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How hard?

Don't get me wrong, it isn't altruism. We hope G100UL is very profitable for us in the long run. It's a business, and that what businesses (hope) to do. I don't make any claims that we're GA warrior and environmental saviors either. I think the "lead poising our babies" trope is WAY overplayed. It isn't a zero effect issue, either. The writing was on the wall 20 years ago regarding 100LL. We chose not to bury our heads in the sand when we realized it was a problem we could solve and people would pay us to solve. That's the free market. Your statements about the STC process illustrates you have NO IDEA what it took to get this done. You said paying back our investment isn't a concern . . . maybe not to you, but it's sure a concern for those of us hoping to keep the business running. 6 months ago, we weren't 100% sure we would EVER get the STCs. 2 months ago, we weren't 100% sure we were EVER going to get to sell STCs. Like Guy said, Swift may be right on our heels. Someone we don't even know about might be quietly going through the STC process, and almost done, right now. EAGLE/PAFI may negate the whole STC process and the FAA may declare all piston engines able to use approved unleaded fuels by some executive fiat. I might get hit by a school bus tomorrow. The future is always uncertain. By selling STCs now for about the cost of a full tank of fuel, we hope to be able to get fuel to market sooner. That's not a trade secret, that's just sensible business. Some people out there will appreciate our efforts enough to spend that money to help us accomplish that goal. They know it will benefit us both in the end. Here's the other side of the free market. You don't have to ever buy the STC or the fuel. You can probably get 100LL for years to come. You can (maybe) switch to an electric airplane or a diesel someday soon. You can make and certify your own fuel. You can give up flying and take the bus. You have options. Trying to paint the owners of GAMI, or plain ol' employees like me, as some kind of gougers, racketeers, or money grubbers makes it plain that you don't know us very well. Anyone who does know us on a personal level will tell you that isn't who we are. That's just the truth. John-Paul

I think you’re wrong, at least right now. I wouldn’t. If I had the option to buy a known product that has served aviation well for decades at a lower price than a competitive unproven product, I’d buy the known quantity every time. In fact, I’d probably be more likely to pay a premium for the known product. I’ve been around aviation my entire life and I’ve seen too many wonder products end up to be anything but. Lead isn’t great, but it works. We know it works. G100UL might be great. But we don’t really know if it works yet. i appreciate your hard labor and I think you deserve to be awarded, but I’ve been around the block enough times to be leery of being an early adopter of anything. i was actually going to buy the STC, but I couldn’t justify it right now. The pricing model doesn’t make sense. The people who will contribute the most to your long term profits, have to pay 3-4x the cost for privilege. And, if bought now, there’s no guarantee I won’t have to buy it again, at least once, but maybe multiple times, before I can even use it. I’m concerned that GAMI has chosen not to have their fuel certified (a la ASTM) at all. It begs 2 questions. #1- are they concerned it has issues that preclude certification? #2- did they choose not to certify it because, if certified, they would be unable to sell an STC? There might be, and probably is, a 3rd question/answer that would explain it however from the outside looking in, that’s what I see.

If the other parcel is say........ not on the water, kind of makes it hard to build a dock to receive boats. Would you expect the government to dredge a new canal so there is a competitor? No, one guy foresaw the need for a port and bought up all the land in some place and everyone thought it was madness, until the war came along and the port was needed. The owner saw the direction the government was going and bought the land. All the other people had a chance here. Shell, Phillips, Chevron, Swift they all participated in the PAFI 10 years ago and came up with a dry hole. GAMI wisely chose to chart a different course, one that seemed like madness at the time, but now they are the last man standing with a viable product. You talk about being "American"? That my friend is the very essence.

That doesn't remove alternatives, it prevents others from producing the same thing. But with only one approved unleaded fuel, banning 100LL would force everyone to either buy the one and only product or not fly.

JP, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm delighted to see you here. We like it when people in the aviation industry come by and contribute or answer questions. Not everyone is contentious. I read earlier that after a few Beech people, a couple of our members were next in line for the STCs. If the antagonistic comments get to be a hassle, there is an automated way to block people you no longer want to hear from. Thanks for being here.

Technically ASTM D910 requires lead.

The RG35AXC has 29Ah of capacity. The earthX is half that.

Exactly And while I am sure that George wants to make money, he is also, bottom line, a GA pilot. He has taken his skills and love of aviation to bring several products to market. Including G100UL.

One possibility is that the light appears to be emitted from something 36 feet wide instead of a point source. The subtended angle is huge compared to the apparently point source.

Fuel sales will certainly pay back the years of hard work . . . and then some. However, there are no fuel sales until there is fuel. The STC sales are PART OF what gives us the capital to build the fuel in sufficient volumes to roll it out to the parts of the country as quickly as possible. Can we do that without the STC sales? Sure, but it will take longer. There are people out there who want unleaded fuel now, not later. Plus, there's no question that being first market is important to any company with potential competition. I'm generally not in favor of banning anything. What California and/or the EPA does might help us in the long run, but with or without us, that is a foregone conclusion. At the typical speed of government, it might be another 10 years before all the lead is gone. I think people will still chose to buy an unleaded fuel, even at a slightly higher price, if given the option. Jpt

What a shit take. Plenty of people do for that exact reason. Doesn’t build that great of a community when knowledgeable people leave because of it.

