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Just a couple of pictures after the wife approval review. Once I get the new rugs in, I will post some glamour shots. I’m impressed with the Spatial Design concept. Spent a lot of time speaking with Bruce about the future of his product and I know he would like someone to take over the mission. Maybe one of you talented folks has an interest. I will provide some links to YouTube videos on the technique as soon as I get time to edit them. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

New left Mag installed, timed and test flown. During the test flight I took it to 4500 ft. leaned it out to 1550 TIT on 65% power and did a long, 60 sec mag check on each mag. Using the normalized display on the EDM900, the EGT's rose in perfect unison on each mag. The engine also runs very smooth on each. Satisfied that everything is working normally, I did a lean find test to see how lean it would go. Previously, with a GAMI spread of only .2 I couldn't go below 9.5 gph without roughness, today I was able to lean to 8.0 gph without any roughness. I'm gonna fly to North Carolina tomorrow and then back on Saturday. Over Christmas while I'm away, they'll pull the right mag and take a look at it. This 252 will certainly get annual IRAN on both mags going forward.

Its a trick question. The best J on the market is actually an Ovation......

Hi Byron, I know you didn’t say it, but had to jab Camguard as we see plenty of spalling regardless of whether it’s used or not. I still believe it’s all metallurgy and you either have a good cam or not. No additive is going to save that metal in the operating environment that these engines are in.

I find significant value in knowing that both of my mags and all my plugs are functioning right before a takeoff, under conditions similar to what I'm about to depend on during that takeoff and climb. LOP checks are more of a long-term diagnostic tool.

Finally got the wheels back from powdercoat: Before: After:

It’s raining 337’s here today! I received Matt’s and Marauders 337’s today. The FAA actually beat me to getting the paperwork done before the job. Time to get Matt’s flying for data reports! David

I wish we WERE paid to say that. The fact is, in my 50+ years in aviation, I've never seen the Feds more interested in improving safety with advanced technologies, now becoming available at a reasonable price. Eventually, most Mooneys will be on the Approved Model List (AML) and will be added with relative speed after we get the first approval for the C,E,F, G.

And since I'm getting so much flak on Facebook: The valve stem is seated properly, I had to push it cockeyed so it wouldn't push over the dust cap when I took pics.

Think of it as a speed mod. With the alternator just loafing you probably picked up another .3 kts.

You buy what you like and want. You just use the numbers to justify it.

I bought a Comant to place under the belly (Clarence calls them "eye pokers") and used the antenna from the removed marker beacon. The cockpit end of the coax sits next to my centre post, ready to hook up if needed. ICOM A6 with the headset connectors. Does not go through the Audio Panel. Receives from over 10 miles away and they will receive my transmission around 6 miles away.

Nice - looks a lot like the inside of my airplane! Only I don't have an aspen. Love the pockets too eh - its a very very clean and more room look.

Exactly! When Mag teeth break off the ozoned out wheel (as opposed from maintenance) they seem to break most often right at startup and shutdown. So I prefer to check after every shutdown/startup, regardless if I just did a LOP Mag check before landing. Although in this scenario you'll most likely have a dead mag and should be real obvious. many things can happen including fouling a single plug from a rich descent which won't be quite so obvious.

I prefer to focus on taxiing when I'm taxiing. Are you doing a runup? If so, why not do a quick mag check then? It adds about 15 seconds to the runup process and you aren't needlessly distracted while taxiing. I understand the value of the LOP mag check I am just not so quick to dismiss a pre-takeoff checklist item.

Awesome. Thanks dude!

Yes, but if it's a shitty forging or bad metallurgy they're going to spall regardless.

Agree with this. I wasnt planning on this but was well prepared financially. I've asked him about a handful of additions for the future and other stuff I wanted done as well

And it sounds like Gary wants us to do his research for him.

