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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/18/2021 in all areas

  1. Been almost a year that I joined this community - when starting to look for a plane. Here in Europe, the market is rather small. My journey made me visit at least 5 birds - and I'm greatful people here would always be providing helpful answers. I closed the deal last autumn. Thought it's time to introduce her. It's a 1978 J - with 1400h and in pretty basic condition. Happy to start transforming her into a hopefully safe and faithful IFR companion. Greets from Germany, Martin
    5 points
  2. In 98 I was flying back from Warsaw to Chicago on LOT. I had a portable GPS and asked the FA if she would ask the captain for the LAT LON of Chicago, so I could track the flight on my GPS. She said the Captain said I had to wait. About 15 minuets after departure, she came over to me and said the Captain was ready for me, and escorted me up to the flight deck. There I was in the jump seat of a 767-ER300 heading out to sea. The captain said he didn’t have the numbers I wanted. I asked for his Jepp binder and flipped to Chicago and wrote it down. He looked impressed. We talked for quite a while. He explained how everything worked in the cockpit. We were coming to a waypoint And he let me change the heading in the autopilot. The plane turned, and I got a thrill out of it. Anyway, we talked about my Mooney and all the places I had flown. He said there were less than 100 GA planes in all of Poland and most of those were for training. So I think it is cool that you are GA in Poland.
    5 points
  3. That likely was quite a few years back As in any country within the Eastern Bloc most non-essential activities were more or less state sanctioned and state controlled - including leisure time. There was a network of aeroclubs, usually associated with the military, and sponsored by the state - have your members participate in the Worker's Day parade, get a free Wilga every few years kind of thing. Then the 80s come around and it all comes tumbling down with the associated disappearance of any state support, etc, etc. Fast forward 20 years, and most of the clubs are getting by, but hardly any are making any improvements, because most of the members are still used to the "old ways" where the state or some state owned company will eventually sponsor whatever is needed. So when they hear "the club needs to cough up $1m for a runway improvement" the response is "uuuuh". So, our field is two parallel 1200m (~4000 ft) runways (powered + gliders), and things are slowly changing. We upgraded the gas station (adding Jet and UL this spring) because we proved it pays for itself. We have two relatively modern planes (Tecnam P2008JC - one bought new, one used), a ultralight plane (Aeroprakt A22 - bought new), and the usual C152 and a C172. The small new hangars were build with money paid up front by people who owned, or planned to own (like me) planes. Apart from my M20K and my hangar buddy's C172 the other hangars house several Pipistrel airplanes, some one-off ultralights, there are two C182s, an Extra 330, a Wilga and a couple of Zlins, and even a Boeing Stearman; there also is a Seneca based here, and a PC12NGX in a private hangar. So yes, things have changed. We're not unique, there is a lot of interest and activity in GA in Poland these days. Not far away there are smaller fields that cater to ultralight planes, which, as a rough approximation, are the European equivalent of homebuilts in the US. As anything aviation related, stuff is expensive. A liter US gallon (edited) of 100LL costs close to $9.64 and the current rate for half of a small hangar is $415 per month. Granted, this is close (30 minutes by car for me) to one of the larger Polish cities, Kraków, but given that our minimum wage is $750/month ($4.68/hr), it still is expensive. And yes, all major airports charge landing and handling fees, some even charge for a low-pass. Yes, inspired by @201er I want to attempt a series of flights that would include, within reason, all the Polish commuter airports before this COVID stuff blows over.
    4 points
  4. To all the fellow space dorks! this stuff hardly makes the news anymore. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/watch-online/ -Matt
    3 points
  5. Having lived in Little Rock, the Clintons are in general, persona non grata. They have a few swappies who fly their flag. But the reality is nobody would piss on them if they were on fire.
    3 points
  6. Looking up the tail number of Bob's Shrike reveals it was reclassified in the Experimental category. https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N500RA
    3 points
  7. Would love to meet you there, Parker! Be sure to swing by the Garmin booth and say hello if I don't make it to Hangar A!
