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My wife started pushing last night local 21:15 roughly. I asked her to hold off for a few hours until it rolled over to Pi day. She didn't play along. But I've got a new copilot! Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

Happy pi day! here is to my irrational piplane!

I couldn't agree more with @Marauder assessment above. The pilots multiple attempts at read backs from the beginning indicate he was stressed and over worked. Although one can't rule out an equipment problem, most would say so on a non-busy frequency when being told to correct course or heading. The sad truth is tackling an IMC approach in challenging conditions, including turbulence, is easily beyond the capability of pilot's that aren't proficient - without any equipment failures. Instrument flying skills are the fastest to perish. Sometimes the preliminary will tell us if an equipment failure is even a consideration or not but otherwise its going to be over a year before the final report is out. Not that we'll know for along time about what happened here, but my take away in these accidents is that one can never be too proficient flying in weather. Two people lost - So very sad!

I hate speculating and won’t here. But I do take exception to someone inferring that an Aspen or any other manufacturer product was involved. Way too early for that. I will say this about single pilot IFR in IMC. It’s the real deal. I have flown a ton of safety pilot flights and I can’t tell you the number of times I have seen pilots get significantly off course or off altitude on an approach with EVERYTHING working in the plane. And for some pilots it doesn’t take much of a distraction or a lack of attention for things to fall apart quickly. It has happened to all of us at one time or another. We’ve been the lucky ones to catch it before it evolves into something bad. Hopefully the NTSB will determine the cause and we learn from it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I read that the FAA is waiving slot use requirements because airlines are cancelling large numbers of flights. With airline traffic down, I am wondering if this creates unusual fly-in opportunities. For instance, open landing slots at big airports (e.g. ATL). Any thoughts? Am I nuts? Maybe we could have a Mooney fly-in at a major? Then not shake hands.

Yep, both DAL (Love) and HOU (Hobby) provide fee free opportunities to be in the pattern with the big boys. I was once departing DAL in some very sketchy IFR weather. It was pouring down rain so hard that at taxi speed, the prop couldn't keep the windshield clear. There was a large cell just off the end of 13. I'm lined up behind an SWA 737. I call tower and tell them we're ready to go in sequence behind the 737. The 737 can't take off because of the massive cell just off the end of the runway. So the tower asks if I can make a mid-field turn south. I say I can. The next question is if I can get past the SWA jet in front of me. Again, affirmative. We're cleared on to the runway. I squeeze past the 737 with my wing under his. The FO is looking down at us with a look that says, "We're not taking off, what the hell do you guys think you're doing??" Cleared for take off with an immediate right turn to 190, we take off, make the quick turn, and climb out into clear skies just west of the line of thunderstorms.

I wouldn’t say the Bonanza is slow but I know the mirrors won’t work on my Mooney because of Doppler shift of flying at Mooney speeds. But the Bonanza doesn’t have the same physical gear position indicator we have with the floor board indicator. We don’t need mirrors to see what our floor board indicator already shows. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh and you ask have I landed at KATL, yes even once in my PA-18 which was a hoot.

He would have recovered quickly, I can return to normal readings in seconds when I go back on O2. Unless it was a CO problem, that can take a week for even a moderate exposure.

Maybe for you guys that get paid to do it for a living, sure. But for someone like me, I might pay the fees once just to say that I did that.

Maybe a few touch and goes though!

I have discovered now is the time to go to the hangar and get all those pesky jobs done on the Mooney. In the hangar you are pretty much in isolation and can get a lot of work done on your airplane since everyone is into "social distancing".. I highly recommend you take the opportunity to "self quarantine" yourself to your hangar. After this is over our airplanes will be awesome!

why Mooneys are faster than Bonanzas:

chose to go with black and grey paint . M20C. Almost done.

The M20J Service Manual Vols 1 and 2 can be downloaded from the links below. The schematics are in Vol. 2. I don't have any trouble reading the schematics on a decently-sized desktop computer screen. http://mooney.free.fr/Manuels M20J/M20J/Mooney Service Manuel M20J Vol. 1 of 2.pdf http://mooney.free.fr/Manuels M20J/M20J/Mooney Service Manuel M20J Vol. 2 of 2.pdf

Went to Sky Harbor (PHX) once, which is very busy with the airlines and gets almost no GA traffic. It was actually pretty fun.

