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I finally got my baby back today after a long and extensive refurbish. N201JJ is the 51st 201 to come off the line in Kerrville. It’s been in the family since new in ‘77. Now she is ready for my kids. Special props to KSMooniac for the inspiration some years back. I’ve loved his airplane since I first saw it here on the site. We made a few changes to make it our own.

I am intimately familiar with grief associated with the loss of a loved one, and I would suggest you wait at least a month before approaching him about the disposition of the plane. A month will likely not affect the plane at all, and he certainly will have other things on his mind for a period of time.

I took a few lessons in High School. The local flight school at Cable Airport charged $12 per hour for a Cessna 150 and a CFI got a stratospheric $5 more. $17 per hour seemed terribly expensive. I worked very part-time at a bicycle shop doing repairs at $1.80 an hour. A visit to the CPI calculator web site claims that a late 1960’s $17 is equivalent to around $130 now. You can still rent a Cessna 150 (perhaps the very one I abused going around the pattern half a century ago) and private CFI for close to that figure. Agree that we should seek paths to affordable flight training for motivated youth. It has always been expensive.

Why does everyone keep forgetting about FlyQ???? My personal opinion, it's on par with FF and GP, if not better. It's certainly cheaper from a cost perspective... Brian

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the CDT is very important especially to the GB engine if there is no intercooler, and in fact its not a matter of irritation with non-working items, the problem is that the aircraft is not airworthy without a working CDT. Compressor Discharge Temperature is the temperature of the induction air when it comes out of the turbo. The air is heated quite a bit in the turbo, partly because of the fact that it gets compressed, and partly because the turbo itself is very hot and imparts some of that heat to the induction air. There is a redline for CDT in your engine, and it is 280 dF. The redline is not there to protect the turbo, Turbine Inlet Temperature protects the turbo. The max on that is 1650 continuous and 1725 for a very short period to set the mixture. The purpose of the CDT redline is to prevent the engine from going into detonation as a result of the fact that the induction air is too hot. If you were to look in the Type Certificate for the aircraft, you would find the gauge listed, and that specific gauge, or a gauge that is STCd to act as the primary gauge, must be present and working. Simply adding CDT to the 830 will not do it unless the 830 is STCd to act as primary for CDT, and I don’t believe it is. The 930 is, but the 930 has some extra items required by the FAA to permit it to act as the primary set of gauges for the aircraft (mainly a secondary display called the RAD). JPI may have gotten an STC for the 830 to act as primary, I don’t know, but you would definitely need to check. As I said, simply getting a CDT readout on the 830 will not return the aircraft to airworthy condition unless the 830 is STCd as primary. I think your best course is to get the factory gauge fixed, and then figure out what you can do about the 830. I am surprised this has gotten through annual. I hate to tell you this, but in its present condition the aircraft cannot be flown because it is in unairworthy condition. The gauge needs to be repaired in place, or you must get a ferry permit to move it to a place where it can get repaired. Look in your POH in the Limitations section you will see the CDT redline limit there.

I’m probably going to get out of airplane ownership and flying in about 3 years or less. The reasons are various but cost is the biggest factor and secondly it’s no longer fun for me. Part of my problem lies in the fact that I’m employed in aviation and have my own little aviation business. It seems that I have too much aviation in my life and I longed for something with less regulation so I recently got back into old muscle car ownership and I love it.

Total turn off for me and awkward! I thought the delay from them running up to the plane was because they were pulling a walker out of the SUV. They must know their demographic and it doesn’t look like me but hats off to the #1 seller of GA airplanes!

ADSB is line of sight, transmitted by your transponder every second. No radar involved. So, if you have ADSB in you will see ADSB traffic at your airport.. In flight the FAA will not have data on you until you are in line of sight range of an FAA ADSB ground antenna. These can be at airports (usually Class B, C and some D's) and elsewhere. Also the FAA towers usually pick up the ADSB signal lower than radar would normally identify you. Currently this ADSB traffic is not used by the secondary radar controllers. In addition to this Flightaware, Flightradar 24 and others use private ADSB receivers all around the country to augment their ADSB data. Seeing your flight to the ground means that someone in that area has an ADSB antenna and is relaying the data to Flightaware. If you look at the track log it will tell you the source of the position data. Mode-s meant that radar sites could track you by ICAO ID when you were within their service volume. ADSB means that you are actively transmitting your location at all times to everyone within line of sight.