    2 points
  8. Hangar D, booths D-090 & D-091!
    2 points
  9. Seamless? I though those baseball seams were part of the appeal!
    2 points
  10. Me, too, but the yoke clock is front and center and in my face. Plus it's never covered by sleeves or coats . . . .
    2 points
  11. Appears there was a warm front nearby the boot heal of Missouri. So, you likely crossed over from the warm sector to the cold sector along the route. Here's the freezing level chart showing a sharp gradient in central TN. Here's the RAOB for central Arkansas (black) and Nashville (magenta). Notice the temperature drop at 7K between the two.
    2 points
  12. Dork signing in here! This stuff certainly hits my news antenna...........incredibly exciting!!! Thanks for the post. Checking in with all my MS friends this AM [behind the beat left coaster] before I head to my favorite place...............my airport and my little beloved Mooney. Happy day to all and stay positive and stay happy..............there is always hope............make it so !!
    2 points
  13. I've been changing tanks every 1/2 hour for over 5000 hours of Mooney flying. Never seen any detrimental effects on the fuel selector. It gets kind of boring up there some times, I need something to keep me occupied.
    2 points
  14. I started growing a third testicle shortly after my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Do you think it's related?
    2 points
  15. Pfizer #1 in the arm this morning. Looking forward to #2 on the 12th of March. I'll still be wearing a mask as it's the nice thing to do for others even if I won't need it myself.
    2 points
  16. If an engine quits, the first thing you do is switch tanks. When I was on my ATP check ride in the gawd awful Seneca II, I was in the middle of a DME arc when the right engine quit. I immediately switched tanks and the engine came back to life. The examiner got a little pissed and said he wanted to see how I handled an engine failure. I said "I just showed you"
    2 points
  17. +1. My procedure as well. Never have the “did I switch” moment.
    2 points
  18. One positive that comes from living in a colder climate: lower risk of engine corrosion. Reduced oil mobility at cold temperatures means parts retain their film coatings longer. Cold temperatures also greatly reduce water vapor transport from oil to air inside the engine. They also greatly reduce ambient water vapor ingest due to diurnal temperature and air pressure changes. Combined, these factors all greatly reduce the risk of non-running engine corrosion during cold weather.
    2 points
  19. 2 points
  20. The original manufacturer is Garwin Carruth, who sold this branch of digital instrumentation in the 80s and still exists under the name Sigma tek. The garwin" gauge cluster " is no longer manufactured nowadays but the plug-in indicators in this cluster are still available. These are the cluster gauges reference 169 L of which here is the link. For volume gauges, they are adjustable according to the resistance of the sensors and the graduations are either interchangeable with your model or to be specified in your order of new gauges. http://www.sigmatek.com/cluster_gauges.html
    2 points
  21. What placard do you need? I stick my tanks before every flight, and now that I'm mkstly flying local instead of interstate, that may be 3 or 4 flights per fill up. I know how much I start with, which gives me a flight time; I know how long I fly, that gives me fuel used. The rest is 2nd grade math. (Then again, I'm an engineer and consider everything up through differential and integral calculus to be "easy math".) Seriously, if I have 22 gal in the left and 18 gal on the right, that's over 4 hours. Fly 1:15 and put her away. Next time, I have 10 and 18 because I didn't switch tanks, take off on the 18 gal tank and be sure to land in 2 hours, leaving me my Golden Hour in reserve. Works well for trips, too. Flew 1:15 home once. A few days lagee, hopped 20 minutes for fuel (none at base). Their pump wouldn't work for me, the local A&P or the FBO guy. A quick check of my fingers showed I had 4 hours' fuel, and myntrip was a little over 3 hours. My map and experience showed several choices tomget fuel in the last hour, so off we went. I made sure to change tanks and run one as close to empty as possible so that my remaining fuel would be in one tank--turned out to be about 5 minutes before starting descent, a good place to be with 90 minutes fuel in one tank. Descend power on, reduce throttle to slow down, reduce more for pattern entry, reduce more for descent, go to Idle on short final. The refill was 41 gallons, leaving 12 of my 15 gallons in the tank, or another 1:15 flight time, well past the Golden Hour in reserve. No checking logs or notepads from last week--dip the tanks and know how many gallons are in each tank, and running one dry is the best way to get max range. My engine may have coughed just before that switch, I kept saying "5 more minutes" on that trip . . . . Never guess or hope when it comes to fuel. KNOW how much fuel you have, and where it is, and switch tanks accordingly. If you get worried, stop and buy some. I've made flights where full tanks weren't possible without leaving someone home, and we made a fuel stop where I dipped the tanks and filled each one to 17 gallons for a projected flight time of ~90 minutes. Four hours fuel was plenty, there were clouds and rain about.