OK, let's get this cleared up. First you have to differentiate between air carrier, which means you charge for your services and you are operating under either Part 121 or Part 135. IF you operate under Part 121 or Part 135 you are required to charge Federal ADAP EXCISE tax to fund the ADAP trust fund which funds infrastructure, parts of ATC and the FAA. However the fuel you purchase is EXEMPT from ADAP EXCISE taxes. Airlines are prohibited from showing you the EXCISE tax on your ticket, they can just include it in the ticket price. If you want to know however, there are ways to discover it, such as purchasing your ticket with loyalty miles, then you will pay the tax directly at the end of the transaction. IF you operate part 91, the Federal ADAP tax is INCLUDED in the price of each gallon of fuel you purchase. Because you are an EQUAL contributor to the system, you are entitled to be an "equal user". Meaning if you ask to land at KATL or KLAX you can use that facility. Now there are capacity controlled facilities, such as KLGA and KDCA where you need a slot, but there are a certain amount of GA slots allocated and yes you can get one. Equally so it is agreed the airport itself will not charge you a landing fee. However the FBO may charge you ramp fees, and other "junk fees". They can also jack their fuel price. The airport authority generally takes a cut of that action usually on the basis of their "triple net lease" with the FBO. The 1.51/thousand pounds gross landing weight fee at KATL only applies to air carrier aircraft. It does not apply to Part 91 aircraft. Last I checked the FBO fee at Signature at KATL was about 50 dollars for a GA airplane. If you want to have fun, I used to operate 4 airplanes that were sometimes Part 91 and sometimes Part 135. Keep track of that paperwork! Now you might want to ask how much money big airports take in. First of all their triple net leases charge a gross receipts levy about 50% higher than most malls. Which is why a bottle of water costs 2 bucks. Average concession fee (on top of gross receipts) is about 17-20%. Add in "visitor taxes" and your 200 dollar rent a car becomes 300 very quickly. To put this in perspective, the second highest grossing governmental entity in the state of CA behind the cities of 500,000 or more population is. the Los Angeles Department of Airports. The amount of money these large airports bring in is mind boggling and how little we get out them is a scandal.

So, everybody at work got the flu from hell about 6 weeks ago, including me and the wife. We have people who travel to China. I wonder if it was COVID-19 and we just didn't know it?

A week ago I was running the LA Marathon, today I am sequestered studying for my upcoming commercial check ride. We are so lucky to fly the best airplanes in the world.

There is a lady in my Avidyne. She says “500 feet” on every landing. I look at the gear handle and say “thank you”

Your Bo needs multiple lights and mirrors, because it is quite capable of lowering one or two wheels insfeqd of all three. Something has to be seriously wrong and either bent or broken for a Mooney to not drop all three wheels. That's what the mechanical indicator on the floor is for--if it moved, all three wheels are down.

Pi Day went well. Finished with a DiGiorno Stuffed Crust pizza pie! Mmmm, pizza!! Tasty stuffed crust, too And I had a slice of coconut pie at lunch . . . .

I'm already planning for Tau day on 6/28.

I don't get the bottled water thing. Have we had *any* indication that water will stop coming out of the pipes?

For good reasons he was called “Lucky Lindy.”

I haven’t listened to the recording but i did read the transcript. I don’t take it as a useless comment. I think the controller was simply trying to get the pilot to stabilize the aircraft and disregard all previous instructions. The reality is this airplane didn’t hit anything in flight. All indications point to a loss of control. If the pilot was seriously disoriented, giving him turn, heading and climb instructions were not going to help the situation. I think this was the controller’s best attempt to try to remove as much workload as possible from a guy in the struggle of his life. I imagine that both individuals felt utterly helpless. One has to live with the aftermath the other does not.

Say what

I'm using LED Landing and Taxi lights I got from @LANCECASPER. I'll try to get some video/pictures of them once the sun goes down. They are plenty bright!

This is a sad thing to wake up to. I have reached out to Michael Rogers to supply surviving spouse info and possibly be the point person for the Summit when the time is appropriate so that the Mooney Summit can engage the Bill Gilliland foundation, unfortunately once again.

Actually you can self quarantine yourself at 10,000 ft in a little Mooney since there in the sky at least 2 miles away from the nearest human at 200kts seems like a pretty responsible interpretation of the phrase good social distancing to me.

Well, I’m down at x51. Don’t be a stranger.

If the facts I heard are right, S Korea has 1/6 of our population and has tested 25x the people we have. I’ve not heard anyone authoritative on what percentage of the population already had the virus and didn’t know it. Is the “flattening the curve” strategy needed if some portion of the curve is behind us?

