Leaderboard

Two reasons. One is so you do not eat and ingest the lead. Also, primers contain lead styphnate, which decomposes into lead oxide, is expelled from the barrel as lead fume, can also be ingested or inhaled. Lead oxide is also skin absorbable.

I had a lead-melting kit as a kid--made soldiers and whatnot with it using molds. Yay me? (I was at a debate once between G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary, and Leary quipped that senility was the most psychedelic experience yet. Perhaps I should consider that a bright side?) --Up.

Before I had my tanks sealed, I had 100LL stains on the bottom of the wing that I couldn't remove easily. The same would go for the G100UL. Bottom line, if your tanks are leaking, they should be resealed. If not, then the staining is comparable and really can't be seen unless you got under the wing and looked. Regarding the STC, I'm not sure what GAMI will do in the long run, but if you were based at an airport that just got G100UL the STC cost $0. For those of us at nearby airports, we got 25 gallons of fuel free, so that gave a pretty good discount on the STC cost. Face it. One way or another 100LL is eventually going the way of the dinosaur. With the unleaded fuel, you should have a much cleaner engine internally, which should lead to longer TBO times.

Weird. I would have expected a 3/8” in there.

In the Beaver, we used to check takeoff flap setting by comparing with full aileron deflection because the indicator was often considerably in error. (Apparently, it is difficult to rig correctly - or at least that's the excuse the service department used). Full aileron deflection for all Mooneys (M20C and later) is 8 deg down. Takeoff flap deflection for M20C through M20J is 15 deg down which is nearly twice the aileron deflection. Takeoff flap deflection for the M20K and above is 10 deg down or slightly more than full aileron deflection. So, flap/aileron alignment depends on the model. Always verify what your CFI tells you (I'm a CFI, too and I'm wrong more than I care to think about )

Larry - thank you, and I'm sorry that's happened. I think that's going to sideline me from G100UL. I've got a couple of very small seeps. Within Mooney service manual limits for airworthiness, but it would appear this will invite some paint stripping. My paint isn't the best, but it is sticking to the airplane with those seeps.

@LANCECASPER a panel like this would be about $77,000 out the door from us. That includes everything you see in his panel brand new with new harnesses. A 3 servo autopilot, IFD440, PMA8000G (newer version of his audio panel), Dynon EMS, Dynon COM, Dynon transponder, ADS-B in/out, 2x 10" HDX screens, D30 backup EFIS, and a new panel with complimentary engraving. Dynon has some prefab harnesses, but that doesn't go very far with a proper install.

Maybe this is common knowledge, but it was pointed out to me by master CFI Lee Fox when I trained with him. Takeoff flaps in the Mooney ('half flaps') set the wing up for maximum lift. Less flaps, less lift / more flaps just add drag. Ever notice that at full deflection your aileron will line up exactly with the takeoff flap setting? Check it out next time you're setting up for takeoff. Also a good way to check that your flaps are appropriately set for takeoff before hitting the RWY. Cheers!

Hope you have a speedy recovery, currently located at KMDQ (Huntsville Executive Airport, AL)

Wife?

BIG difference between metallic lead (sinkers, soldiers, bullets) and soluble lead. Metallic lead is not skin absorbable. You need to ingest or inhale it. Soluble lead compounds, like TEL in fuel is very skin absorbable.

I would be real concerned with a discharge rate of 290 amps, even at 20V (hit a battery hard and voltage drops), that’s still 5,800 Watts, which is an awful lot as in enough to cause a fire. A bad battery should not have anything to do with a discharge, once running the alternator is providing current, not the battery, so in my opinion it’s most probable that you still have a problem, and I doubt the -290 amps is real or you would have smelled burning wires. A loose ground can cause all kinds of illogical problems, lots of things that just don’t make sense.

