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This doesn’t sound like it’s working right. I’m not an expert on all things GP, but I haven’t seen any particularly slow behavior or disappearing airport details - I wonder if there is a resource contention issue on your iPad or similar. Anyway - I’m just saying that your experience is not what I would consider acceptable, and I definitely would not use GP if I had the same.

I still believe airworthiness inspections should be good for 24 months instead of 12. It’s not reasonable for a plane to be out of service for a month or more every year.

I’d consider a vintage (B, C, E, F) and modern session (Js and later). I think that would allow 2 groups - if we had 2 AP/IAs ;o) -Don

How to hands on: Weight the airplane Do an oil change Remove/Install/Time mags Baffling inspection and repairs Remove, clean, check gaps, and re-instal plugs Compression check Fuel injection system Fuel system inspection & o-ring replacement (lines, gascolator, gas caps). There could even be enough o-rings that everyone who wants to can re-do their gas caps. How to put the airplane on jacks. Replace a tires, re-pack bearings Lubrication points What to look for during the airframe inspection Classroom portion Interpret borescope images Interpret engine data for engine monitor How to read your logbook How to keep track of upcoming items that are due How do search for AD, SB How/where to buy parts from Discussion on what parts to stock How to communicate with the IA/AP When to schedule maintenance How to deal with various AOG issues I learned from that maintenance version

Just read this today: https://www.flyingmag.com/bill-would-limit-use-of-ads-b-data/?oly_enc_id=8131F6736601B9C

As an aside, the whiskey areas were pretty fun to operate in. It was as close as you could get to the Brit airspace which can be pretty much a free for all. Meaning you could takeoff with your wingman to go to the bombing range and on the way there, minding your own business, you get jumped by a Tornado or maybe a Eurofighter now. No warning, no planning, just keep your eyes open and be ready to react. We (USAF) scheduled the whiskey areas pretty tightly because it is annoying and potentially dangerous to have random, non briefed aircraft in the middle of your 4v4 fight, but unfortunately (or fortunately), the Navy didn’t subscribe to the theory. You could easily be fighting 4v6 and wondering who the heck wasn’t supposed to be there until you closed to visual and realized that two “adversaries” were EA-6s in a holding pattern trying to work against the SAM simulator under your CAP that you also didn’t know about.

MUTTON? Might as well eat old Billy Goat! The west was won on BEEF!!! Cooper's BBQ in Llano, TX :-)

...I miss my plane! They are promising early August. Is it bad if I wish July away? :-O Well it should be a kick ass new engine for my old bird.

Fortunately my shop signs off the logs and annual when they're done. I'd be super irritated if my annual was signed of and then the following month returned to service. At least with this year I moved from a May 2025 expiration date to a July 2026 exp.

Those coords were previously associated with GPS testing in Apr-May by Carrier Strike Group 4…

Hopefully they get some support, but I don’t feel like there’s much backing for us “airplane owners with deep pockets” to get the govt to help us avoid fees no matter how onerous the business practices.

I feel very fortunate. The folks I use schedule annuals a year out. I already have Myrtle scheduled to go in February 12th. It will take 1 - 2 weeks for the annual unless they find something that requires ordering parts. When we know we are going to be sending mags, fuel pumps or anything else out for overhaul, they pull those items first and get them sent out right away. On average the annuals have averaged 2 - 3 weeks total.

I don't think that's the issue. I brought a freshly smoked brisket for my avionics install, have brought them pizza, usually pay the day I pick up or put a check in the mail the day I receive an invoice. But they are still swamped enough that it took a month to finally get me in to troubleshoot a transponder antenna. The delays seen AREN'T because your shop doesn't like you and you're a nuisance (okay, maybe some people are). It's because their plate is full and they can't eat everything at once. So it's a continual process of triage and sometimes that works in your favor (i.e. AOG) and sometimes it just leads to delays that they probably don't like either. But the unclear expectations cause the most frustrations. The aspect of maintenance that I think a lot of shops could improve on was setting a clear expectation. Use the Disney phenomenon of under-promising and over-delivering. If my shop gave me a squawk list and I could say "I'll come into the shop and take care of 3, 5, 7-10 and 12" and they were okay with it, I'd love it!! Instead it's often things they already addressed during the inspection and rolled into the bill. They don't want me in the shop, they'd prefer that I leave the plane and a blank check, and say take care of it all and call me when it's done. That's the way to maximize THEIR efficiency. Not pizza.

If this change were to actually occur, it would have an impact on the behavior and service of many shops. I have found a provider I am comfortable with. They are honest, generally on time, and above all, the communication is excellent. I pay for this, but I am happy to because there is nothing worse than having your plane down.

