Leaderboard

I would not pass up he opportunity to fly coast to coast and back. Will you ever get the opportunity to do it again ???

I think it is all the photo's of Chris's harem. They are large files to say the least

maybe its just me but I hate this new forum style. I find myself coming here less and less. Why did this new format/style happen and are there any advantages to it I am not seeing?

and the standard remove the scat tube on the muffler shroud and look for signs of leaks. borescope is your friend here.

Insuring oneself requires walking somewhat of a fine line. We can all insure ourselves into the poorhouse. I agree that in order to avoid that the insured has to accept some reasonable degree of risk. But it should be reasonable. The person who has a net worth of 5 million is not wise to insure with a 100k sublimit. If your wife or your child was catastrophically injured or killed by a driver with that type of net worth but foolishly driving around with state minimum coverage of 25k I highly doubt you would authorize your lawyer to settle the matter for that 25k policy limit.

That makes absolutely no sense to me, unless a "pin" is installed somewhere that prevents the landing gear from retracting at all. AD 75-23-04 makes Mooney Service Bulletin M20-190 mandatory. That SB requires removing and inspecting the landing gear actuator for worn internal gears. There is no "pin" involved, and I'm extremely skeptical that AD 75-23-04 is actually N/A to your airplane. Strongly suggest you have your mechanic research the AD and SB in detail.

A guy in our M20J club accidentally broke the Autopilot Disconnect/Trip Interrupt switch for out King Autopilot 200. The switch C2003R is handled by Textron and sells for $99.95 each. Unfortunately the switches were backordered until mid-August and I am leaving on a cross-country trip to California next Friday. Many thanks go out to Bob Weber at webairconsulting.com 616 822 1999 for helping our mechanic figure out how to get a replacement switch. Even though Bob didn't have a switch, he helped us find one. The good thing is we have replaced the switch. The bad thing is that we had to pay $360 for it (without labor).

I have been told there was a tubing thickness change also by a Mooney engineer.

The cross county was supposed to be clear sky today - Oof! I wondered as I had about 2 miles visibility (down at an angle from 7,000 feet) if is was due to wild fires far, far way. Over Illinois and Indiana, it was flying in milk.

You obviously have electric gear. It indicates that you are overdriving the actuator. You need to have someone who understands the Mooney gear get it set up right.

The bracket on the airframe which your gear actuator mounts to, is in turn mounted to the floor pan directly under the pilot's seat. As the gear goes over center, compression of the springs in the system cause the rods to compress against the actuator on both the fore (nose gear) and aft (main gear) ends. This compression, combined with the aluminum floor pan not being perfectly rigid, will cause a "bump" under your butt in the left seat. Our 1976 M20F has consistently done this for the last 16 years, through numerous gear rigging checks, with no long-term ill effects. I've come to think of it as an additional "gear is down and locked" indicator. When I put the gear down, in addition to looking for the green light on the panel and checking the floor indicator alignment bars, I expect to feel a kick in the butt. On edit: if your log books indicate recent completion of Mooney Service Bulletin M20-190 (the AD that @Ron McBride refers to), I would not do anything at this time. If there is no record of this inspection being done recently, then yes, you ought to have the gear actuator checked out. But that is true independent of the "bump in the butt" observation. For further info, see https://www.donmaxwell.com/ad-75-23-04-sb-m20-190

Careful. The OP didn't say he had a "PC" system. He said he had a Brittain B6. That is a three-axis Brittain autopilot capable of nav tracking and altitude hold. In addition to the T&B and servos everyone correctly describes as simple, the B6 also has a control head unit full of electronics (not modern ones) with a complex rotary mode switch, as well as a complex altitude control unit, and the associated vacuum switches and relays required to make it work. Our own @211º has been through the Brittain saga, and was kind enough to collect a bunch of information from a bunch of different sources, and organize it at https://www.windfield.farm/brittain-autopilot. It's the best reference I know of on this class of Brittain autopilot. TLDR summary: it is feasible - if a little gray from a legal perspective - to patch cracked vacuum lines, re-seal servo boots, etc. But if there's an issue with the control head unit or the altitude control box, you're effectively out of luck. It is extremely difficult to get service for these modules, and any service you could actually get is one-hundred-percent not legal. Only Brittain holds the legal authority to do this work, and they're not taking any customers.

Just watched Dr. Scott’s YT weather presentation for the day… -a-

This is false. Depending on the policy language, yes, the attorney (and carrier) is obligated to defend the Insured until settlement or judgement or award is reached. Generally speaking, the duty to defend outweighs the duty to indemnify. The attorney hired on your behalf is more obligated to the Insured than the carrier. As you highlighted, with the excess exposure, the carrier has no more exposure with respect to indemnity. That being the case, the attorney certainly has to work with the Insured more closely. At any time, an Insured can retain their own counsel at it's own expense. Conversely, if the loss can be settled within the policy limit, the Insured is rarely consulted. The defense attorney and carrier simply work through the matter with the plaintiffs, only bringing in the Insured when necessary. Remember, settlement negotiations are to avoid litigation. Once it goes to court, the ball is out of everyone's hands. In some cases, the cost of defense can be more than the policy limit/settlement made. The carrier has a duty to settle, or attempt to settle, the claimant's claims on behalf of the Insured within the policy limits. If the claim is obviously in excess of the limit, in most states, the carrier must immediately tender the limits in an "attempt" to settle.