In all honesty I cant think of ever shooting an ILS to a short field, ILS as I’m old was my default in “hard” IFR. I don’t fly IFR anymore, I don’t have the need or desire and don’t maintain proficiency, so I just don’t. I’m one that believes proficiency and currency differ. Are there any ILS equipped short fields? I guess that depends on your definition of short? I normally land with full flap, because that gives me the lowest landing speed and a lower deck angle, but I think you should be comfortable landing with no flap, because eventually you will have to. A Mooney or any other GA aircraft will go around with gear down and full flaps, if nothing else an electrical failure is possible even if unlikely. But it won’t in every possible scenario. You can’t cover every possibility, if you try you will end up with a dog with no real range or useful load. However every GA aircraft I can think of climbs best with NO flap. Many won’t use flaps on takeoff because of this, rather than getting wrapped around the axle on something that likely isn’t real important, I use T/O flaps because the POH calls for it. I’ve participated in several accident investigations, both Military and Civil. If your the aircraft Commander it’s far easier if you were following the POH as opposed to give a convincing argument why the POH is incorrect. But in truth under normal circumstances it’s truly difficult to get a Certified GA airplane in a position it can’t fly, yet of course some do every year, we have all seen the videos of the airplane that gets off the ground but can’t climb because it’s in the region of reverse command. You just can’t build an idiot proof anything, there will always be a “better” idiot. As with everything else all this is opinion, there are many ways to skin a cat, and no single way is always the best, that’s why in my opinion you should be comfortable with every possible way. For example if light weight and near sea level the shortest T/O in my Maule was with 48 degrees (full flap), but my normal T/O was no flap. I think it was 48 degrees anyway, point is depending on conditions maybe there is no one best flap position, which flies in the face of always follow the POH. In my opinion you should do a couple of practice go-arounds full flap and gear down, learn it’s not anything to be afraid of, if you weren’t shown that then you should have, eventually you will need to go around on short final and scrambling to get gear and flap may not be prudent, possibly getting the aircraft climbing and you to settle down, then getting gear and flaps is a better idea. Watch some videos of Corsairs take off of a Carrier if you want to see a lot of flap, or watch the T/O film of the Doolittle raid, those guys did a lot of practice with getting a heavy B-25 off short, I’m sure they tried everything.

Those pictures are not same kind of deposit 100LL will leave, it literally act like a paint stripper. I will stick with my 100LL until all the issue with G100UL is sorted out. I used to be a firm supporter for unleaded avgas, but there is so many debacle going on with G100UL many no one know if it is true. I'm not very eager to test them out with my money. Also not a fan on how GAMI dodge those questions and avoid critical issue their fuel have, feels scummy.

Concorde RG-35AXC Edit to add that I retired my previous 2 of these after 7 years in service, each. Sent from my motorola edge plus 2023 using Tapatalk

You may be right! I was guessing after 25+ years of memory. BUT!!!! I actually still have the wrench as an orphan in my toolbox, so I can check! LOL!!!!

Not necessarily anything, but definitely most solvents penetrate the skin in minutes.

Mine are not evenly spaced. They are much like the first photo with a large jump between 6 and 8 quarts. However, I did get an answer from them. I have a narrow deck O-360-A1D. The part numbers you listed were for a wide deck. My dipstick is correct for the narrow deck O-360-A1D. I have pasted their response here. Hi Greg, The dipstick part numbers you mentioned below comes from the wide deck O-360 parts catalog (pc-306-1). The serial number you have indicates you have a narrow deck engine where you want to use parts catalog PC-106. PC-106 also has four different options for the gage assembly. LW-16783-18 superseded LW-14758 which is called out in the narrow deck IPC for the O-320-D1A. LW-16783-18 is for an 8QT system that is 19.44” long. Additionally, there is also service bulletin 612 regarding LW-16783-18 for the IO-360-M series engines. This Bulletin talks about replacing the LW-16783-18 with LW-14760 for the IO-360-M.