My tablet gives me a heading to fly and makes adjustments depending on what the winds are doing if they are pushing me off track. If the indicated heading I am flying is the same as the leg shows I should fly it works perfectly. In my mind I "think" that if I set the TruTrack to the heading on the tablet it will get me there. The reality in practice may be different.

Plus 2 Most Mooneys are not properly lubed. It makes a huge difference. Remember a greasy Mooney is a happy Mooney!

Flew up to Tune (west of Nashville) for brother's bachelor party. Great flight even with a 0500 wheels up!

We flew to Mackinac Island this summer and really had a great time. But we stayed in Saint Ignace which is about 4 minutes by Mooney from the Island. We stayed in a great Airbnb which was something like $65/night. Also landing and parking overnight at Saint Ignace (free) gets you access to a crew car. We were told to keep it over night and as long as we needed it. It was a super cool '82 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. The wife and I cruised around with the windows down playing the theme from Shaft.

My co-pilot and I have gotten to know our 1967 M20C well since we acquired her last October. With the help and supervision of our A&P plus a good instrument shop, we took a tired example of a Mooney M20C and brought her panel up to modernity thanks in no small part to some advice given by MS members. She now has an 8-pack panel layout, JPI900 EDM, GNS430W, and Appareo transponder with ADS-B in/out. To celebrate we took her out on a "victory lap" around the Rockies in August, covering 2838 nm in 26.2 h flight time. We really spread her wings with max. cruise at 12,500, and 208 mph g.s. at top of descent approaching Amarillo thanks to some ridiculous winds. We faced headwinds more often than not, even on some eastbound legs! The haze from the numerous forest fires out west severely limited visibility particularly in the northern portion of our trip into Colorado front range and into southern Wyoming. We visited friends and family, plus toured Bryce Canyon Nat'l Park, Cedar Breaks, Nat.'l Mon., drove down the Moki Dugway and across Monument Valley, overflew the Grand Canyon N-S via the "Tuckup" VFR corridor at 10,500 ft., and orbited meteor crater near Winslow, AZ. "Little Sister" as we call her performed admirably.

Estate, plane, stuff, give it a year. Now if you are asking to take him flying to help remember his Dad. That would be being a good friend.

A little flexible long neck video camera also works wonders

If the 830 is not STCd as primary, it can be hooked up to show CDT but the aircraft is still not airworthy. There must be a Type Certificated or STCd primary display of CDT. Sorry, but that is how it is.

Yeah ModWorks installed a TCM IO-360-ES in 1998.

Meteor Crater near Winslow, AZ, August 26, 2018. San Francisco peaks/Flagstaff, AZ, in distance.

I really appreciate it and will keep you posted with any updates. Yes winter / spring flying around Vegas is great and I am looking forward to meeting you!

Thanks @gsxrpilot. We picked late August because the weather out west is usually the nicest that time of year. This year the monsoon flow of moisture up from the southwest was still switched on so we had to dodge some storms. It would have been nice to have a turbo. The density altitude the morning we departed Laramie, which has field elev. of nearly 7300', was 10,400'. Takeoff took a long time chewing up a LOT of runway. Kind of like a 747 takeoff from LAX to SYD. I'd guess the takeoff roll took probably about 45 seconds consuming about 2500' of runway, and the climb out was not breathtakingly fast. About 300-400 fpm was about all we could muster with full tanks, and my co-pilot is really light. Together we average out to about two standard Mooney 170 lb humans.