It wouldn't matter except for the regulatory framework regarding who can disassemble a unit for maintenance and repair.

You ain’t living unless you do a nice deep exhaust borescope exam. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

When I got my current Mooney, it would warp the floor when the gear was actuated. The plane had been repaired from a gear up and it wasn't assembled properly. After I put it together right and adjusted the gear properly, it doesn't do it any more, you can't even feel it except you can feel the motor running a little. Who says they are all correctly rigged? I've seen a few that worked fine and were probably safe, but were all jacked up. The last Mooney Gear that I did was Brice's M20C with a Johnson bar. It had always been hard to put the wheels down. I ferried it home when he bought it and I mentioned to him then that it shouldn't be that hard. Fast forward three years and he installs a new up lock block. He asked me to inspect it and sign it off. At that point I re-rigged his nose gear, one rod was being over driven and the other was doing nothing. I got them equalized and now the preloads are spot on and you can work the Johnson bar with your finger tips. I'm just saying that there is a lot of ways to get the Mooney gear all cattywhampus and still meet the preload specs.

fly it there!! even if you only get to fly it once while you are there that's more than it will be flown back in VA.

Electronically, this is true. Mechanically, the switch that engages the altitude hold is mounted in the BI-601 head unit. If the switch itself has an issue, repair will require opening the BI-601 unit for service. To my knowledge, only Brittain can legally do this, and they're not accepting work. I'm not trying to discourage the OP from working on their autopilot. It is certainly true that the B6 system consists of multiple sub-systems, and even just getting some of them to work is nice. We have a B-5 in our airplane, which was inop at the time of purchase. We got the wing-leveler (PC) component working fairly easily and quickly. Heading hold came later, though we never have gotten it to be quite as precise as we'd like. Nav tracking came even later, and we didn't get the altitude hold working until about 8 years into ownership.

There is a distribution block on the port wall of the baggage compartment. That is a great place to start. Well actually the self test in the flight manual is the best place to start.

That is correct. It's in the IPC if anyone wants the details.

I'm getting ads for my own company's products! What gives with that?! Also, I am seeing ads for "Depends" for large people. Wonder why that is happening?

Vague advice here… search for the parts manual here on mooney space. I think it’s in the downloads section. Some of the electrical parts are also called out in the maintenance manual. Once you find the part number, try to find a match or a new part number substitute. Spruce will likely have it. On my ‘68F, spruce has them as STDP single throw, dual pole switches.

BTW, my B6 was inop when I bought my 20E... through about 3 or 4 years and finding little things that needed tweaked and finding some geniuses on MS and working with my A&P, it works better and better. The moments when a little portion of the system come alive or begin to work will make you smile quite a bit.

Thanks for the reply. My buddy with a Bravo, don't know if he is on here, mentioned the drag wall. I figured higher would be better think I will see what I can get initially at 17000 and then back to LOP.

Do you have a baro-corrected altitude source connected to the GTN 750 like a G500, G5, GI275? VNAV will not work without it. If you do not have a baro-corrected source you want your GTN set back to VCALC instead. Also it is possible to set a VNAV constraint that cannot be achieved for example you are at or under the constraint, or you are currently flying at a heading perpendicular to or away from the waypoint. This is likely not your problem since you were at Flight level 120 and 42 nautical miles out.

I was involved in a commercial real estate lawsuit. I ended up hiring an Attorney that specialed in Insurance law. The attorneys for my insurance company were not happy. Their tunes changed quickly, and they settled soon, well within policy limits. The money spent on our attorney was well spent keeping the insurance companies attorneys in line. Ron

Carusoam is correct. The $10 minimum donation will remove ads for only one year. As a side note it will not effect ads showing up via Tapatalk - those are from them and not us so I cannot make them go away. As for the new look I posted here on why we had to update the theme/style of the site. Personally I don't think it was that radical of a change...if you could be specific about what is worse now vs then that would help. Also mention what kind of device you are using the site on such as a phone, tablet, desktop, etc.

A I’m borescoping again this weekend I’ll try to get better pictures and post.

I’m getting fed up with the overly pushy ads that open up and you have to close to see a topic. Not easy to click out on a phone with big fingers. I know this is the point but it’s getting to be too much. I don’t mind having my eyes bombarded with ads, but the fingers are another story.

Here’s Lycoming’s recommendation for storage. Engine Preservation for Active and Stored Aircraft.pdf

That means diddly squat when buying a non-stock part from them without a Mooney part number. I've bought both OPP and proper P/N cables from them for my airplane and they're not made the same. I actually prefer the OPP ones.