That's a big yikes... I'm not a fan of gami selling 600$ STC to buy their fuel. Now they are potentially causing leaks and definitely stripping paint when leaking, I will stick with 100LL...

I’ve tried everything but brake cleaner. It’s not the blue stains: it’s the gunky sticky brown build up. I’m hoping to have some paint touch up after the bladders are in. Appreciate the recommendations.

I just emailed them myself based on guidance from multiple folks above - they will be puzzled by the sudden deluge of dipstick-related inquiries Just curious, are the marks on yours evenly spaced on your stick or more like the picture in the first post?

Based on Larry's pictures, it seems that the new fuel can double as an effective paint stripper . Small seeps around the fuel drains appear to be fairly common. In fact, I noticed one last week on my plane. That does not make me feel very good putting G100UL in my recently painted plane.

I think ya’all are over complicating this flap thing way too much. But that is just me. Whatever works for you is fine with me. After many thousands of Mooney landings, I must say landing a Mooney well is way easier than parking my truck in the Walmart parking lot.

I set 1/2 flaps two miles prior to the FAF. That’s my buffer to get fully configured as I nose over at the FAF. I land that way. This is not meant as a dig for those that put in full flaps at the last minute, but doing so IMO is not a stabilized approach - a requirement I aim to instill in instrument instruction. BUT, I land my F with 1/2 flaps 90% of the time. The other 10% are no flaps due to wind gusts. I do 1-2 full flap landings a year, just so I mentally retain that sight picture. The CFI that did my Mooney transition trained me that way, and similarly I as a instructor train others that way.

Time will tell. Hoping the bladders outlast me and the next owner. Will post a few pics during the install process. Looking forward to it.

Use automotive bug and tar remover for the belly. Cheaper and waaaay safer. As for lead, as one doctor said to me, anything you touch with your skin is at your liver in 10 minutes. As to lead exposure, there is a growing body of evidence that adults who were children in the 60's and 70's are showing up with adverse levels of lead which many are saying is part of the growing Alzheimers, dementia and MS rates. Telcom workers and plumbers being the worst.

@PT20J is right: CALL LYCOMING! I would not trust myself to ferret out the correct sump/tube/dipstick combo. Give them your engine serial number and have THEM tell you the correct part numbers.

When I attended George's session at the Buckeye Air Fair this year he said straight out that it is hard on paint, so don't spill it on your paint, and that it may be harsher on seals and gaskets. I suspected then, and moreso now, that he was underplaying the concerns. He did flat out say that there were potential issues, though. So this is at least two aircraft (more if you count the Cirrus) that have sprung leaks or damage after storing G100UL. Neither is definitive or proof of anything, but I think both warrant concern and keeping a close eye on further developments. This is the sort of thing you really can't know until field deployment starts, and use still isn't widespread or even enough to get a good sense of what a complete deployment might look like.

This is what I use. Keep it and a couple of quarts of oil in a plastic tray in the hat rack.

Most water/soda bottles have cap threads that are compatible with the dipstick tube and will thread in just fine. The "funnel" I keep in the hatch in my airplane is just the top cut off of an old water bottle with a shop towel in it to keep things reasonably clean. It threads into the dipstick tube so even being somewhat small it's very stable in there.

The G100UL works great. It's been mixed with 100LL in my plane, so its benefits won't show up until I use it alone all the time, and that's not anytime soon, since so few airports have it right now. It does weigh a little more than 100LL at 6.15-6.30 lb/gal. GAMI says to use 6.25 lb/gal for weight and balance calculations. The fuel has "slightly higher volumetric density" so has about 1% more energy. I've found FF to be slightly less at cruise power to get the same TIT. One thing to be aware of is the necessity to carry an absorbent towel with you when fueling or dumping fuel back into the tank after checking for water. The fuel will stain the paint if not wiped up immediately. So far the price is fair at $6.99/gallon.

