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Showing content with the highest reputation on 10/11/2017 in all areas

  1. I have had a few people ask me and yes, I plan to keep flying GA. My wife is very forgiving and understanding. Plus she really enjoys flying and was super excited to have a plane of our own as we had talked about it for years. Right now I will let the insurance settle out and get everything sorted. We also discussed that from now on I will conduct a full brief with her on the plan just as if she was my co-pilot or wingman on a military flight. That way she will know if I'm doing something different and make me justify it. This is our way to mitigate this type of issue from happening again.
    16 points
  2. Had an interesting bit of IFR flying today in actual. Coming to Butler, KBTP, the AWOS was reporting 800 overcast. The GPS runway 26 approach (which the wind was favoring) was good down to 600-1. Great. I shoot the approach and can't see a break in the clouds down at 600. I hold the altitude till the end and go missed. On the missed, I listen to the AWOS and now it's reporting 400. Approach asks me to say my intentions so with the wind being only about 4kts down 26, I said I'll try the ILS going the other way. The ILS is good to 300-1. With 400 overcast, that should be ok as well. I shoot the approach and down to the DA, I've got nothing. I figured even if it's slightly below minimums, if I could just make out the rails, I could get an extra hundred. Neither the ground nor the runway lights, I go missed again. Now the AWOS reports 200 overcast! ATC asks my intentions and I said I'll fly the published missed and hold till the weather improves. After about 15 minutes of holding, I was getting pretty tired so I figured I'll give it another shot and go somewhere else and take a break before coming back if it doesn't work out. It was reporting 400 so I had a shot. I fly the approach and as I cross the FAF, the AWOS goes back too reporting 200! I thought of cancelling the approach but figured, heck, I can use the practice so why not? I fly the approach right on the ball. I broke out at about 400ft, just a little above minimums and spotted the runway. Something was odd though, the runway lights were not on. I didn't need them this time because I broke out, but they could have made it work last time. I clicked the mic a bunch of times and then they came on! Doh! For some reason, it just didn't occur to me to activate the runway lights in daytime. Usually if I fly an ILS, it's either at a towered airport or at night and I know to click for lights. Butler is uncontrolled and it just didn't dawn on me to turn them on in day time. Nothing unsafe, I held to minimums and went missed the other times but dang those lights might have helped. On a 2 hour flight, I ended up spending an entire hour shooting 3 approaches to minimums and holding. I ended up being more exhausted from that last hour than I was from the other 4 hours of xcountry flying all day. I can fly to Florida on a nice day and be less worked than an hour of hard IFR. Instead of picking up my passenger and going right away, I took an hour break and got food before getting back in the plane. So two things I learned were give the mic a bunch of clicks when shooting an approach and the weather can go up and down quickly in screwy ways. The only way to know if you can really make it in or not is to give it a try (as long as you can honestly hold to minimums and go no further unless you have it).
    4 points
  3. I think its sad that this thread has focused on the basic pilot skills , that I have no doubt , that the pilot possesses , and is WAY more qualified than myself , or most of the pilots on this site.... This is not about runway length , aircraft performance , weather conditions , etc etc ..... You are focusing on things that will never help you as far as this accident is concerned , This is about a breakdown in the decision process , and that's where you should concern yourselves.... It happens to all of us , and we usually get away with it....... If you want to learn anything from this accident , its about what interruption , or distraction caused a qualified (well qualified) pilot to make the wrong decision and almost lose his and his passengers lives..... Its time to listen , not to judge....