All of my first 3 annuals took months and $$$ because the first pre-purchase turned annual didn't catch a damn thing. Lucky it didn't have corrosion. Right now the plane is at Willmar for the first annual from them, and Eric said all the airworthy stuff is done (nothing found), and they're just patching surface corrosion. I can take it when I want if I need a trip and bring it back, even. But it's been there two weeks -- I'll get it back Wednesday, and he apologized for being slow. Keep in mind that it was down for 7 months getting a lot fixed firewall forward. I'm glad to hear he said it was A+ in the engine bay and not a thing was wrong.

There are large demographic and economical forces at play that wiggle small airplanes around like a dog wiggling its tail. One way for the OP to get ahead is to get personally involved, do dirty and boring work, find parts, nudge the schedule, buy pizza, generally become a guy that is good to have around, the shop has to have the feeling that the OP fixes more problems than he causes, profitability is higher with the OP doing stuff than with the OP not involved, by doing helper work you replace a guy that costs the shop let's say $30/h and is billed out at let's say $110/h. OP has to find a way to balance that out. Once the balance is established it is beneficial for everybody, once the shop trusts you they let you comb through there parts storage on weekends because they know you pay on Monday and bring pizza. This works for handy people, the shop then has to explain to Joe why Phil is allowed to work on his own airplane while Joe is not allowed to enter the premises. The concierge service means in the last consequence that the OP owns and operates a maintenance shop, beware what you wish for, once upon a time I knew a guy in Vienna Austria who owned a Citation, unhappy with the performance of the avionics shop he bought it and started to manage it as a hobby, think he got personal pleasure out of it, RAF trained fighter pilot and successful business guy. Key to successful small pane maintenance is to find the best setup you can and then support, manage, and subsidize it as needed and you will achieve amazing things, I keep fingers crossed....

Week six so far Saw your plane there unfortunately engine wasn’t hung yet. D

Is it duration alone or a combination of duration and communication? Years ago I scheduled an annual with a very well revered shop, the owner promised me a turn around so quick I could wait in a hotel. One belligerent phone call and 10 weeks later I get texted a video of a loose turbo housing. No text, no explanation, no suggestion. Followed by no response to my questions, call or emails for three more weeks, only to find out they had not ordered the turbo bc they needed my permission to do so…. The captive market nature of this genre, shapes customer service, and not for the better. Shame on me for being so optimisticly suckered…

@Danb I'm dealing with this now. I'm into week 6 and still not a definite ETA. List is small and only has minor squawks (tighten this, adjust that), and this is probably my most simple annual yet. Only parts to wait for were GFC500 servos that I was getting warranty exchange for (my pitch servo crapped out) and asked if that would delay annual if we did it on drop off; told Garmin says it takes ~2 days to ship new ones and we can easily get it done before the annual is done. My last 3 annuals have taken 3-4 weeks; first one was the first time they inspected my mooney; one of these I replaced baffles; one of these I did a 500hr IRAN mag and installed a SureFly. I think the Mooney is seeing more back burner time because there are more airplanes than humans fixing them. I suspect that unfortunately there isn't a solution, I just wish my shop communicated delays better so I had a clear expectation of when to expect communication and what to plan for. This year I still haven't even received a cost estimate or ETA at all. Needless to say I'm as frustrated as you are. But I'm perpetually wondering if the grass is greener on the other side...I suspect it also has just as many weeds...or is that cobwebs? I'm guessing that as GA contracts, more people going through A&P school take jobs working on the commercial aviation side. I'm still trying to figure out how we set up a Concierge service like Mike Busch has talked about. I think the leverage would be a single A&P working on a small group of planes with a membership...unfortunately I suspect that would be better served with an A&P who's winding down, rather than just getting started and would potentially come with enough insecurity that it'd be hard to find and replicate. I'm thinking that the only way to control how long it takes is by moving to owner assisted maintenance with an available and accommodating A&P/IA.

Had the bubble gum belly beacon and strobes on my m20f. Replaced with belly strobe recently. 1968 model

Decided against making the switch, sadly. The app is so much slower than Foreflight. Maybe it’s written in Java and runs in a VM in the iPad but it’s just slow. It’ll also glitch out a lot. I’ll click an airport and it’ll show details, then vanish. Last thing I need is that if I’m in a high pressure environment. You can’t annotate on SmartCharts and they’re not always right (they don’t seem to always adjust for NOTAMs which makes me lose faith in them). They also don’t persist my airplane category so I need to switch it every time. That seems like a simple oversight. No live camera feeds, no user comments, that’s a bummer. For at least one more year, I’ll stick to Foreflight.

