something white and fuzzy went by, I locked onto the AI and TC and did a smooth 180 and went home. Started training seriously the next week.

It’s great until something comes up. Only takes once. My “once” was yesterday.

If a family member insisted I drive rather than fly my own aircraft I think the conversation we would have about it would be the last I ever had with them. I would convey my venal insult In my loudest voice, which has been known to drown out commercial jets. I don’t care about idiot in-laws, they can be someone else’s problem. I have to admit, I am blessed with fairly intelligent relatives. I’ve had just about everyone on both sides of the family up in the airplane at one point or another. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t want to go, but someone trying to prevent ME from flying? All that said, I don’t tend to fly to family gatherings. Too much pressure to get back in a timely manner.

Hah, yeah and all the potential drunks, road conditions, small kids in the back, stopping for diapers, feedings...all went a long way for reasoning behind us buying a plane. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is the key. You can talk statistics, training, etc... all you want, but experience and time, showing that you make good decisions about flying will likely be what changes their minds.

First those aren't mountains, they are hills , come fly out west to see mountains. Steps to gaining family trust: 1. Fly when the weather is very good VFR to start. 2. Ensure you have time to wait out any weather or maintenance issues without pressure for both outbound and return flights. 3. Have a back up plan for commercial flights, rental cars, etc. Do not hesitate to use them to show you have good judgment. 4. Plan routes that reduce risk over large regions of unlandable terrain and around potential weather. Most of the time you will find that it only adds a few minutes to total time. Even an hour or two is still better than driving. As you gain experience, wisdom and judgment that goes with more flight time your family will grow to love the speed and convince of the Mooney. I fly from Utah to California most winters, but I leave many days (three to four days) of flexibility in the schedule. I once had to borrow my fathers car and drive home 800 miles when I couldn't find a route around a storm that was stretching from the boarder with Mexico to Canada when I had to be back for work. I then drove back a week later to return the car and fly the plane back. We have had to leave our visit several days early when the forecasts were showing marginal weather for extended periods. IFR can help in the winter, but out west most of the time if it is IFR it is also solid ice. Be patient and gain the trust slowly, you have a long time for your family to enjoy the advantages of flight.

Statistics probably aren’t going to be in your favour so stay clear of that altogether. That being said stressing the professional standards and regard for safety that you hold yourself to may help. The rigours of training, maintenance requirements, weather limits. General Aviation doesn’t get a lot of good press and the general public is far from educated on what it involves so good luck. Being open to questions and answering what you can is your best bet. Remember they aren’t necessarily questioning you personally because they probably just don’t know. Or maybe they just don’t like you

No apology necessary. JPI provides software to analyze your monitor's data but it's quite atrocious. Alternatively you can upload it to SavvyAnalysis' website and customize your own graphs quite easily. It's free to do this. Many of us (myself included) subscribe to their service where all my data is monitored on a continual basis for such things as pending exhaust-valve failure and they'll notify you promptly in such an instance. You can also query them for further analysis anytime you suspect an anomaly in your data. They also provide a quarterly (?) report card comparing your plane's parameters to the fleet (there are currently 176 M20J/F models in their database). This is great information. Lastly, we also have a great resource on Mooneyspace who is an analyst for Savvy by the name of Paul Kortopates (name corrected now). I didn't intend this to be an advertisement for Savvy but I'm sold on their services. cnoe P.S. If you tie your 830 into a GPS source it greatly enhances the available data. I highly recommend doing that.

Heck no! I bought the Mooney to go FAST!! I typically will run 80° to 100° ROP. I have done the Gami spread test (0.3 GPH) and my plane will run LOP. I ran it that way a couple of times. I just don’t like seeing my airspeed at Skylane levels. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Same here! haha

Flew a Pilots and Paws Flight from KBMC to KCDC on the 12th dropping off a couple of Border Collies going south to AZ for the winter. Wouldn't you know the female was looking over my shoulder the whole trip. It was a great day to up in the air 20K overcast with stable air underneath the whole trip. I had a nice tail wind at 11.5K on the way home (150+kt GS)

Thanks for being brave enough to put this out there. If nothing else, this gets each of us to revisit our personal minimums and evaluate our preflight procedures as we think through your experience. That is valuable in and of itself. I am half way through my instrument training. I’ve not yet been in the situation, but I’m not doing VFR on top until I finish my instrument ticket.

one thing I've noticed after my mod is that the CHT's are much closer together. At least on the O-360. I'm interested to see the results on the IO-360's.

I don't mean to sound like the annoying Monday morning quarterback, but as a fellow IFR pilot, this is the typical set up for a catastrophic accident. I remember once upon a time being the optimistic VFR pilot thinking I could fly anywhere in any weather situation as long as I could find a hole in the clouds and torpedo my way through to safety, but if you think about it there are several unwise factors that you probably haven't thought about: terrain changes, surface elevations relative to the cloud bases, radio towers several hundred feet high, buildings, other "scud running" airplanes. Also why your family or whoever is riding with you gets increasingly anxious over your pursuit to find this mysterious hole, the rest of the air traffic control system can hear your frantic silly efforts that typically disrupt the approach path of everyone who is qualified to fly in those conditions. I don't mean to be cynical. I myself have been there, looking very foolish for getting into a messy situation, ultimately putting my wife and I in potential danger while illegally Descending into and through the clouds. We made it, as you did, but it wasn't until after I got my instrument rating that I realized that mindset is stupid, unwise and dangerous for cross country travel. After an IFR certification, which is the system all other airplanes travel by, layers of cloud flying is very straight forward, fun, and safe provided you're current and actively being proactive/ahead of the airplane. You're entire story could be avoided with a simple approach into whatever airport you landed at. Please do yourself and your family a favor and start your IFR training today. You won't regret it, flying and traveling in general will be exponentially more enjoyable and then when you hear that guy trying to find a hole in the clouds while your autopilot is capturing and holding the glideslope to the runway 5 miles out, you'll be able to chuckle to yourself thinking "dude, go get your instrument rating." Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have also input 11:1 into ForeFlight extrapolating from the POH chart. I’m surprised there is not a more precise glide ratio published for the J model. I haven’t done the in flight cross check like @cnoe, but it is comforting to know the POH is a conservative number.