    2 points
  22. Hey A, I blame my nature for this Anyway, my initial thought was to poll the community to see if anyone already did something. You know, maybe one of you was going to say "oh yeah, I did that 5 years ago, it works marvelously"... Can't know that without asking Yeah, I have working fuel gauges, too Anyway, I'll go the placard route. I really don't feel like fueling before/after every flight... I don't like the idea of defueling into portable tanks, either. I think it's even illegal in Michigan due to fire hazard ... Yep, I'll print and laminate the new placard tomorrow ...
    2 points
  23. Before I bought one, I'd like to see how it works on an operational cylinder. At trade shows, they bring a dry jug. Same with this video. And, even with the cheaper 640 x 480 camera, the view looks great. But I notice that when I use it on my engine with cylinders that have an oil film and are highly reflective, the lighting is a problem and the light backscatter seems to cause focusing problems and glare issues. Skip
    2 points
  24. Do you have the windup clock in the yoke? Every time the moving (white) minute hand overlaps the nonmoving (red) minute hand, I switch tanks. Having 2-1/2 hours' endurance in each tank keeps it interesting . . . .
    2 points
  25. The mayor of Cincinnati had it correct, when questioned about the road, "Pete Rose Way" "Never name anything after anyone unless they are dead"
    2 points
  26. @MooneyPoor I'll gladly put this information on the MooneySpace Map I maintain... although it's a bit exclusive and not available to everyone.
    2 points
  27. My personal minimum is 2 weeks of sitting for the airplane. It’s real tough to fly it every 2 weeks in the winter for me too just because of the typical low/icy clouds we enjoy from December through March, but I can usually do it. I have had it sit for a month a couple times and two months one summer due to long lead time maintenance/parts. I didn’t see any ill effects in the oil analysis. I do not run it on the ground, I will only run it if I’m planning to fly it. Sightseeing and breakfast runs are still fun in the winter. I went to Bonners Ferry Idaho (which is basically southern Canada) last week (9 degrees F) just because it’s a beautiful flight and they have $3.54 100LL vs the $5.54 I have to pay at my airport. I use biweekly flights to keep the airplane full of cheap gas!
    2 points
  28. Installed on copilot side of plane...because it is an easier disassembly for me....no soot ever gets on the wing there
    2 points
  29. I am jealous of that well lit spacious hangar
    2 points
  30. Sounds like a great reason to go fly with an instructor to knock the rust off yourself as well as the camshaft.
    2 points
  31. My first Mooney was the first airplane I owned outright. It was purchased with a budget that I knew couldn't ruin me financially if it all went south. But I bought the best example I could find, thinking it'd be easier to get back out of, if I had to. It all worked very well to plan. Two years and 400 flight hours later, I put it up for sale to go find my forever Mooney. I'd been completely transparent about that Mooney here and when I posted it for sale. It sold quick right here on MooneySpace. I'd already been looking for some time, knew what I wanted, and was ready to move quick when I found it. Now five years and 700 hours later, it's still my forever Mooney.
    2 points
  32. My turn...All in all, 10 years' ownership and four phases of upgrades to get it where I want it. Lots of work, but grateful and fortunate to be able to own and fly this thing. The revised W&B gives me 1007 lbs. useful load. Original cockpit as purchased in 2010 First phase - factory reman IO550N8B engine and new F7498 Hartzell scimitar Second phase - Initial G500, L-3 ESI500, GTN750, L-3 Lynx9000+ install Third phase - Upgrade to G500TXi, add GTN650, PFD controller, upgrade EDM900 to EDM930 Fourth (and hopefully last for a looonnnnng time...) phase - GI275 and GFC500+YD install. More simplified and functional.