FAA program to provide real-time visual weather data. FF just began incorporating it into the airport pages. Here’s the FAA site. https://weathercams.faa.gov This describes the program: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/systemops/fs/alaskan/weather_cams

And if it happens to be a dry year, the “screws” become a verb rather than a noun.

That was way before pandemic...sometime around 2010 if I recall correctly. I imagine that post-pandemic the situation is lot worse.

I’ve been lucky, my ACK 406 has been flawless for probably 15 years. If you want. you can pull defective ELT, placard it and fly it for 90 days before you have to replace it, per 91.207 F 10 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Western Skyways is my closest name engine shop, and I did ask them first. I was told that due to parts availability and pricing for the TSIO-360-MB, they would recommend a factory reman or new engine. I got the same response from a second name shop, and I was told the turnaround time would be 5-6 months at the third name shop which did my overhaul in 2011. When I told Western Skyways the price and timing from the factory and said surely you can beat that, he said he'd get back to me with an estimate. Jon

Everybody is assuming it is a fuel issue, but you never cycled your mags at high power when it was running rough. That’s the first thing you should do, that is why we have convenient switches to do that. As far as an injector being bad, if you can find someone with an inspection microscope with a ring light, set the nozzle on the stage pointing up, focus on the end and inspect it, then focus down the bore. They are made with an EDM sinker. They should have an even sandblasted look to them all the way down with no scratches or burrs anywhere.

The nozzles shouldn't wear out, but there are a couple of stupid mechanic tricks that can screw them up. The first is using safety wire, a drill or some other object to clean them. That can bugger up or change the size of the orifice. The second is mixing up the inserts between the bodies. It's easy to test them. Just set up the baby bottle test and watch the spray patterns when fuel is flowing. It should be a stream about the size of a #2 pencil lead. If it is otherwise, then there is a problem. If it's a simple mix up of the parts, you can swap around inserts until they all have a coherent stream. According to Al Jesmer, that's how RSA assembles them at the factory. They just match parts until the stream is right.

The Mooney Summit 's Bill Gilliland foundation will be reaching out to Gentry to offer crisis intervention and financial assistance. Thanks to everyone who support the Mooney Summit's mission "to better the breed" and our charitable foundation to aid downed Mooney pilot's families at the time of their greatest need.

Those old ACK ELT's are troublesome. The boards suffer from weak solder joints, and the G switches are temperamental. Definitely don't buy their slide-in 406 mhz ELT-04 replacement. They are just as bad. Bite the bullet and get an Artex ELT345.

Some people are meant to be caretakers in life. The person who eventually purchases this aircraft is a caretaker. They are the ones who make purchases like this to preserve the history of our Mooney’s. In my opinion this is a plane should be kept as close to original as possible. (Obviously for safety improved radios). I have owned a car for a long time, I am it’s present caretaker, and I tell my wife that she will have to sell it to the right person. (A new caretaker). Short version- If this aircraft meets your mission and you want to take pride in its history, this is the plane for you.

I sometimes wonder, if you presented the scenario to the pilot a month before the incident, would they: say, "no, of course not." talk in terms recognizable as one of the hazardous attitudes. say, "legal is the only personal minimum I have." have a history of similar acts in which they've been successful. [fill in your own answer]

Mooneyspace is a great source of information from people who have experience that we can all draw from. Occasionally someone signs up on here that really enjoys taking a contrary view about nearly every subject and has very little to zero personal experience on the subject they are arguing about. They never pay the money to be a supporter on the site and are here to stir things up and argue and don't contribute in any positive way. They get banned and then come back with another screen name. Most people who have been on here a long time have learned to ignore them and not take their bait to engage in endless debate. There's always the ignore option on their profile. (Beechtalk's policy of people using their actual name as their screen name seems to help people behave better and not hide behind a random screen name.) Personal observation: I've had an Inogen for close to 10 years. I bought it off of a Craigslist ad with 10 hours on it for $500 and although I have built-in oxygen I very rarely use the on-board oxygen. My canisters on the Inogen are still good - I only use it for flying and the bottom line: it keeps my SPO2 where I want it. I end up using it on almost flight, whether it's 8000 or in the teens. Very rarely do I go into the flight levels, but when I do I plug into the on board O2 FL180 and above, with a mask. It has opened up options for me - if I need to climb higher I'm not restricted by how much oxygen is in my on-board tank. I still have my on-board O2 plus a few cans of Boost in the back pockets of the front two seats.