Leaderboard

+1 for ignoring total airframe time. That is the least important data point. +1 for buying the nicest example you can afford. For example, you'll be much happier with an $80K M20E than an $80K M20J. The reason is that the E will be the top of it's class, well maintained and fully upgraded. The J will be the bottom of it's class along with all the deferred maintenance and all the upgrades left for you to spend on. That's just an example but you'd be better off buying an older model that is better equipped, mid time engine, well maintained, flying every week, rather than a newer model that is in rough condition or a hangar queen, and is therefore "cheap". Rules to follow: Don't buy a Mooney without an autopilot. Don't buy a Mooney without WAAS GPS. An engine with between 500 and 1000 hours SMOH is best, runout is second best (pay less for the plane and get the engine overhauled yourself), and a new/fresh overhaul is third best. Don't buy a Mooney that has been sitting. Find something that is regularly flying, with a current annual. Don't buy a Mooney with a fresh paint job. Make a list of all the things you're looking for in a Mooney, sort the list by order of importance, resort the list as you learn more, buy the Mooney that gets the furthest down the list.

It is more important to do a "pre-buy" on the owner. I've only done a pre-buy inspection on maybe half of the airplanes I've bought, the last four I did not. However, I've done a "pre-buy" on every owner.

After a week and a half of delays with a title issue I was finally able to pick up 4775H from St Louis this week. Big thanks to Jeff Schnabel out of Cincinnati for the help on the reposition and insurance dual. we shook down the plane Friday night and left for CT Saturday morning. Dodged the storms over to Latrobe PA for lunch and filed IFR back to CT. With ceiling forecasts calling for a high overcast it looked easy and we might even be able to knock out the rest of the dual that night. It turned out to be hard IFR and an approach to mins to get in and we called it a day. Great work for me as an instrument student to get in the system and put some actual in the log book. Finished up today and flew the Hudson River for fun to close out the hours. Ready to start putting her to good use now.

The big difference between the MSE and MSE Limited was a KAP-100 Autopilot in place of the KAP-150 and no HSI. There were other minor differences. Like the lower side carpets were replaced with royalite plastic and if I remember correctly, there were no sun visors. No middle arm rest. Cheaper carpet material and seat material. Mechanical cowl flaps vs. electric if I remember right. The reference to the inflation adjuster above. The big difference(s) between 1994 and now are labor rates, the cost of non-factory produced components (which also include much larger liability premiums) and the cost of liability premiums for the factory. Since the Mooney airframe takes 5000+ hours to hand build, you have to figure that the cost of labor is probably three times now what is was back in 1994. Cost of an engine and accessories, probably 3-4 times. And liability insurance premiums maybe 5-10 times what they were then and not spread over as many units. I just got a 1989 M20J that I am hoping to turn into a basically 'new' plane. I'm guessing if it were actually new, it would probably have to sell for between 600 and 700K for it to break even. I am going to try to stay under $225K for it, which is very high for a J, but in relation to new-new, it will be a bargain.

Thanks for all the help. I went to Henderson via Las Cruces last Sunday and returned via Double Eagle today. The turbulence beat us pretty bad for 5 hours, and then when I got back to Dallas, the Sarahan dust had moved in.

Thanks. Mission: Wake up in the morning and go flying without having to rent. Would like to travel and visit places/relatives without having to worry about the airline's schedule or traffic on the ground, sometimes with the girlfriend or sons. Live like Jimmy Buffet in the Caribbean. Attend Oshkosh. Go to distant places for a day or two trip. I bought 2 laundromats before I retired from the Navy, so I don't really work anymore and have a lot of free time.

NEVER accept an annual as a pre buy, especially and annual done by some one else for someone else other than you. (The buyer of the annual rules). Take the airplane to someone who has no connection in the past and have a pre-buy. If one of those MSC fit the bill, fine. Just make sure you are getting an independent and uninvolved opinion on the airplane. Distance should be reasonable, but do not let that stop you from getting it to a place where it needs to be.

I remember one owner of a Mooney that I was looking at years ago. He proudly stated that he always flew the airplane 50ºROP. The conversation was over at that point. Pre-buy on the owner accomplished, no need to spend the money on a pre-buy of the airplane.