    4 points
  4. JB, I have almost 3000 pic time in old E models with the low gear and flap limits. You can descend rapidly in a Mooney, you can slow down a Mooney, and you can maintain power to keep CHTs up in a Mooney,... but not all 3 at once. So.. I cruise as high as practical for the winds and distance. I pay a price in speed and fuel to get up to 10,000' +/- and I want to cash in that energy I've stored up. So I descend at near red line and slightly reduce power shooting for 500'/min or less. (Light+ chop in the yellow is okay by me, and my Mooney is a great deal tougher than I am, YMMV.) I like to arrive at 1000 AGL a couple of miles from the airport with IAS about as fast as a little 4 banger is capable of. At that point I level off and pull power back to arrive into the pattern at Vlg. My Mooney is slick but no one is going to mistake it for a sailplane and it cannot maintain speed and altitude without significant thrust. If I pull back the throttle it will slow down. Surprisingly rapidly. It's about that easy.
    3 points
  5. There! Made it right . . . .
    3 points
  6. I shared the story here because I wanted other people to learn and I didn't want to hide anything. That is they way we do mishap reporting in the Navy. I gave the exact same information to the NTSB duty officer and the FAA inspector at the scene after I was out of the hospital. I showed the FAA inspector all of my flight planning, take off performance data, weight and balance, etc.
    3 points
  7. Cooperdog, I am unsurprised that an officer of our military is up front and honest about a crash due to his own mistake. You exemplify what makes our military the envy of the world. Thank you for your honesty and your service to this great nation. I am grateful that you and your family walked away from this harrowing incident, be it luck or the genius of Al Mooney.
    3 points
  8. Yes, the pilot is here. Yes, I recently purchased the aircraft. I flew from Pensacola on Friday and landed at W75 with about 10 gallons remaining. I filled up Saturday morning (54 gallons on board) and was planning to continue to New England. I checked the fuel during preflight as usual and I saw no water. I looked at the windsock as I finished my preflight and it was about 5 knots with a slight crosswind, but favoring 19. My plan was to back taxi and use the full length of 19. I looked at the windsock again as I was about to taxi and it was limp. I don't have a voice recorder so I'm paraphrasing from what I remember. During taxi, Unicom asked me my direction of travel. I said north. Unicom said that the winds were light and variable, not favoring a particular runway, and that no traffic was known to be inbound. He said I could use 01 if I wanted to be closer to course. At this point I was at the one taxi intersection with 01/19 and he said I could take off from there or back taxi and 180. This is where I made my first mistake. The taxiway intersection is not in the middle of the field. It is closer to the approach end of 01. But if you look at the taxiway diagram it is a short runway and the intersection cuts off a significant amount. I allowed this distraction to alter my plan and I elected to takeoff runway 01 from the intersection without fully considering the decision. There are trees not far past the end of the runway. I don't normally climb at Vx, but as I saw the trees I pulled for Vx and made my second mistake. I over-rotated and entered a power on stall. As I was barely over the treetops while I was attempting to correct, but the sight of the trees right beneath me tempered my forward pitch correction and I re-stalled. I lost lift on the left wing, rolling left. I did not have enough control to really pick a spot at that point, but I had enough rudder to keep the nose between the trees. Or I didn't and it was luck. I honestly can't say. It happened pretty fast by that point. I am a Navy pilot and TOPGUN graduate. I have my ATP and CFII. I completed my BFR in a 182 just a couple of weeks before I bought the Mooney. I am meticulous about safety and planning. I used to preach to students about the three things a pilot can never use: fuel in the truck, runway behind you and altitude above you. I frequently talk about complacency as a major cause for accidents, not just in aviation. I want to be clear, I am not attempting to place any blame on the Unicom. However, I allowed that brief conversation to distract me from my very solid plan and change to a very poor one. The left wing sheared off from the tree on the left side. The right wing entered the house with the fuselage and was leaking fuel. Debris from the structure prevented me from being able to open the door enough for escape. Neighbors called 911 and told us to stay put, but fuel was leaking and I wanted us out. A man who happened to be at the airport and getting ready to fly saw everything from my intersection takeoff to stall. He jumped in his truck and found us. He took charge of the group at the house, got the power to the house secured, apparently there was house wiring on or around us, climbed into the house and started pulling debris away so we could get out. This man subsequently held out gear, picked us up from the hospital after we were released, took us to his home and then brought us to a hotel. I am forever in his debt. The footwell crushed around my legs, but I was able to pull them out on my own only with minor abrasions. My plexiglas windshield was shattered and I have some lacerations on my head and bruising on my right arm. My wife was in the back seat next to our 13 month old son, who was in his car seat. My wife has a fair amount of bruising and soreness. My son has minor rash from his car seat restraints. Fortunately the home was unoccupied. We are very fortunate.