Chapstick

If you have the LEMO headset, you can benefit from the convenience of panel power whenever it is available, but still easily connect it to a GA Plug plane with the $40 adapter referenced above. If you buy the GA plug headset, you’re stuck with GA plugs and batteries in every plane. I don’t see a reason not to buy the LEMO headset and GA adapter if you regularly fly in a plane with LEMOs. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

On any airplane I've ever owned where the interior was out for upgrades I made sure that all four passengers had lemo plugs (in addition to the standard plugs) - very reasonable upgrade while everything is out.

I know not what others may say but as for me, give me LEMO or give me death!

I posted about the upgrade and avionics available in the pre-J model forum but this is what the new panel looks like from Monarch Aviation in Defuniak Springs, FL. I’ve had Carl work on my 1965 M20E for 15 years and I recommend him with the highest regard. The installation was superb and you cannot find better customer service! Steven

well i see all the other planes have their tails on backwards as a trick to try and make their airplane look like it’s going fast because in reality they are not, like the 60’s fin tail cars, But i grew up in a mooney and only learned of these slower less efficient other airplanes when i went to get my private pilots license cause dad wasn’t going to let me learn how to land in the mooney.

When was the last reseal?

I wasn’t kidding when I said I think it was the best headset I ever had. The DC was a very nice passive headset, and the ANC from Headsets Inc. was excellent. I do like the Bose, but I think the DC is a better set. And I definitely like having a more robust headset that isn’t so heavily dependent on electronics for noise canceling. I keep thinking about doing another conversion myself and keeping my two Bose headsets for passengers

Each PIC gets to make their own judgement calls, and I don't know anything about you personally, so don't take this the wrong way. That said, most of the unofficial line-up-and-wait I observe at my local non-towered field does essentially nothing to help with spacing. It is instead - intended or not - merely a way for an airplane on the ground to bully their way in front of an aircraft approaching to land, by establishing a dominant position on the runway. Most of the time things works out fine, but on the occasions they don't - which is not that uncommon - the approaching aircraft is forced to go around, while the departing aircraft still gets to depart as desired. There is then sometimes a fight on the radio where the departing aircraft insists the go-around aircraft should have stayed on the approach and that there was plenty of room. Even setting aside the immediate safety implications of the go-around, that makes line-up-and-wait sort of a jerk move by the departing aircraft, that occasionally creates a secondary safety problem while people fight on the radio about what just happened. When people ask me about this in an instructor capacity, I suggest they time how long it takes for them to taxi from the hold short line to the runway center line. Some airports have strange configurations with hold-short lines that are a long way from the actual runway, and it takes 30+ seconds to taxi the distance. I think reasonable people can agree that maybe there is a place for "unofficial LUAW" in that environment. In contrast, at my home airport, a competent pilot can taxi from the hold short line to the runway center line in about 10 seconds. An airplane approaching at 65 knots covers about 1100 feet in 10 seconds. It's my assertion that if you're trying to insert yourself into a slot where an extra 1100 feet of distance is the difference between going and not going, you are probably missing the bigger risk management picture.

Yeah. That was me. Dead sticked it from FL210 through the clouds, icing, in the mountains, and broke out at 1500 agl. All I had was this road so I put her in nicely. There happened to be a bit of water from the left tank (just switched tanks). The water went into the fuel flow divider and froze. -36 C OAT. When the water froze, it expanded and shut the flow of fuel to all cylinders. No possibility for restart. I let the plane sit for three hours as I dealt with the local sheriff department (who were excellent btw). Fired her up. Run up was perfect so I flew it outta there. lol. Another day in the office. I’m now working g with the FAA, continental, and another shop to remedy this issue.