Very well every time except once. I bought an airplane from a guy I had known on an aviation board for a couple of years. He seemed like a good guy and knowledgable and I trusted him. It was a fairly new restoration, new paint, interior, engine overhaul, etc. The restoration was well documented including photography. It had been through a couple of annuals since restoration so it still had low time everything. I found out at the first annual how much was skimped on. It probably cost an extra $10k to get it where it needed to be. On the other end of the spectrum, I had a very thorough pre-buy done on a different airplane. The recognized expert on this airplane type did the pre-buy (not a Mooney). He found over $10k worth of work that needed to be done. The seller agreed to do it all. I had the same recognized expert do the first annual after I bought it. It was over $25k. I'm on my 16th airplane in 18 years. I have the 'N" to have seen airplanes in better and worse shape than all of the data suggested. Unfortunately, someone that buys only one or two airplanes in their life has only one or two experiences which may be very good or very bad. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

If you can find a $60-$80k e or f, put the rest in the bank to start your maintenance/upgrade fund, you’ll be really happy. Unless you’re regularly crossing the middle of the Rockies, E and F are fine out west and less complicated to fly/maintain than a turbo. You said this isn’t necessarily your forever plane... fly it for 3 or 4 years and you can see if you think you really need turbo? If you want one all tricked out with glass panel and eis, find one it’s already done. Read @gsxrpilot post about autopilot and engines about 3 more times and follow his advice. If you have questions, ask! Also, insurance is probably gonna cost you $2-$3k /year on an $80k f. Just a guess.

I've only owned one plane, but I beat the hell out of the 172 I used for training. 10k Mooney hours probably equals 2k hours in a trainer as far as wear and tear on the airframe.

Lots of good advice above. The problem with doing your instrument rating in your own plane is that right now you may not know what you really need and will want for training till perhaps you get started and get some exposure to some of the different modern avionics out there. Also I would discourage anymore from getting their rating with VOR's alone; although many do but your instrument training will be very limited that way. Club aircraft in my locale are typically much better equipped than any budget owner aircraft bought to save rental money cost. Also I would shy you away from a K for under $100. What ever you buy I'd recommend it being a nice example of the model and well maintained; not the cheapest example you can find. That will slow your training down to a crawl as you take care of unforeseen deferred maintenance. A 231 is also a handful to manage with the fixed (bolt) or manual (merlin) wastegate. I personally wasn't all that satisfied with my 231 till I upgraded to the 252 and now have the ideal turbo upgraded to the Encore. Turbo adds whole another level of capability to the plane. There have been countless trips I would have canceled in an NA aircraft that I was still able to fly with the turbo. But it also requires you to fly in the upper teens for the main benefits of much faster cruise and ability to fly over the weather. Its not out of the question for a recently minted C172 private pilot to transition to K model. But expect it'll take more than 10-15 hrs in type that most clubs require for a complex checkout; because the plane is a handful. I had a client that was a very good new C172 pilot, yet it still took him 30+ hrs to transition in part because his business only allowed him to get away once a week; and then of course we couldn't fly every week. But for most of us, once you go Turbo, you won't go back to NA. But if this is mainly just for continued training it will more likely just slow the training process down with more unneeded complexity. A 252 on the other hand is as easy as flying a J model.

Just make sure you have the money to feed and care for the plane first. I would recommend you leave $20K in the bank for unexpected expenses, spend $80K on the plane. Tom

I recommend buying condition over total time. 6000tt is a plane that has been flown regularly over the past 60 years.. if it’s been taken care of properly, then it should be fine. If not, then some things could be worn beyond limits.. most of the value in these planes is the engine. the different models are good for different missions. If you live and frequent high density elevations or generally fly out west, then turbo is probably what you need. East of the Rockies NA is fine unless you want to go high and far. As your mission is usually solo or 2, many will say and E or C model. Sometimes you can find an E with rayjay stc. F is usually the best vintage for UL, which you don’t need right now, but maybe later. J is slightly faster than F, but usually UL challenged and such a drastically higher price. Many F models have been modified to be as fast as a J and several F’s on the market lately have turbo stc installed. Many prefer preJ vintage for the bullet proof manual gear, like me. Your budget being under $100k, don’t bother with J or later...

I want to change my answer..... airplane parts in KLR’s old hangar

I can even tell you what hangar it is in. Many years ago that was my hangar.

I will start all the screws in an inspection plate by hand, run them in with the electric with the clutch set low (4 on mine), then finish them with the Snap On screw driver. If you set the clutch on the electric high enough to run them all in, it will overtorque them, strip out the + on the screws and the bits.

Like I’ve said before, ATC gave him several chances to get out of Bravo, it doesn’t matter what any of us think as far as if he was IN or OUT, when the FAA looks at the data they will look at history of the controllers scope. Even if the FAA finds that he was CLEAR of Bravo he still did not comply with ATC. In the air is the wrong place to see who has the biggest.... well you know. I fly VFR over to the coast a lot and generally tell Approach it’s just sightseeing and if they want to vector me out traffics way for either KHRL or KBRO go for it, I’m just converting 100LL into Airplane noise

My airplane has 8,720 hours on the airframe and 2,120 hours since major overhaul (TBO=1,700). The only "repair" they had to do at annual a few weeks ago was "Adjusted and trimmed nose landing gear doors to close properly." Compressions (this is a Continental) were: 75/73/77/65/76/76. Oil analysis and photo attached. Don't let airframe - OR - engine time scare you away. *NOTE: I bought the airplane January 2019 so oil analysis before that were the previous owner's who ran ROP. The February 2019 analysis is a mix of both owners and subsequent values were mine with the engine running LOP, as an FYI.