    3 points
  9. daver328, you hit a chord with me. Not all aviation experience is transferable, and some of it may have a negative transfer when going between multi-engine and single engine ops. For example, at work, takeoff distances are all based on losing the critical engine at the critical time. As long as all the engines turn you have lots of margin...takeoff calculations in a single engine have virtually no margin. It's a different mindset. Woe be to the airline guy who thinks there's plenty of margin for error when the only engine quits.
    2 points
  10. Hank...stop trying..the guys obviously drinking in front of his computer
    2 points
  11. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! A Mooney at our field a couple of years ago was able to replace an inner gear door after deploying gear above Vle. Said he did it all the time. At least up until he lost the inner gear door.
    2 points
  12. Just a thought...but if "something" made one deploy drag over the limit speed wouldn't the landing gear be better than flaps? That gear seems pretty robust compared to the flaps and I suspect the max speed is to aleviate the load during retraction. Once down, I'm not sure what part of the gear is vulnerable. Perhaps the fairing doors? Obviously, none of us ever have exceeded limit speeds, but we may each know someone.
    2 points
  13. If the atmospheric conditions are accetable and relatively smooth I descend under reduced power to keep in the green, and maybe into the yellow arc if really smooth. I will arrive at pattern altitude, but I don't try to level off several miles from the pattern. I agree with Bob and if you are in the pattern and a little fast then just back off to 15 or less on MP and raise the nose. She will slow down and only need to climb about 100ft, and when the gear is down she will satay slow enough for flaps which are added incrementally beginning on base turn or as desired. I agree with Mike that even though my Max extension speed is 132 my procedure is to slow to 120 before lowering the gear. All of this is assuming VFR.
    2 points
  14. Ditto on what @201er said about slowing down a J. I use my 430W to plan a 500 fpm descent to get me 3 miles from my destination at an elevation where I can slow and drop to pattern altitude. I would recommend you build up a good maintenance fund if you continue to drop flaps at the speed you currently are.
    2 points
  15. I am in the habit to NEVER deploy flaps before gear. And even though the gear extension speed on my J is 136kias, I use 120kias as my normal gear extension speed. The way to slow down is to reduce power early and to descend to pattern altitude early and level off. You can't descend and slow down at the same time. So descending through about 3000ft AGL, I'll reduce power to around 22 squared and be at around 130-140kias. Then I level off a few miles prior to the pattern which gets me right down to 120kias abeam the numbers on downwind and ready for gear extension. Flaps come after gear. To sum up, get to pattern altitude a few miles prior to the pattern and use low power level flight as a means to slow down. Regulate the rate of slow down with power.
    2 points
  16. I'm not sure I could catch an Uber back to PA from Florida.
    2 points
  17. I agree and this time they were rapidly changing. In the span of about 30 mins it went from 800 overcast to 600 to 400 to 200 and back to 400. Half an hour after I landed it went to 1200 overcast so it was just a matter of time. I had to pick someone up at this airport so it wasn't a matter of just going somewhere else and driving a rental car a little further. Nearby airports were marginal VFR. It was pretty smooth and non-convective. I had enough fuel to divert to Florida with more than legal reserves
    2 points
  18. The hole is in the left inboard rib that allows the bolt to be pushed into the horizontal stab. It is barely visible until you pull off the tail cone and remove the elevator bungees and linkages. Then, when you start sliding the bolt out, you'll say, "oh that's what that hole is for!" I allotted myself a half day to do the job, it actually took about 2 hours of work not including head scratching and water breaks. Most of that was disassembly and removal of the elevator bungees and linkages and keeping everything labeled and sorted. At least we have a tail cone that comes off. I think for airplanes with the full length rudder you might have to remove the rudder itself.