Perhaps the most scenic and spectacular tour around here is the 500' Class B transition around Linbergh on the coast called the Bay Tour. Its not documented anywhere officially but it begins just a couple miles north of Crystal Pier (on the sectional) where you call up SAN Tower (Lindbergh) and ask for the coastal transition at 500. Once they clear you into the Bravo, they will hand you off to North Island tower pretty quickly (so have your radios setup beforehand). When you contact North Island, just tell them you would like to do the bay tour. They will usually have you check in when rounding Point Loma, then you just fly dead center at 800' over the bay. A little before the bridge, they will ask your intentions (if you want to keep going south to Brown, turn around in south bay, etc). That's is very quick summary. There are some videos of this on youtube covering more of the details. Here is an example by one our own Mooneyspace mooney's @StinkBug If the Bay Tour sounds a bit too complicated for what you want I would recommend the VFR corridor over Lindbergh and then over the Bay along downtown. But this higher at 3500' southbound and 4500' northbound but is well documented on the San Diego TAC and doesn't require all the radio work, instead it uses special freq of 126.050 to talk to other corridor traffic. You could takeoff from MYF, climb to 3500 and go south and either make a 180 down south and come back north the same way at 4500' or you could drop to stay above 3000' but below 3500' and transition over Brown Field (above their Delta) and then up along the east side of San Miguel (below the Bravo ceiling of 3500'). Call MYF Tower abeam San Miguel for landing and then make a left for landing when exiting the Class B at the Cotton Woods gold course and aim right of Mt Helix back to MYF. That will make a loop out of the tour. Lastly the easiest of all low level coastline tours would be from Mt Soledad (VPSMS) up the coast line at 1500' below the bravo 1800' ceiling up to Del Mar or as far as you would like to go. But watch out for CRQ's delta along the coastline that goes to 2800' if you don't talk to them. But you can also get flight following for this off MYF with SOCAL on 119.6 (ask for it before departure with MYF ground to make it easiest for you).

Define "best"?

I'm still holding out for the Trutrak option, hopefully they will stick to the 5 AMU price they've told us. I have a feeling it will be a while though...

except when the bladders don't have the extra bags for the extra 10 gallons.

Glad you took care of the left mag, bit surprised that the right one wasn’t pulled just for nothing more than a look see. That is a LOT of crap inside a sealed mag. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

..and thats why F's are always faster than stock E's

I swear the boot on mine is an old dirty sock. With the colored calf bands and everything

Hey SkyTrekker !! We are working on the Mooney STC, initially for the C, E, F, G - using a C model for the prototype... with our partners at US Sport Aircraft, in Addison. It's a slow process even though the FAA is being VERY cooperative. Stay tuned - Eric -

I just noticed the label on a couple of the cables! There appear to be 2 splitters with the comm antenna behind the one I was concentrating on.

You’re going to love them Bob! I love mine! The extra fuel makes a world of difference. Like jetdriven said, “the best speed mod is more fuel”.

My original one was a stretchy loose weave thing. Too soiled and rotten to determine color. I removed it years ago and put in a temporary sleeve. when I had more time I took measurements and built a wood mock-up with a plastic tube for the J Bar. There is a bend at the bottom and the angles are tricky. the boot slides on the bar and also flexes a bit. I used a cloth pattern to rough out a design, but still had adjustments with the leather. My wife did the sewing on a regular sewing machine. Some other designs I have seen are just a tube sewn to a flat piece. I think that is where you get problems when you retract the gear. Solution seems to be the slack required to accommodate the bend in the bar has to tuck into the hole in the floor when the gear is down. Also I had to remove a borrow strip of the carpet that covers the wheel well to make a bit more space for the boot. I guess I was looking for a puzzle to solve.

My 1970 M20E will get a full panel re-do as soon as the Certified Dynon HDX is available for it. :-)

It looks like it came off the Titanic........ Sorry Paul, had to say it

If you are just redoing things and not doing wiring of say an audio panel, I would say 40 hours. why not do the modular panel of the later F/J variety?

If you are having them connect the audio alerts from the Avidyne to the audio panel make sure you hook it to a switched input. That woman will not shut up. She is going to make me crash one of these days! You would think if the radio is smart enough to tell the transponder that I'm on the ground it would be smart enough to tell the traffic lady that we are on the ground and that the airplanes in the pattern are not going to crash into us! It is wonderful trying to practice approaches at the local stack. There is always another plane 500 ft above and 500 ft below flying holds the same as you are. It is just part of flying with modern avionics, trying to concentrate on your flying while hearing a constant TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC.............

There should be adjustment screws on the back side that push against a ring that the bulb sits in. I just readjusted mine with the cowl off. It would be difficult to do with the cowl on. I set the cowl so they shined vertically onto the ceiling of the hanger. Then I adjusted them to the spec “that looks about right” The 3 screws you see on the front hold the bulb retaining ring in place. The procedure that Clarence posted above looks like it is for wing mounted lights. The 231 (at least the early ones) have a cowl mounted lights with no access panel for adjustment. Cheers, Dan

Holy crap, a 7 and a half year necropost! Nice!