Buy the nicest model you can afford that has been well taken care of and Properly maintained with the avionics you need . , any $$$ you have to spend after the purchase could have been used to buy a nicer one in the first place Call Jimmy Garrison. at All American Aircraft. If you know what you’re buying there should be no big surprises ( just my opinion)

Airtex leather seats in my 67C. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Just be glad it was only a 2 blade prop. :-)

Gents! Thank you for such awesome feedback! I will definitely incorporate all the suggestions. Please let me know if you can think of something else. I need to check on ignition and mag timing. I believe that it is 25 deg. It's marked 25 on the starter gear ring. I definitely agree about JPI engine monitor. I'm looking into options now. I will boroscope the cylinders next week to see the valves. They do have good compression (77-78/80). Once everything done, we will do another test flight in the similar conditions here in Florida. I will be sure to do more aggressive leaning on the mixture. I will collect more data and report back to provide more detailed breakdown. Thank you, guys. Lots to chew on. P.S. All this will done, once I will move my prop from being living room furniture status (wifey not loving it). Replacing starting ring due to lost teeth (posted a separate post on this earlier).

I agree that the 1.5 gallons out of the left wing was most likely due to trapped air. If the same thing happened on the right then you only burned 8.5 gallons, not 10. I don't dawdle on the ground. For me, it's usually about 7 minutes from start to takeoff for the first flight of the day and more like 3 or 4 minutes on subsequent flights. I plan on burning .5 gallons for start, taxi, and takeoff. If you spend more time than me then you may burn closer to a gallon. At any rate, you are down to about 8 gallons burned. For climb, I figure it costs me a quart of gas to climb 1000'. That means you probably spent about 1 to 1.25 gallons for the climb. That leaves about 7 gallons burned in cruise. That's still a lot for a 32 minute flight, but not unreasonable if you were well ROP. If you were running 2050 RPM and 24" MP, that is well over square and I'm guessing you didn't even get close to peak EGT before the engine appeared to run rough (because I'm guessing it was more like lugging the engine). So I'm guessing you were in fact well ROP. Do you have an EGT gauge? Did you reference it while leaning? Next time, instead of 2050 RPM and 24", try it the other way around: pull the MP back to 20" and then reduce the RPM to 2400 (about the same power). After you reduce RPM you'll probably notice the MP has risen so pull it back to 20" again, then lean to roughness and enrichen until smooth. See how that affects your burn.

Always pre-buy the plane as well as the owner. You can tell pretty quickly if they are a person who defers maintenance or takes care of something before it becomes a big problem. Never use the previous mechanic who has done work on the plane for the pre-buy. I doubt they would bring up anything since they have signed off on the plane, and different eyes see different things. And before you move forward with anything, decide if this is the plane you want for the mission you have. It may be a bit much to ask at this point, but what do you want to do with this plane? Some of us started with our first plane before we spent the money on our "forever" plane. (Dated other planes before we got married to our current Mooney.) @gsxrpilot and others have put together lists of what they prioritize in a plane when they went shopping for one. My wants were specific enough I could dismiss several that seemed to meet my needs, but did not check off enough boxes to grab my interest. Good luck, and welcome aboard!

I owned a Diamond DA40 before I sold it to buy this Mooney over 10 years ago. I found -the DA40 was a wonderful plane to fly and to hand fly. -the company was difficult to work with and in several ways made their legacy fleet owners second class citizens. From my own experience and also from reading repeatedly the experiences of other owners on the owners forum, to the point when I sold I had the feeling of escaping a bad deal. So I would be hard pressed to buy a Diamond again. Maybe colored by that, and it may be just me, but the DA50 isn't a nice looking plane to my eye. I do think it is a twin DA62, or rather the other way around, the DA50 was designed and flying and vapor ware long before they released the DA62. Just like the DA40 and DA42 are the same bodies. I do think their DA62 is the best of their fleet.

Ross, you should read what Bob Kromer says about certification spins in Mooneys. All counterspin control moves should be brisk, immediate and to the limits. They are on the MAPA site somewhere. Not a maneuver for most of us.