My new-to-me 1970 C-model showed the obvious signs of weak engine mount isolators (Lord Mounts). The prop sagged over an inch below the cowl opening. It was time to tackle the task of changing the engine mounts. In case anyone else needs to do this job I thought I'd share some info. There are multiple ways to do this job. I describe what worked for me. The Lord mounts for a C-model cost about $450 a set. Access is very tight but do-able. I removed some intake parts, scat tubing, etc. My aircraft has a 201 cowl and 201 exhaust so your C-model may require dropping the exhaust, etc. You'll need an engine hoist and a way to pivot the prop hub up and down. We used a second block and tackle for that. First off - this job needs at least 2 people. Moving the engine to line up parts, etc. can't be done alone. Removing the old mounts and bolts is pretty easy after the engine is supported. The bolts can be positioned to remove them when the engine is moved forward an inch or so. For the new mounts, we started with the hardest to reach mount and left the mount with the best access for last. Moving and lifting the engine both by hand and the engine hoist was required to get parts lined up. A small brass hammer helped encourage the bolts into place. It took about 2.5 hours. See the before and after images - it made a big difference on this air frame. No additional shims were needed although I made a few in case they were. It's unclear how old the mounts were on this airplane - at least 15 years old and perhaps older. Thanks all.

It’s is hard to read this thread after the initial post. I might be wrong, but I’m guessing that the OP posted to share something cool and unique. That is a darn good looking plane. Inside and out. I’m a bit jealous of the plane and the flight. Well done! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

Hi Zjggy it looks like they pushed my Dallas trip to tuesday/wednesday thru friday instead of sunday through tuesday, if dropping off friday would be an option I could probably fly you to OKC on my return trip.

The K has a pretty complex wiring diagram... Expect that there are hot wires in all modern Mooneys 1) the master switch has a hot wire leading to it... 2) Some cigarette lighters are also hot all the time... 3) a handful of Mooneys have interior lights that can be left on until the battery dies.... 4) Some instrument’s with memories like radios and Fuel data have power all the time... 5) this same question has come up recently. Somebody was looking to mount a new clock... How is that for ideas? PP thoughts only, not a mechanic... Best regards, -a-

I have been flying a couple of years now without a canopy and love it (see pic). The RV-7 can handle more luggage than you are allowed to take on most airlines. I fly VFR only anyway and can vouch that landing a biplane is anything but "stabilized" so I should enjoy flying it.

It was really a really cool trip. The trip took 15 days, we have a lot of family out in that part of the country. I'll post a few enroute photos soon after I get them downloaded. The thread and before/after photos of the new panel is here.

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Great to hear Paul. Got a lot of new features coming over the next 6 to 12 months.

I've put a couple hundred hours on our Mooney with no auto-pilot. I'm with you that I hate to see the date slipping further back, but for what they are saying it does for the price I am willing to keep flying without one and wait a few more months. Planning on purchasing it through @Jeev and if I decide to have him do the install too the Winter/Spring months are much nicer for flying to Vegas than the Summer/Fall months.

Has to be said ... Never had a $150.00 tablet and Stratux go fritzy like that when I needed it

Would start with lube. It does make a difference. In particular, I find the the yoke shaft feed through the panel makes a difference.

The golden age of GA is right now. Lots of serviceable airframes are available at reasonable prices. You can navigate with inexpensive consumer electronics that will also show you weather and traffic with inexpensive avionics. Lots of experimental gear is becoming available for the certificated fleet, and you don't even have to keep getting a medical. You only ever need pass the dread 3rd class medical once, and then you can transition to the much more facile Basic Med. There's a crapload of win going on right now.

Did mine at the old AF base in Victorville CA They gave us a pop to 28000'. Saw the fog and everything else. My partner was told 3 times to put on his mask and he verbally agreed each time BUT- when he fell forward I put it on for him :-) Hypoxia is a sneaky little bastard. You may/probably will never know it has raised its ugly head, especially in an unpressurized cabin. Its nothing to fool with even in the middle 20s. Don't even think you are going to troubleshoot the problem or even change systems to the backup before you start down. The longer you wait at high altitude the more probability of a bad outcome. Don't screw around. If you even suspect O2 problems dump it at Vne POWER OFF (to hell with the shock cooling at this point, you're in an emergency condition that can kill you, OK?) and get down now! Then call ATC to explain. YA, its that important! You're gonna die if you don't do it correctly. Thankfully most O2 systems are pretty reliable BUT? I've had 3 complete losses of pressurization in 40 years in jets. Its nothing to screw with. Home work problem- How long will it take you to get down if your O2 fails at FL 240? Again, I'll buy dinner if you can meet your ETA the first time you try. You'll never make your estimate the first time, guaranteed! I've seen it happen too many times in the sim.