Update - there’s a hangar available at x51 homestead for a bargain price of 700/month

I do not agree. VNY / BUR is a very busy airspace. Moreover, VNY miss approach intercepts BUR RWY8 localizer. The following screenshot is within the time controller repeatedly issuing the miss approach instructions. You can see 777WP flying toward a C750 just took off from BUR. I think that was the reason why when the pilot did not readback and the controller had to repeat. But once the controller realized 777WP was about to be out of control, he immediately went into helping mode to help the pilot. But it was too late. Added: Here is another screenshot on 14:47 moment before he crashed. You can see BUR was extremely busy. A Global Express GLEX just departed while SWA about to land. A Skywest was lineup and wait for taking off at BUR. (The yellow plane on the left side was 777WP). Added: Here is the link to playback the last a couple minutes of the flight. https://www.flightradar24.com/2020-03-13/21:42/12x/N777WP/242cb4f9

KATL for example is not Verboten. In fact they will handle you quite nicely. I have been on both sides of the coin there. The problem is. ramp fees and 8 dollar fuel.

I remember the cube! We all thought it was treat day and were happy to see the cube vs the syringe.

All I know is that yesterday on my way out I got cleared through the Miami Bravo when requesting flight following. I’ve never been cleared through the Miami Bravo before. The scariest part is I didn’t ask for it, didn’t need it. and my direct route took me 5 miles to the west of it!

time to go fly to Lu Lu's and KHKA

Posted on the Facebook CFI group:

Congratulations NJMac family.............

Go irrational for what’s left of pi day! -a-

I'm guessing a little of both lol

Tht could be Alabama or Georgia when a 1/2" of snow is forecast. No milk, bread or diapers . . . .

No. But as @jetdriven noted, the tach is required equipment under FAR. So, technically the aircraft is unairworthy without it But, if the FAA determines (this is where the FSDO has latitude) that the flight can safely be conducted to a place where repairs can be made, it can issue a special flight permit (aka ferry permit). https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certification/sp_awcert/sp_flt_permit/

Simply, changing the direction away from another plane most effectively in close is done with yaw, not bank. It’s immediate and also allows you to keep sight of what you’re trying to avoid instead of going “belly up” (and therefore blind) to it. We are taught from student days that planes turn by banking, but this is least effective and responsive when in close, as well as dangerous. So stepping on the rudder away from the threat is best—in our light GA planes. Bunch of published materials on mooneycaravan.com in the “training” section, look at “blind” or emergency procedures. Or go for a ride with a pair of qualified form pilots, it can be a lot of fun for those with whom it resonates, and you really get to know how to fly your airplane.

I'd be interested to know the results. My watch is the cellular/SIM equipped version - not sure that has anything to do with it, but to keep it "scientific" :-)

It's really hard to know what the precise interplay was here between pilot disorientation and possible instrument failure(s). It seems like the controllers recognized the seriousness, and I'm not sure what more they could have done. Leveling the wings and arresting the descent seems like the #1 priority when this deep in trouble, and that's what they kept asking him to do.

Efficient means it’s a national (regional it seems) healthcare system with single payor that spends slightly less than median GDP among developed nations. WHO ranks it #2 health system in the world. Better outcomes than we have. They should have been able to deal with this had not the hospitals become overwhelmed. Just like us. Here’s an actual verified medical professional (Intensivist) In Seattle.

Hank I couldn't disagree with you more. This thing is for real. This is a massive public emergency. As surely as when a hurricane is bearing down on a beach town and it is a good idea to board up your house and perhaps evacuate, this is a major pandemic bearing down on us. There are always those people who stay in their house on the beach with a category 5 hurricane bearing down. I will go with Angel Merckel's report of what her public health epidemiology advisors are telling her. She reported that she expects 60-70% of German's to be infected. She is a PhD biochemist and she knows how to use scientific information, and how to defer to the specialists in a given topic and how to interpret their advice. I found it very gratifying our resident meteorologist - a man who understands forecasting weather and the importance of the public reacting to dire forecasts when they come - understands how to trust public officials from a different scientific field. And Scott cancelled his trip to Sun n Fun. Reports from Italy are an example of how bad this situation can get if not managed well. Even if managed well it will be very very impactful. It is extraordinarily important to do what is possible to slow this down since it will potentially make the difference of 10's or 100's of millions of people dead across the world. Hank if you would define the phrase "real information" in a manner that is informative that would be great. Meanwhile, first hand reports from doctors in Italy, a report from people in Milan who's sister died a few days ago in her appartment with her and the morgue is too busy to come get her and it was 36 hours by the time of that report, and generally from public health official warnings are real information as far as I'm concerned, are information enough for me. I don't agree with the anti-information anti-science anti-media everything is a hoax crowd. I don't need to wait directly to see my neighbors or family in dire straights to start to react. I'm not sure if this qualifies as "real information" but this report from 2007 about 1918 suggests that 1% is a critical threshold to be avoided if possible. https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582

I don’t think you’ll get any disagreement that vents must be kept clear.