    2 points
  19. Yeah, but they're faster with aft CG
    2 points
  20. Folks, I also would like to respectfully put my view forward relating to what I also believe to be misinterpretation of Don Kaye's post. I say this on the basis of having personally met and flown with Don extensively in a demonstrator Mooney Acclaim some years ago when he and other Mooney officials, including the then Mooney CEO Dennis Ferguson visited Australia. I found Don to be very professional and humble both as a teacher and on a personal level. I spent quite a lot of time with him and most of our conversations were to do with Mooneys. I will never know anyone in Australia that has his vast Mooney knowledge and experience. We have all at some time or another been misinterpreted in either emails or in this wonderful forum of ours as keyboard language is devoid of normal, personal interaction. A special thank you to @Cooperd0g for sharing. Victor.
    2 points
  21. Triggered a thought. My wife had T-shirts made for my 40th birthday and I wear it on every birthday. A few years ago, I did a flycation for my birthday and met some pilots from a nearby military base for lunch. Sobering to realize my shirt was older than them.
    2 points
  22. The beauty of the C is its lack of high-dollar switches . . . But from experience, accessing the bottom of the panel (say, for the gear microswitch inside the throttle quadrant, or the pilot's headset plug, or working on the panel overlay), the services of a chiropractor or deep-tissue masseuse would certainly be nice!!
    2 points
  23. My autopilot trim switch went out a few years ago. I think it was $900 and I was lucky to find a new old stock because the new ones were something like $1500. A plastic switch with a microswitch in it. Thanks BK.
    2 points
  24. @Cooperd0g First, Thank you for your service to our county. Second, thank you for your service to Mooneyspace. I agree with an earlier post, If we every meet up, dinner is on me, Best wishes, @BradB N708PJ
    2 points
  25. It’s alive ! It’s alive ! Need to spend an afternoon tidying up and then off to the avionics shop for software updates and 91.413 transponder cert. I still need to fashion a shelf for the FS-210 as well I only pinned one headset jack backwards and all the interconnects I tested and seem to be working with the boxes racked. So far so good. The audio quality is about 10-fold improved right off the bat.
    2 points
  26. You don't know that the runway was insufficient. It certainly would have been prudent to use the full length (and I am sure that Cooper is kicking himself over being lulled into an intersection take off) Even topped off, it's likely that they were several hundred pounds under gross with a young man, woman and a 13 month old with bags. Intersection was 1500' to the threshold, 1600' to the end of the pavement and 2220' to the first single tree. The DA at the time of the incident was less than 1000'. The It's very likely the airplane had adequate performance margins to get out of that strip even from the intersection, but one would need to use type specific technique which is hard to come by with just a few hours in type. The best way to do it is clean up the plane immediately, build speed at low AOA once attaining Vx all additional energy is used for altitude. piperpainter demonstrates in his C model what looks like a hot dog zoom climb here, but he's really just accelerating as long as possible in a low AOA/low drag attitude before increasing ROC. Below is an image of the strip where this was clip was shot. 1600' from one end to the terminus at the tall pines...
    2 points
  27. No, the aircraft is $400,000, the liability insurance is the other $400,000.
    2 points
  28. This is exactly why there are hanger fairies. Andy is right its a pain, but its not difficult.
    2 points
  29. And keep in mind, there's a pretty good chance they had to loosen all the other switches to provide space from the buss bar to replace the switch. You'll see what I mean if you lie on your back with your face behind the panel. Then go back and forth from that to a sitting position hitting your head on the yoke or instrument panel each time. After you start getting dizzy hanging upside down, you'll think it isn't unreasonable. Sorry. Rant over.
    2 points
  30. I wouldnt rely on a Cell phone to locate me or call for help. My last cross country drive, my iPhone 6 ATT had consistently 1 bar, and often dropped calls or even refused to dial. Its pretty remarkably bad, even moreso when you go overseas and see how much better they have it.