TAF, METAR, AWOS all don't do well with smoke. They just don't see the particulates. A few years back we were making a fuel stop in Tracy, CA and it was reporting 10miles and clear skies. On approach you could see the ground and runway ahead, until you were in the smoke layer and couldn't see anything for a minute. On the ground you could look up and see bluish sky but climbing out there was again a period where forward visibility went to almost zero even though you could still see the ground off to the side. As has been mentioned, with smoke it's always preferable to stay VFR. If you fly out West (or live in fire danger areas) there's a great App called Watch Duty that sill show you all the fires, their size, evacuation zones, etc... Helps to get a picture of where the fires are and their size. That Bridge Fire that @NickG flew through is now almost 52,000 acres and when he made the flight it was already over 20,000k acres. I took a similar picture to the one he posted on my way home from work on Tuesday. Everything to the right of the fire is smoke... They really put out an immense amount of smoke that travels hundreds of miles. This was the Airport Fire in south Orange County seen from work on Tuesday. At this point it wasn't even very big yet, I think just around 5-6,000 acres but almost looks like a volcano. I have an incredible amount of respect for the guys that fly the tankers and helicopters dropping on these monsters.

In addition to Dave's pieces, I'll try to add a bit: Let's have a quick look at torque and power before we get too far: Torque you are probably familiar with via the use of a torque wrench. Is is a measure of how hard you can turn something, and the typical example is one of a bucket in a well, where the drum on which the rope is would has a diameter, and the handle with which to wind also has a length. It doesn't matter about the diameter or the length of the handle for the amount of torque required to hold the bucket in one position, and to hold it stationary required no power, you have to apply so much force over a lever of a length which is why the unit is lb/ft or kg/m - like a see-saw used in the CofG calculations, you can apply half the force at double the distance for the same effect. If you want to move the bucket up, you need to exert not only torque, but maintain this over a period of time. So you could have a "low geared" well lift, where you wind the handle lots of times to move the bucket up one foot, or a "high geared" one when maybe only a fraction of a turn is required, but in the latter case you would need to apply a lot more torque. Power comes from multiplying the torque (which is already a product of the force and the lever length) and the rate of rotation, so consequently something at 0 RPM is making zero power, but back to the well, a tiny motor with very little torque but running through a reduction gearbox maybe able to lift the bucket - however a big motor at low RPM may have the torque to lift it without the gearbox. At the end of the day, if they lift the same weight bucket over the3 same distance in the same time, then they are making the same power. You can put a torque wrench in the vice and hang a few bags of sugar on it, and you can get a torque reading, but there's no power being produced! One way you can get power by burning fuel. You can burn fuel in a variety of ways, many of which are terribly inefficient, but if you want to extract more power (at a given efficiency) in a normal IC engine, there are two ways to do it: a) turn the engine faster (so it draws in more fuel and air) - as long as the torque doesn't diminish to much, as power=torque x more RPM ie more power (lift the bucket up faster) b) Ram more air and fuel in - this will (should!) give us more torque, so again power=more torque x RPM ie more power again (lift a heavier bucket up in the same time) Problem with a) is we need to keep the prop tips sub-supersonic (or the prop goes very inefficient) There's loads of reading out there on this too, but in summary, we need to keep the tips below about 0.85 mach or so. As the speed of sound is dependant on temperature (not air pressure!), then at high altitudes (in the cold), the speed of sound is lower, and a 75" dia prop (as we have on the Bravo), with a high TAS (which adds to the tip speed) we can get quite close even at 2400RPM. If you get up in the (very!) cold you can try this by setting max power at 2400, and then trying 2575 - if the tips get over the critical mach then you will actually slow down. (Obviously I hope, race/consumer engines for cars/bikes etc have different constraints) Problem with b) is you can only ram in so much with the compression before detonation comes a problem. The effective overall compression ratio is not that terrible, just some of the compression has taken place outside of the cylinder. A NA engine at FL180 only gets half the ambient sea level pressure, but a turbo'd one can get sea level or more, so that 10:1 ratio N/A is effectively 5:1 at FL180. In a turbo'd engine you can get the whole sea level pressure, but you're constrained by all sorts of other stuff such as the incoming charge temperature that it is principally the engine designers job to manage. With all that out of the way, we could over simplify things to say that if you burn fuel in the most efficient way possible (ie about 25-50 LOP) in an IC engine, for rotating shaft output, then the amount of power is dependant on how much fuel you lob in, hence the figures in Don's spreadsheet. Problem we have is primarily cooling and the speed of combustion, and to manage these the designer has specified an overly rich mixture at high power settings. This means we don't burn the fuel efficiently - we are putting extra in to cool the combustion and get a burn speed that allows us to get more power, albeit at an efficiency cost. Conversely, at low power, we are still making all the ancillaries and internals do their work, and these have an overhead (eg, take all the spark plugs out of your engine and spin it over by hand - hard work isn't it! Now spin it at 2400RPM and see how much power that needs!) That power is gone no matter how much fuel you put in. This is one of the factors the engine designer copes with for the idle speed - the engine might be making 10 or 20% of maximum rate power from the fuel ingested, but so much is used to internally before there is any to spare - if he makes the idle any slower, then there is not enough power to run the internal before we get anything useful for the prop, and hence the engine stops. The graph can be converted into BSFC (Brake Specific Fuel consumption), which is a measure of efficiency - how much power do you get from each pound of fuel. (Lots of reading out there on this too is you are interested) Really efficient engines (diesels) get down to maybe 0.35, gasoline engines rarely do better than 0.38, and even then only at a very controlled output. By converting the units in the graph we get a peak efficiency in the AF1A/B of about 0.45 or so which is pretty rubbish, but it is an abysmal 0.6 at max power, and over 0.5 below 50% power. The "sweet spot" for efficiency in that graph is thus in the 175-215BHP area, and outside of that it is starting to drop off Some of the good gas aero engines are getting to about 0.41 - 0.42 or so, only 0.04-0.03 difference, but this does represent 10% Hope that helps! Ben