Pilots come out of the training looking very sober. Then, I hear, they head over to the Sky Ox booth.

Nicely done Dan. This is the reason why I recommend engine analyzers to clients, even if they think they cant use it because they have carbs. You where able to see on the analyzer that you had an issue BEFORE it started coming out of the sky. BTW, second run cyls should provide you with good life. I hope you make a lamp stand out of that popped cyl. Good conversation starter for your BBQ guests.

Gentlemen, I am still hoping to do this mod, but would really like to duplicate what someone else has already done. There are several different ways to mount the battery box and run the cables which is why I was hoping someone with an E model, or a C with the battery in the tail could take some pictures. Words are nice, pictures are better. I have already done W&B calcs to see where I would be after the Mod. I am also looking to the future (many years from now) when I replace the flooded cell battery with a Lithium battery that will be much lighter. I am also hoping to pull the Oil cooler back behind the baffling, so weight isn't my only concern. Thanks for your time. Last request. I and Jstickler76 have asked for people's opinions. Please don't slam folks who's opinion doesn't match yours. It is fine to disagree, but I see a lot of unnecessary insults tossed at folks. That's not helpful. This forum is better than many of the auto forums I participate in, so I appreciate that.

What I think will change my decision is what, if any, integrations will occur with these vendors. If Garmin introduces the GFC 500 and it integrates with the Aspen either initially or is being planned, it would factor into my decision. I wouldn't want to add a G5 just to manage the autopilot.

One data point: I have been commuting from Calif to Texas for 13 years in a '64 e with the io360a1a. Usually 12k' eastbound and 9500' west bound, and usually WOT and 2700. 8 hours eastbound with one fuel stop and 9-10 hours westbound with two fuel stops. I lean to between 100 degrees rich to sometimes peak egt. Most times I lean for for max airspeed/best power. My engine was overhauled in 1986 and has 2800 hours smoh, 6000 total time on it.. Compressions are 79 on all 4. I change the oil every 25, filter every 50. In that time, one cylinder had a "tuliped" exhaust valve that was replaced at 1400 smoh. It was not burnt or anything, so most likely a defective valve. If you don't have the a1a engine then you may have counterweights, and I have seen those cause problems in other 360's going over tbo. 2700 is relatively low rpm designed for longevity afaik. I have heard that racers spin these up to 3200 routinely.

When I had my engine failure at 200ft, I was already above 120mph. It was a hot day, gusting crosswinds and I was close to max gross. I had kept her in ground effect until Vy. The exact control input sequence I used was as follows (I wrote everything down immediately post incident to make sure I remembered it all). Engine gets quiet, I start descending. Tower asks, "N..... is everything ok?" "I've lost my engine" I immediately realized I had to do something. There was maybe 2000ft of runway ahead of me of the 10,000ft runway that I had used. I knew I couldn't make the runway, but there was a field at the end. I pulled the throttle because I didn't want the engine to come back to life. I stood on the rudder, threw the gear and flaps down and loaded the wing. I pulled back; when I got below 100, I descended as aggressively as possible. The speed kept wanting to come back. Control input was full rudder, full flaps, gear down and back elevator. I look down while over the field and see my speed is still well above 80. Fuck it. I forced the mains into the grass. I thought it would help get rid of energy. I believe an unintended positive was the tall grass helped to spoil airflow over the wing. The next trick up my sleeve was to dig in a wingtip if I had to and ground loop the airplane. I remembered thinking, "shit; is this it?" realizing that I could be in the last seconds of my life. I see the end of the field and the neighborhood and trees approaching and applied the brakes. The plane came to a stop 30 yards short of the tree line. No bent metal. No injuries. Cause was FOD through the #4 cylinder of unknown origin. Mechanic who had just done the work recovered the airplane and refused to give me access to any of the parts that he removed before I came back the next morning.