    2 points
  31. I would encourage you to watch this and reconsider reliance on a cellphone for an emergency landing. They may have 95%+ coverage in populated areas... but it's all the unpopulated areas you gotta be concerned about.
    2 points
  32. Yes. But you should have a PLB regardless of whether you fly over the north sea or over a backyard pond.
    2 points
  33. I have thought about that a lot for obvious reasons. In my case, the wing was snapped off on the pilots' side, and from the pics, sufficient penetration on the copilot's side would have punctured bladders also. Are they better than just aluminum skin for penetration (Gawd, I love that word)? Yes, but how much in their current design?. Now, if they were made like the bladders for race cars, that would be the berries. The fuel cells (note the change of wording from bladders) will withstand a shotgun blast. I doubt this was a design parameter of the O&N's. Again this is something that Grimes data could reveal what their structural strengths are and what they have been tested at if at all. I think a bulkhead between the wing (bladders or not) and fuselage would go a long way in post crash fire safety. Fuel will run down the dihedral right under the cockpit, where all kinds of hot things can ignite it.
    2 points
  34. Kudos to the pilot for coming clean and giving us all information that we can/should use to improve our own safety. I see multiple lessons here. It's easy (in fact, probably easier) for experienced pilots to get complacent and expect positive outcomes even in marginal situations. It also shows that even the "best of the best" (sorry, Top Gun reference) can have an off day. And yes, a combination of primacy skills (use those rudders) and good engineering (Mooney roll cage) turned a bad situation into something less than horrible. Awesome. This was a graphic illustration of a simple phrase that I picked up from our good friend Mike Elliott during a BFR a few years ago, borne of his personal experience. I repeat this phrase usually on every pre-flight and run-up, and it's simple: don't be in a hurry to die. That applies in just about everything we do when we take to the air.
    2 points
  35. First, thank goodness "all's well that ends well". I also appreciate having the person who went through the ordeal explain what happened. Having said that, if ever there was an example of the importance of having good Mooney specific transition training including all maneuvers included in the Basic Wings Program this was it--no matter the experience level of the pilot. Here we have an ATP and CFI make incredibly inconceivable decisions and stall the airplane on takeoff. Had he received a proper checkout with more experience flying at the edge of the envelope there is NO WAY he would have taken off at that airport with runway behind him. It also proves why I don't do Flight Reviews any more; only Wings Programs. The Wings Program requires the pilot to do power on stalls. I have the student do Power on stalls at 65% power. Do you know the attitude of the Mooney with only that power setting? Imagine the attitude at 100% power. It's unbelievable! Then couple that with the laminar flow wing of the Mooney. Laminar flow wings have a much steeper "backside of the power curve" than the non laminar flow wings of other models like the Cessna 182. That "J" was going to lose altitude at that attitude. And to "secondary stall" the airplane requires loading the wing on the primary recovery. Ouch!! This was a "lack of training" accident in my opinion leading to the resultant poor decision making. With lack of adequate training it was a case of "not knowing what you don't know" about the airplane. The accident chain began back with the lack of a proper aircraft checkout. This should be an eye opener for those who read this thread. I thank the pilot for sharing what happened in detail, so that others can benefit.
    2 points
  36. Several here have cited their Owners Manual's performance charts. It is probably appropriate to remind ourselves that our 50 year old airframes being pulled along by engines rebuilt or overhauled many hours and years ago and being flown by someone other that Bill Wheat or Mikey Miles might have lost a step or two along the way and that in addition to allowances for DA, runway slope, air in tires, wind gusts, bugs on wings, ... a significant GOK factor should be applied to "distance to clear 50' obstacle".
    2 points
  37. As I mentioned, I planned to back taxi and use all of 19. A person local and familiar with the airport mentioned the option to takeoff 01 with the intersection also as an option. I should have stuck with my original plan. I don't know why I decided to change. Clearly I shouldn't have. It was a lapse in decision making.