I've read all the input here, thanks! I told my persistent Santa that I didn't really need it but if she just had to do something here's a link: http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/sporty-s-sp-400-handheld-nav-com-aviation-radio.html

Finally got the video together from Harvey. Still amazed how everyone just pitched in with military precision and helped try to mend lots of hurts

The January 2018 AOPA Pilot arrived this morning. The Cover photo is titled "Standing Ovation". "Climbing Back" Still lighting fast -- with creature comforts. The 8 page article includes 10 pics, which seem to have been taken around the Tampa AOPA Fly-In that @mooneygirl, Nancy and I attended as Mooney Ambassadors. This after Flying and Plane & Pilot cover stories in December(?). Kudos the MI marketing folks.

I got pajamas last xmas.

Can you place holds at random? Fly offsets to routes? Enter victor airways? Use voice commands to control the Avionics? Get 3D audio from the remote panel? Nah. Not that all those features are essential, mind you. Besides that, the panel was way more than $30K. And if you leave the money to your kids they’ll just waste it on non-Aviation frippery.

Mine is in the shop now getting a 650 and 750 installed along with adsb and some other things not pertinent to this thread. Originally I was going to do either a 650 or 750. Most of the MS folks love their 750s and highly recommended them due to larger screen size, plates etc. etc. The choice was made and the 750 was going to be the replacement and upgrade from the 430w already in the panel. We were going to move the 430w down and keep it as the secondary nav comm and sell off the old Original King Nav and Comm radios. Well, why not sell off the 430w, kY196, and the KN nav, and put in a 650. This became a "while we are at it," situation or WWAAI. WWAAI is a deep psychological condition(usually temporary depending on cash flow, wealth, 401k value, w-2s, 1099s...etc.)allowing a "normally," CB pilot to circumvent normal practical reasoning and financially justify spending more AMUs for a particular objective. Anyway, dang, we are going ahead and putting new antennas along with rewiring everything to the center stack in hopes that we don't have any issues with range, GPS signal loss, connection issues, etc. All kidding aside, having modern avionics for navigation, communication, redundancy, simplifying updates, extra screen, etc., will hopefully be money well spent.

An Inadvertent Spin and What I Learned About Flying a Mooney I originally posted this to the Mooney Mail List back in December, 1996. -- Don Kaye With all the reading I'd been doing about stall/spin accidents, I decided about 6 months ago that it would be a good idea to have students do a couple during recurrency training (one of my better ideas--sure---). Naturally, they should be practiced to the left to make it more difficult (you know, torque, p-factor, slipstream effect). What I'm about to describe involved M20K's, but is applicable to other models, too. OK, so we climbed up to 6,000 feet. I had the student configure for the landing configuration, full flaps and gear down. I demo'd it and then let the students do a couple. Gradually increase a skid with increasing left rudder and simultaneously feed in more and more right aileron and back elevator until the stall. With the first 4 students nobody particularly enjoyed them, but they worked out ok. Everyone was so nervous that the instant the airplane started to stall, the yoke was released and power was simultaneously added, coordinated rudder and aileron and recovery was complete. (Your basic Power, Pitch, Bank recovery for nose up stall). However----student number 5 decided that he wanted to really see the "break". He held back pressure, I kid you not, just 1 second too long. My new experience now tells me that Mooneys don't snap like the Cessnas in a cross controlled stall--the wing just casually rolls vertical along with the nose going vertical and you quickly "accelerate" into, you guessed it, a spin. Not only did the spin rate rapidly increase, but the aircraft began to porpoise in the spin. I said, "I've the airplane" and the student quickly lifted his hands off the yoke and said "Be my guest." Since getting my ATP, I've always stressed "smoothness" in flying an airplane. I "smoothly" pushed the nose down, pulled the power, and applied full right rudder. The rotation continued--and continued--and continued. Just as my heart rate was really starting to increase and the sweat was beginning to break out on the "right" side of my face (of course you know that flight instructors never sweat on their left side) and plan B needed to be thought up, the rotation started to slow and stop and I gradually pulled up. The altitude was 5,000 so we were test pilots for only one turn (like we did a 2 turn spin). There were a couple of seconds there when---. Back on the phone to Mooney, I talked to Joel, one of their test pilots about the slow rate of recovery from the spin, and he gave me an earful! It seems he's had plenty spin recovery practice during certification. Here's some of the "other" things he said to me which I really took note of: 1. Forget smoothness when it comes to spin recovery! Abrupt full elevator forward right now! 2. Flaps up to prevent stress on the flaps and more importantly to get the air flowing over the rudder more effectively. 3. If recovery isn't affected using the above technique, then use full rudder into the spin followed by full rudder opposite the spin. 4. If that doesn't work, then increase then decrease power a couple of times. 5. If that doesn't work--well, he's never had it go that far. He said Mooneys are slow to come out of spins, so as the POH's say, "don't get into them." I've decided not to give cross controlled stall practice routinely anymore. If you're not really current, I recommend not practicing these by yourself, and even if you are don't do them without first taking a good Mooney specific flight instructor along with you for some additional "comfort". MOST IMPORTANTLY! Watch out for the situations where this vicious type of stall can occur. -- Don Kaye I found this some where....... LT