Yep. Absolutely. Ditto. Can't repeat it enough. I think the other lesson might be "Don't fly Cessna's"

I was just thinking of that yesterday since I'm about to do my yokes and wheels. Thats the problem- its pretty well soaked in the slot

Ned, I don't know how that happened. The avionics shop followed their protocol and set the Aspen up in miles. I guess I have a case of out of control hangar gremlins.

I was reading through my Owners Manual and was pleasantky surprised to find this topic addressed there. This is what Mooney has to say about the red arc on my tach: I am officially not worried about RPM in the pattern. This topic is not addressed at all in the discussions about descents and landing. As I have always done, I will select a cruise RPM outside the red stripe, enter the pattern at 2300 (my red zone is 2000-2250), and ignore both MP and RPM needles way over on the other side of the panel while I'm making left turns, reducing power and landing.

This topic was discussed in great detail back in March 2016 when I conducted glide tests in my M20J. My findings were that the published glide ratios/distances were overly conservative. For me personally, I set the (wind corrected) glide distance rings on my moving map (Foreflight) to a ratio of 14.4:1 or 2.37 nm/1,000' agl. In the event of a power-off event I want to know ALL of my options, not just the ones that Mooney's lawyers conjured up for me. Of course I'd look for the closest acceptable landing spot, but I wouldn't put it into a hole in the trees if my calculated glide range would allow me to fly beyond them. I believe that a CONSERVATIVE figure (for MY plane) is 14:1 or 2.3 nm/1,000' agl. Your numbers may vary; you'll never know unless you practice this. My personal testing was done with both "power on" and "power off" (i.e. mixture pulled to ICO) with the prop control pulled fully out. The difference between "idle" and "off" was less than you'd expect. Somebody may flame me for flying around with my engine off but it's really no big deal. I also have no issue running a tank to empty if the flight scenario requires it (though it rarely does). All the details are found under a previous post titled "M20J or glider". This link may get you there: https://mooneyspace.com/topic/17978-m20j-or-glider/?tab=comments#comment-261924 cnoe

I did some tests about 30 years ago with my M20F. I would sometimes fly long cross countries at 500 AGL or less because I was young and stupid. I wondered how far I could glide from that altitude. So I tried it two different ways. I would fly outbound from a VOR and at a certain DME I would pull the engine to idle and see how far I could go till I was about 50 ft AGL. I. Don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like 1.5 miles if I maintained altitude until reaching best glide speed and 2.5 miles if I zoomed up to best glide speed. The lesson I learned is if your engine quits, aggressively getting to best glide speed will buy you almost a mile of glide.

Great video above the clouds. Here is a sun set above the clouds.

Sorry to hear that. We used to visit family (450 nm away) once a year (Christmas); maybe twice. Since purchasing our Mooney 5 years ago we’ve logged more than 20 trips to see them. Then again maybe they don’t care to see you that often.[emoji846] GA is the safest it’s been in 50 years, but still has risks. Fly safe and send them articles like this? https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/11/22/472074.htm Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have been swapping between my 172 and my Mooney a lot lately due to some maintenance on the Mooney. I have found that I have to be very diligent in all of the aspects of the flight. Checklists for everything and no shortcuts. Although I did forget to put the gear up on the 172 last time I flew it. I'm very happy to read that it all worked out for you.

Per the NTSB report, the manufacturing process for the nylon magneto gears has not changed in the last 20 years. At work, we mold gears every day using molds that are more than 20 years old, and some brand new ones still being approved. No, they are not aerospace gears . . . .

Here's a little tease..... the primary color is called "Kona Blue" (a color code I stole from the ford car colors - so you can look up Kona blue) and it is sort of a chameleon color - sometimes it looks dark blue, sometimes purple, sometimes shiny..and there is a trick added to the paint too - more soon. It is mostly this color throughout with a certain accent... more tease in the next few days. The paint is ALL done in fact and she's being put together on Monday.

That’s what we do best. We’re like a school yard full of kids with magnifying glasses looking for the next ant to fry. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

This is all great information and we can all learn from this thread. However, in an actual engine out situation, the last thing I want to do is try to strectch my glide unless absolutely necessary. I would rather have to dissipate energy in an area I know that I can make than to hit houses because my glide computations were just a "little shy" of a runway. Once the engine quits, I'm flying the insurance company's airplane.

There's a pretty large flock of Nanchangs and Yaks at Deer Valley that fly together a lot, and a T-34 that sometimes flies with them. They make a fairly distinct sound so I always know when they're flying when I'm at the hangar, and it's not at all unusual to see them break formation midfield and land sequentially. They tend to show up for sale around $95k and are apparently not that hard to maintain. A guy in my hangar row has a Wilga with the same engine, and takes advantage of the local support economy for them. So there are ways to do the 'warbird' thing without spending an outrageous amount of money.