    2 points
  38. 2 points
  39. Last thing he needs is a lecture from you , Respectfully , if we treat people this way , don't expect others to be so forth-coming in the future....
    2 points
  40. I practiced power on and off stalls with a CFI prior to ferrying the Mooney home to Florida. But the sensation is all together different when treetops are in your peripheral vision. We were loaded pretty full, but not quite at gross and definitely not over gross. With the three of us and full fuel we could carry an additional 165 lbs. We were about 80 or so pounds under. We don't always practice flying at, or near, gross so I'm sure that was a factor. I shared here because I do believe it is possible to learn from other's mistakes. I read many of the accident reports and it is difficult to see how I would make the same errors, but there are some that I could see myself making in the right conditions. I let a moment of distraction nearly kill my family.
    2 points
  41. When my 1970 tanks were resealed in 2010 or 2011 [I forget, and don't have the logs at work], they had been leaking for a couple of years until they reached the point in the MM that says to do something. When they were stripped, Edison told me that there was evidence of several patch jobs, and that much of the original sealant had the consistency of sand . . . So maybe the 40 years before reseal was a little too long . . . At any rate, I should be good to go for a long time now!
    1 point
  42. It's worth noting that (1) the flaps speed went from 105 to 125mph in 1968 (2) there are a number of planes (including my '68C) with doublers installed over the center of the rear spar to address cracks resulting from flap use too fast. So I observe the book Vfe, and rarely if ever drop flaps before gear, although there are likely some scenarios where using flaps without gear down may be useful. My procedures FWIW. It's not like I have gobs of experience. -After downwind entry, I keep altitude while pull throttle back to just before the gear horn sounds - it gets to 120mph gear speed pretty reliably by the time I'm abeam the numbers. -If I'm really fast approaching the field, I'll pull power way back a bit before downwind entry. -If I'm both too fast and way too high approaching the field, I'll level off 5 miles out and then drop gear to use as a speed brake for a steeper descent.
    1 point
  43. The test for rudder play is to stand at the back with the nose wheel straight and wiggle the rudder left and right. You will feel when the linkage begins to exert resistance on the rudder. The allowable play is when your inspector (me, in this case) says, "hmm, that seems a little loose." There is probably something definite written somewhere that Clarence can dig up, but often it is up to the comfort level of the maintenance technician. On the diagram from the link in the original post, it is #27, and the bolt that everyone hates is #28. Clarence's reference page is from a different year/serial number, so that's why his says #61. Its the same part.
    1 point
  44. Do these switches interrupt a circuit in a special way?
    1 point
  45. Thanks Paul. For a minute there, I knew I had a great video to watch, but couldn't find the keys! Now I’m looking for the right office chair around here, similar to a ball gunner position... It takes some skill to watch this stuff. Best regards, -a-
    1 point
  46. CD just thought I'd add that am so glad you and yours were able to walk away from this an because you had the courage to let us all know what happened and were able to do so. Instead of a debate on what we thought might have happened we have been having a productive discussion that for me has added quite a lot of useful information to my knowledge base. Once again so happy you are alright and hope you get back into another underpowered GA airplane soon.
    1 point
  47. I didn't know that houses made good shock absorbers. I wonder how you can identify the soft squishy ones.
    1 point
  48. What I’m really interested in is the decision making process. How did he with all his training allow this to happen? What was the thought process and how did his training just go out the window? Is it as simple as a new to him airplane and not taking it seriously? How can some decisions be so perfunctory? When they are supposed to be deliberate and based on our training? Reminds me what we learn and teach in instrument training: always trust your instruments. My old instruments professor drilled it into my head: “If you don't trust your instruments, you will lose control and die.” Similarly we need to trust in and make our decisions based on our training and do not deviate. I’m intetested in this because if it can happen so easily to someone with his credentials it can certainly happen to me.
    1 point
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