    2 points
  33. The filter replaces the pressure screen.
    1 point
  34. Now that’s funny! .....and common!
    1 point
  35. those helicopter blades rotate at 2400 rpm in that thin Martian atmospere....100 or so works fine on earth
    1 point
  36. When people asked my why I was studying engineering, my normal answer was "because I want to drive trains!" I can't help bu think that would be more exciting than helping to make little plastic parts for someone else to put together [what I've been doing since 1989]. As for the Mars shot, you have to pay attention to detail. In my jobs, thousandths of an inch matter [being off by 0.001" may be acceptable, but being off by 0.003" rarely is], sometimes ten-thousandths of an inch matter [one part I was responsible for had a feature that was 75μ tall [0.0075 mm = 0.00295"], so we really couldn't be off much at all. Attention to detail!
    1 point
  37. Good find. I knew he would have done something to make it legal. I wonder if it was a paper work maneuver to switch it to experimental or they actually did some kind of airframe modifications to strengthen it? E
    1 point
  38. Working from 25 year old memories. I was unaware of a 6 cyl change for the J. All my research back then was K related as that is what I owned at the time. Yes it does seem odd to me to put a more expensive shorter TBO engine into the J without a significant power change. I was involved with Rocket Engineering back about 1996. The slight cost difference between the Rocket and the 262 conversions made the Rocket conversion way more worthwhile. My 231 was converted to a Rocket. Their Missile conversion where a IO 550 was installed in a J was a significant upgrade.
    1 point
  39. I had owned my airplane for 21 years before I started my upgrade journey. I thought it was a one time effort. It was not. It started in 2013 and continues to this day. So far there have been 5 major iterations and numerous small ones, each with a good reason. There will probably be more as other new technology comes online. For those interested here is the order: 1. G500, GTN 750/650, GMA35. GTS 800, GDL 88, GTX 330ES, ESI 2000, GDL 69A, WX 500, MVP-50. 2. G500TXI, ESI 500, GTX 335, FS 210, Alpha Systems AOA. 3. GCU 485 Controller required a panel change. 4. GFC 500, G5. 5. GTN Xi 750/650. 6. Aera 760, Landing Height System.
    1 point
  40. I'm using a 5 Amp circuit breaker switch with a 1 amp inline fuse.
    1 point
  41. Let me know if you are missing anything else. I can see if I have any other misc documents you might be looking for since I have a 66E as well. If you need help reorganizing or creating a binder for your plane I'd be more than happy to explain the steps that I took. Shoot me a PM anytime! -Tahir
    1 point
  42. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - thank you for what you do. It takes a special person to do your job and I certainly wasn’t cut out to do it. PICU was without a doubt my least favorite month of residency. I tried to look into getting my son into a vaccine trial but wasn’t able to find something. I’ve never seen him that eager to get a shot. He has his 11 year old shots coming up and he asked me what they were for so I told him - meningitis, tetanus, HPV. He asked me what HPV was and I told him “it’s a virus that causes warts.” He asked where and I told him. He turned pale and screamed “there’s no way I’m letting someone give me a shot there!!!”
    1 point
  43. With standard tanks is is not that big of a deal with one full and one empty. Now if you had the extended range tanks it may cause more issues. I generally run the first tank for 1 hour that gives me right at 10 gallons switch to the second tank and run it as long as needed until it is empty or 30 minutes from my destination which ever comes first. Then switch back to the first tank and get ready to land.
    1 point
  44. While in there... Look to see what you have for an alternator... might be a good time to check the logs for it’s age/hours... Two birds, one maintenance stone... Plastic gears in a starter? Must be there for a reason... shear protection...(?) Nylon gears in Mags are known to strip teeth... but that is an O3 ozone issue, along with a lot of heat... Looking forward to the pirep on the new starter... Best regards, -a-
    1 point
  45. the 149l has extra mounting bosses that may need to be removed for fit. i had to do that on my F.
    1 point
  46. Ron, Make the decision for yourself.... https://bandc.com Is the preferred supplier for back-up alternators around here... Skytec has been used by dozens, hundreds(?) of MSers... B&C probably makes a really good starter... but, you may be leading the charge...(?) +1 for getting the seals correct... We have a seals guy that is familiar with this challenge... @ bee-gee PP thoughts only, stuff I read around here... Best regards, -a-
    1 point
  47. My Eagle is 3-4 knots faster after I installed new mounts and aligned the prop to cowling. It was sagging about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch. Masoud
    1 point
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