re: TIT IMHO there are three factors to consider here; 1) we should all agree TIT matters, and we should all agree that EGT absolute temps don’t “really” matter. 2) We should agree that there is much more incorrect (folklore) vs factual information out there as to why TIT matters and why EGT doesn’t “really”, and 3) we should agree that a Mooney airplane / engine combination is generally no different from that of any other like-type airplane / engine combination. No one will successfully argue against the fact that the hotter you make steel and aluminum the more they will fatigue and eventually fail. So given that, my comments below are driven by a cooler is better premise, however, I am not afraid of recommended heat ratings or running my engine at those temperatures. I recently had a long discussion at KOSH with a design engineer at Hartzell and we talked extensively about turbochargers from the manufacturers' perspective. I’ll abbreviate the convo here but I would love to discuss any of this in more detail. I asked specifically about the M20M’s dual max POH TIT (1750 max lower altitudes to 1650 max at higher altitude) I just couldn’t wrap my head around why the diff in max temps? The turbo has no idea it’s higher up in the air and temp is temp as fast as the materials are concerned - so why the diff and why don’t we see that on most “other” turbocharged piston airplanes? His answer surprised me and immediately made complete sense. Paraphrasing: Hartzell rates that particular turbocharger for a max *continuous* TIT of 1750dF, and that turbo will run all day long and with expected longevity at that TIT. He went on to say that Mooney (not Hartzell) lowered the max TIT to 1650dF at altitude to increase detonation margin due to the higher and unmonitored compressor discharge temps at altitude. Ah ha! I get that! So I said that I monitor CDT and Inlet Air Temp and at higher altitudes I can see little difference than in the mid teens so I suspect my detonation margin is not changing based on CDT, right? To which he replied: because you monitor those parameters you will know if your intercooler is working properly or not, you (me) should be able to safely ignore that lower TIT limitation as long as the CDT remain low and reasonable. Interesting - so what about metal fatigue? His answer was simple - we design the turbo to withstand and tolerate that max TIT of 1750 and there is a adequate safety margin there for metal fatigue and blade stretch. We don’t want these units coming back for repair, so we set the max operating parameters with care. So the take away is, if you trust the manufacturer, then our collective arguments of running TIT lower than allowable to “protect the turbo” is largely flawed. So what about the rest of the exhaust system? Some argue that this is the weakest part of the mooney’s engine and by running TiT less than max you will preserve the exhaust components. Maybe - likely - but no one can really say for how long or in what consistency owner-to-owner. But more importantly, TiT is not directly representative of the “rest of the exhaust system”. TiT is higher than individual EGT’s because it represents the additive effects of the pulses of heat collecting at one point AND under increased pressure at the entrance to the turbine hot side. Before that inlet, the individual EGTs are cooler (some can be 100dF cooler ) and after the turbo, the aggregate exhaust is at least 100dF cooler. On my Bravo I have a second TIT probe (TOT actually) at the exit of the turbo just past the V-clamp. I added that to monitor for a (unlikely) sudden failure of that section and it's always 125dF lower than real TIT. What this says to me is that if you are running the max TIT of 1750, you will be likely be 1650 or less in the main exhaust system. If you run 1650 max TIT then the math works out to be 1550 or less EGT and that is where we find most non-turbo systems running at decent power levels. Happily I might add. Some may argue that you’ll burn probes out faster at higher temps. Probably, but again how much faster? I think Mooney recommendation is to replace the TIT probe at 200 hours regardless, but I think that’s overdone as well. Thermocouple probes have gotten way batter in just the last decade, so they are lasting longer and staying accurate for a longer period of time. All that said - we agree that cooler is better, so run your engine where you want. But I would suggest that we should not be afraid to run the power up and go fast while not exceeding the limits, and also not being shy of approaching them. OK, let me have it! :-)