I flew all DA birds (not D-jet though ), there is a good spirit of fuel efficiency but they do feel underpowered and tight on load, the best of the fleet so far is DA62 which is really a badass aircraft ! Maintenance can be a nightmare on diesel ones with electric ignition, sensitive batteries & Garmin avionics, so they may only make sense in school environment, also I don’t think any of the Diamonds Aircrafts need a chute: HK36 is motor-glider, DA40 goes down with stick fullback way better than Cirrus on chute (except 40kts forward speed) and DA42 is one of the easiest twin/single aircraft to land Will wait to see what DA50 has to offer

Most important to me when I was shopping was recent and regular usage. Try to find one that's been flown 75-100 per year for at least the last several years. I went with the F and made sure the plane had a WAAS GPS. I bought mine with a run-out engine (and run-out price) but, I believe thanks to the previous owners constant and regular use, I'm now approaching 3 years and 2400 hours SMOH with no issues. It also has an AP which at the time I didn't care about...NOW, I'm VERY glad it does. If you've been renting like I used to, long trips were rare (VFR only, rental scheduling, minimum daily hours...) Hand flying for four straight hours gets old. And, for instrument flying, while you MUST be able to do EVERYTHING without the AP, I believe it adds to safety by allowing you to manage the bigger picture by freeing up 'CPU cycles' Like Paul said, you want to train for your IFR with a GPS. I got my instrument rating many years ago with just VORs...I still struggle with the GPS. As others have said, do NOT worry about total time. Look for condition. Good luck!

AE300, which is approximately equivalent to an IO360, is 30% heavier. I don’t know a lot about the new Austro 300hp, but assuming the same relative weight difference, it will be porky: IO550 is 460#, 130% of that is 600#. The bigger issue, though, is W&B. The DA40 lycoming is slightly aft CG biased, as you probably recall. The DA40 NG is very nose heavy as I recall from flying it. The long body planes start nose heavy, requiring the dual batteries in the tail for balance. Plus the fuel tanks are slightly aft, so even though diesel has more go per pound of fuel, it would be really hard to balance on the long body. Not saying “it’ll never work,” but... it’ll never work. -dan

Help for David... Anything that will help get the wife on board, flying a Mooney! -a-

I have had this happen, It is not a pushrod failure it is stuck valve. The question is why did the valve stick? After completely reading your post (sorry), it sounds like you had an oil failure. The valves are oiled by oil from the lifter being pumped through the push rod, through the rocker arm and then splashed out the rocker arm shaft. For some reason, the oil wasn't flowing. That caused the rocker socket to wear and get galled and the lack of oil caused the valve to seize. It was probably caused by some debris plugging the oil path somewhere. Sorry this happened.

With his attitude..... he will

A 709 ride will complicate his life sufficiently he will never want to wrestle that tiger again.

77s are lower, but anything else less than $100k has either a runout engine or original avionics.

I wouldn’t bother with a prop balance. I have the counter weight engine. I got a prop balance once. Honestly I never could tell any difference. Unless you’re having an issue I wouldn’t worry about it. Mooney doesn’t require it in the service manual. -Robert

Yikes. In fairness to you, I wouldn't be comfortable doing 360's on the base leg at that altitude. The fact you were asked to do it does demonstrate a lack of foresight on the part of the tower that day. I've landed at Portland Intl several times, and they either ask me to orbit on the downwind or ask if I can expedite from the downwind to final.

Where in the world did you get those power setting from? A 32 minute flight is going to have a high percentage of rich high power settings and I would think your fuel usage wouldn’t be abnormal.

What can you see as his logic? Why? I've never heard of this before. Maybe @Cody Stallings can help here.

Go O1! -a-

Well I made the trip from 6B6 to FXE this afternoon and the dust tops were just below 16k. The pic on top was taken around Jacksonville and the is canaveral where it started to get a little better...

I bought teflon washers from Aircraft Spruce to put under inspection panel screws. It helps. Don't just use hardware store screws, the countersink angle on aviation screws is different

Oh, they already know about it. If the controller gives you a number to call, they are filing a report on the incident. The FSDO will give that knucklehead a call in the next couple of weeks.

I just started removing my first-gen Whelen Parmetheus to make way for the latest Parmetheus Pro. Did a brief test in my hangar before heading to the avionics shop, and can say that they’re over twice as bright as the first gen Parmetheus. A few pics below...before, after removal, and after.

How does one transition from simply a gentleman aviator to an established gentleman aviator? And likewise for gentlewoman aviators. Is this one of those things where I need to meet the World's Most Interesting Man? He lives vicariously through himself. His blood smells like cologne. Hi business card simply says, "I'll call you." He bowls overhanded. His passport requires no photo.

Here's the short version. There was discussion about incompatible greases but I think the conclusion was that there wasn't much grease at all on the failed jackscrew. A01_41_48.pdf

I'm not going into details on a public forum, but my 252 will fly with just about anything you can shove through the door. But then like most stuff, runways here in Texas are larger than usual. Nevertheless the 252 and the Pilot are working to loose weight.

Upside down, in the weeds, on fire.