Properly installed and configured, Primary ADI and Standby ADI/HSI or Standby ADI/MFD, the Standby would revert to an ADI if the Primary's breaker was pulled, or the mandatory revisionary switch was moved from Auto to ADI. It could also be done by rotating the big knob one click CCW.

Troyes Aviation (LFQB, France) and ACG (EDFQ, Germany) are two very well regarded MSCs. The latter I can recommend very much from personal experience. Both are not in Southern France or Italy, though.

Just write it up as: Airplane: $1000 Towbar: $200,000 Then it will save you a lot of money. ;-)

I guess I should take my recently reproduced OPP up and down locks and throw them in the trash... This is nonsense. With all of the areas discussed regarding OPP to include McFarland and others how can anyone make such definitive statements. Also, does anyone have any data to show these are not acceptable parts as I have not heard anything that would make me think otherwise. On another note if someone wishes to go this direction and procures these parts I don't see how bashing the idea with no data supports the intent of this site.

I did. And I also asked for a separate sales contract for the extra equipment vs the airplane. Saved a tiny bit of that CA sales tax.

Parts sourced using any of the compliant OPP processes can be used. When this supplier's process was looked at earlier it was evident that this can be not much different than having McFarlane make control cables.

Josh Harris.. CFII and a partner in my mooney M20G based in LebanonTN

Thanks for the input!! Replaced the VR system working great. 14.2v all day long.

The original tow bar is actually listed in the W&B. All of above was included with my plane. I would not expect a fancy power tow (electric,gas) to be included.

$130k hull, $1M smooth, old Republic $2036, 81 M20J 2,600 TT. Renewal 8/21

Nice work Dom! Now for the gravity switch… This place looks magical. Best regards, -a-

There are many reasons why but the most common reason why we can't fill every seat and fill the tanks is flexibility. They build the airplane to fill a variety of missions thus they give it more seats than tank full capability and they give it more tank than it can hold with full seats. I don't know of any airplane that is not built that way and it is up to the operator to balance the two out. Some other reasons go to manufacturing. The A330-200 if you filled all tanks could not even cary the crew, because they placed the A340 center tank in the airplane for manufacturing commonality. It will however go a long ways, Singapore to ATL with just the crew. Airlines have got surprising accurate on weights in part to tech, in part to 9-11. Believe it or not, where I worked we began to use actual baggage weights. Thanks to bar coding, RFID and the TSA who scans every bag, every bag is weighed, its location known. As to passenger average weights, an audit is performed twice a year. The result? We now have weight accuracies on the order of 0.1% and that is accounted for in the performance programs. As to accuracy of your own airplane? I'm not shy. I weigh everyone and everything. I have a calibrated scale in my hangar. I prepare a load sheet when I am carrying an unfamiliar load and I email it to myself for posterity and the NTSB. Operational discipline.

231 here. Gear up as soon as I have a positive rate on the VSI, regardless of runway left. Flaps up when the gear is in the wells. Then pitch for midway between Vx and Vy to gain maximum altitude with minimum risk, as close to the airport as possible. Vx risks an inability to get the nose over in time if the engine quits. It is for performance takeoffs but not everyday takeoffs. Vy gains altitude too far from the airport to make it back if the engine quits. My initial climb in my aircraft is 85 KIAS. Getting the gear and flaps stowed helps to accelerate to that speed faster and allows a steeper climb at that speed. I use takeoff flaps for takeoff in my aircraft, that's half flaps.

Quick flight to Sedona for some mountain biking yesterday with return today. Photos of Boulder flatirons early am, over the shoulder sunrise view, Sedona, and Longs Peak.

Got to go on a trip out to moab and bend, and while I was there, stopped at a couple uncharted strips. First one was fields for the second time in southern oregon. Second one was later today at panoche valley. A smaller 2000ft grass/gravel runway in central california just south of mercy hot springs.

I can tell you what I did. The case on my IO36A1A cracked at 2800TT and 900SMOH. I removed the engine and took it to my local engine shop (Aero Engines of Winchester) sans accessories. They split the case and sent out to Crankcase Services in Tulsa, OK. The case halves were overhauled (cleaned, repaired, reinforced and align bored). I had the cylinders IRANd by a cylinder overhauler at the same time. He lapped all valves, replaced a few exhaust valves and gave the cylinders a light hone. My engine shop reassembled the engine with reground lifters. My cost before rehanging the engine (done under supervision) was about $4000 (of which $800 was the case overhaul). This was in 2010 so I’m sure prices have changed. In the 600hrs since the repair I’ve not had a problem with any of the work performed and the engine has been oil tight. I was active on the AOPA forum (red board) at the time. The predominant online wisdom at the time was that it was time to buy a new engine. I am so glad I tuned “those experts” out and spoke to an actual engine shop about my goals.