Here’s what I saw on our vacation sortie: Altitude: 15,000 (PA 14,860, DA 16,495 with 0C OAT and altimeter 30.06) Airspeed: 138KIAS/176KTAS MP/RPM: 30/2200 FF: 13.5GPH TIT: 1620 (-60F LOP) CHT: 348-362F Increasing only the MP to 32 and holding everything else constant gave me 180KTAS, raised the TIT to 1640 and raised the CHTs by 10. I tried increasing only the fuel flow to 14.5 and holding everything else at the original values above but I didn’t like where the TIT was going so I pulled it back to 13.5. I can’t get my head around the idea that “TIT doesn’t matter”, espoused by some experts. And I’m extremely happy with what I’m getting at 32/2200. And it’s QUIET! Hope this helps the next guy looking for targets and what’s possible LOP. Cheers, Rick

This is my plane one week after taking about 15 gallons in each side. The seeps are not new but the result of the seep is stripped paint. I’d be very wary of using this fuel if your tanks are not perfect.

I had a gear collapse on landing in September 2024. Prop strike, exhaust squished, lower cowling scratched up, cowl flaps, nose gear doors, nose retract rods, belly damage, right wing skin damage, right retract rod in belly bent, right flap hinge, probably the flap too, wing tip fairing. Landed softly and gear unlocked at about 55mph. Slid down asphalt and then did a little twist off into the grass, I believe due to the difference in drag of the fixed step/wing on the right side, and left main gear remaining down and rolling. Not sure if it matters regarding damaged components, but Dukes electric actuator was fully down and sitting on the limit switch. No visual damage to the gear motor, but not sure. Quote was for about $90k with IRAN only, probably optimistic at that. Of course the engine IRAN and prop is a huge chunk of the cost. There's a lot of labor in reskinning the wing too. I think a "clean" gear up where the wings don't hit is probably repairable. Collateral damage from gear collapse or partial collapse can push it over the line. I'm thinking if just the nosewheel collapses its probably not an insurance total. It's just really sad as if you look at the plane, its all pretty minor looking damage with a huge pricetag.