I might have missed this in prior posts or Foreflight videos. But last night I was working on the IFD100 trainer app and had my other iPad running foreflight. They were both logged onto my house WiFi and I realized the IFD100 was sending the simulated flight into the Foreflight app. It as giving me eta’s terrain info and everything as if I was flying. I was pretty shocked at first and then actually got to enjoy playing around with the Foreflight app with real world flying from the safety of my couch. If everyone knows about this then I guess I’m late to the party. But if you don’t and have the Avidyne IFD systems and Foreflight or looking for a reason to go with an Avidyne IFD radio here is another reason. I enjoy the setup more and more. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Got to do plenty of aviating over the Thanksgiving holiday. The short and skinny: TTA (Raleigh) to FYJ (West Point VA) to bring the little one to her auntie and uncle’s house. FYJ to ILM for a few days for work ILM to IGX (Chapel Hill) to pick up the MRS IGX back to FYJ to spend time with family FYJ to the land of @carusoam 39N to see my grandmother (and parents too). Back to FYJ the same night. Back to IGX and then TTA the next day. Broke the 700 hr Mark... Beautiful Weather the whole weekend The best part of course was letting my little copilot fly. She did as well as or better than most adult non pilots that have flown with me. She flew for 5 minutes and could keep the wings level or turn left or right - she’s an amazing natural - she would reference out the right wing or the AI and was loving every minute of it

He's my IA. Amazing guy and book of knowledge. He spent 30 years wrenching on radials in Alaska and I spent the better part of the work day just listening to some truly amazing stories.

For local "I'm in no hurry" flights I run 2300/2100. For longer "I want to get there" flights below 5K feet I run 2300/2300. For longer flights above 5K feet I pull out the POH and see what works best in the prevailing conditions.

Upon landing, your engine and cowling area are actually pretty cool, temps are at there lowest point for 30 seconds or so. Maybe a normal start procedure is what the doctor ordered instead of a hot start procedure. As soon as your landing roll is under control you may try to lean the mixture for ground operations which may help keep the engine running, but I would also seek the input of a mechanic as to why it's stalling. Ron

I flew a load from Georgetown to West Houston this morning, and there are two other J's at the same time. Also following along was the B-25 Devil Dog! What a great display of people working together. We got the easy and fun part for sure, and I was glad I came down to help. KGTU was running like a well oiled machine receiving, processing, packing and loading the never-ending supply of donations. It sure was great to see so many people helping, and so much happiness on the receiving end. West Houston is a mess. Coming from the west it didn't look terrible, and then BAM, water everywhere just east of the airport. I'm sure it got worse going further east. Even after a week I'm exhausted now after 13-14 hours of flying this weekend in many legs, but I'm sure it is nothing compared to what many are feeling as they try to get back on their feet. There will be an ongoing need for support for a long time, so consider helping if you can! Sent from my LG-US996 using Tapatalk

So the chain started last night with a Facebook post about there was a need for food in the some of the places that were hit hard by Harvey along the Texas Gulf Coast. A flight to San Antonio International and a short conversation about where would be best. Bay City Texas was chosen because it seemed the most cutoff. There was a mini van full of pizza in San Antonio. We weighed a bag 5 pizza to a bag and 11ish pound per bag. We were able to get 13 bags in the plane. About a 50 minute flight to Bay City where the Airport Manager took the pizza into town. Huge shout out to the #Pappajohn Family and the family of franchise owners in San Antonio. The Airport Manager said "It was the first hot meal they had in awhile" A Bonanza brought in another load.