Very well... Taken FROM A MOONEY (recently). Out the pilot's window at a couple of thousand feet. The Neches river ship channel, Southeast Texas, USA. Note the cloud 'shadow line', too cool.

It was a beautiful day on Badin Lake

Turning final at Kern Valley next to Lake Isabella a couple weeks ago. Also have video that I "think" I'm about done editing. It's a fun approach right along the hills on the west side of the valley.

Come on guys................this is one of the most popular threads. This drift isn't fair to @bonal How about a nice U.P. sunset to get this back on track? This is a view looking north west from just north of KIMT, my home airport, towards the Keweenaw Peninsula jutting out into Lake Superior. Tom

@Raptor05121 I will give you the shoulder harness/seat belts out of my F when I upgrade to the AMSAFE airbags. I plan on doing the upgrade this fall as part of my annual. $3000 is not even aviation expensive and if it is ever needed it will be priceless.

Alex, Ill show you a nice scar on my head at the Summit where it was stapled back together. Did I mention I was wearing a shoulder belt? Without it, I wont be here typing. Hopefully, you will realize the few $ spent on shoulder belts are a far better addition to your plane than some new headset or other gizmo. Personally, I wont fly in any aircraft that doesnt have them.

Had shoulder belts in my Cessna, but the instructor didn't use them, so why should I? I read an article by Rod Machado the night of October 11, 2003 and decided to start using them. Here is the next day. Have had the opportunity to tell Rod in person how his article likely saved my life as my entire physical damage from this was a light bruise from the shoulder strap.

If unemployment paid that well, I'd have quit my job long ago! Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

FRED, I may have missed something, but let me share something from my C experience... Dump ancient engine monitor for decades newer modern technology... The four selector switch is just a nightmare for pilot cog overload or a reason to ignore the data... They invented the graphic engine analyzer for a reason. It does all the switch turning, graphing, and delivers the results... They also come with things like FF, flight recorder, and OAT... They also have the ability to download data to somebody for help with an engine challenge... even a decade newer used device doesn't cost very much... even if you have to mount it in front of the copilot... Climbing out... you have a significant engine vibration... you look at the engine monitor and see one cylinder has gone cold... You are in a much better position than dialing a switch waiting a few seconds for a steady reading, dial again, wait again.... This is the time you are landing straight ahead, and deciding if you have enough power to get to a field, or return to the airport you are leaving... I got this stuck valve experience in the first 10 hours of mooney ownership.... no engine monitor.... had transition trainer on board... Best regards, -a-

That is not ALL bad. I love it in part because it is hard. It is challenging all consuming. My work is very cerebral and follows me wherever I go. I am a math professor - I work all the time in my head. I love that - and sometimes I hate that. I can't just sit in a couch and relax because I just keep working in my head. The only way I have found to NOT work is to do something else engaging. Flying is that. It is all consuming and challenging enough that it chases the other things from my head. And it is magic. What other word is there for it? Its magic. Flying in the sky at 250mph is just magic. And when I am done for the day I am just high from the joy of it. Heck, I flew yesterday and I am still basking in it today. You know what else - when I am not flying, I look up at the sky in a way different from how I used to. I always wanted to fly but I used to look up at the sky and wonder what it was like. Now I look up and think, MAYBE I will go fly today and I imagine all the details of what it would be like. So I fly often in my imagination too.

I think that once the economy improves, particularly real estate values, we will see some more vitality to GA. I do think the momentum is moving away from certified to experimental. Personally, I have been able to get back into serious flying and aircraft ownership due to a reduction in used airplane prices. I am now flying for about half the hourly cost of renting a slower airplane. Some pilots like to bellyache a lot; I'm not one of them.