The amount of entitlement in this thread is absolutely wild. You all realize how privileged we all are to even be able to do this let alone complain about a new fuel that doesn’t poison the people below us that help pay for the airports we commonly land at? We have a big enough issue with airports closing due to “noise” when those people bought a house next to an airport that has existed for half a century we don’t need leaded fuel to even be in the conversation anymore, it’s a joke. The fact that we are burning leaded fuel still in 2023 is frankly disgusting and negligent. It should have been banned 3 decades ago. If you don’t want to buy the STC, don’t buy it. This place is more toxic then video game lobbies at times it’s ridiculous.

I am NOT against G100UL as an ALTERNATIVE. My beef is that now that there IS an option, the government WILL ban 100LL. Why is that so hard to follow and accept as a cogent argument? If 100LL continues to remain available along side G100UL, I wish GAMI the best with COMPETITION in the market. If they want market share they MUST be price competitive. And, no I'm not trying to 'cheap' out by not purchasing an STC. Despite @John-Paul's protestations otherwise, they can EASILY pay back their investment with the fuel sales: Avgas (nearly ALL 100LL) is somewhere around 150 MILLION gallons per year. If the EPA bans 100LL, and the ONLY available option is GAMI G100UL, that's pretty clearly 150 MILLION gallons for them ALONE! How does ten cents a gallon sound? Sounds like $15 million a year to me. How is that NOT going to pay back quickly? To have invested more than a decade in development and suddenly they want their payback NOW?? I wonder if @EricJ is onto something with uncertainty as to if the fuel is going to be available any time soon. Then their present quest for $400 STCs makes sense. The doomsday scenario would be the EPA banning 100LL THINKING GAMI is able to deliver G100UL....and they CAN'T! YIKES!!

Which highlights the risk of pre-paying for one particular STC with no guarantees it'll even be distributed in an area that you fly to and no timeline for when it might be distributed anywhere. I wish them the best, and I've been looking forward to opportunities to use their product economically, but those do not even appear to be positively identified on the horizon just yet.

They don't have a monopoly. There is Swift coming along fast and big oil has limitless resources to crush them. They are still in a high risk environment.

I had an F. Loved it. Back and forth, Arkansas to Vegas. Wonderful trips. But if you are shopping for an F, then you have an obligation to look at J's since J prices define F prices. A F will bring X% of what a J will. If you end up with an F everything will be fine. If it was me, I would shop financing. I might find some longer term financing and get a J for the same payment as I was planning to pay for an F. Welcome to life as a Mooniac.

LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

ASTM has more than one certification.

https://www.avidyne.com/manual-guides/

It’s not whether the powder coating is stronger, it’s whether it stretches. If it does it will hide the cracks.

I love to see young people get into aviation, but before you jump in, I would encourage you to gather information and get a picture of your total cost of ownership. Purchase price can end up being irrelevant.

That's a reasonable post I can agree with. Pragmatically, it hinges on what "a slightly higher price" ends up being. I'm counting on the "speed" of government to provide that decade buffer. I'm pretty confident if it pans out in that fashion, that other options will be available and competition will provide a fair price.

That end looks like AN800. The hole in the flat is to release line pressure before the nut at completely removed, so it doesn’t fly off and hurt you. I think the fittings with the C logo are Parker. They are Swagelok knockoffs.

I really don't get the ones that are complaining about GAMI buisness model of selling the STC. Hey, if you don't want to use G100UL don't pay for the STC, that's it. All the people complaining sounds more like they are desperate to get G100UL but they don't want to pay for it, quite childish. GAMI initiative of investing to develop this is quite risky, a lot of things can go wrong. All the aiports I know (not many) have the possibility to handle one type of AvGas, getting them to switch to G100UL when not everyone is getting the STC is losing clients. Switching a whole infrastructure that has been running with one type of fuel to another type of fuel that, although technically possible, from a legal point of view cannot be used in any aircraft is paramount. If there is any one to blame here is the FAA, who should have approved G100UL without the need of a STC, I don't know how that can be handled from a legal stand point (placards, different specific weight) but they should have come up with a solution that do not require a STC. Then any aircraft that previously used 100LL could now use G100UL, without any bureaucratics. And then airports/FBO could have an easy way to go to G100UL, for sure starting in those areas where 100LL is already banned.

Thank you for the link. That seemed to be a coherent representation of the facts.

My advice is: Find a plane which has the equipment you want and need. Don’t by too cheap or even expensive with old equipment. Narco radios are nice but they do not fly GPS approaches. I exchanged mine for Garmin radios 10 years ago. In my opinion, a good Waas GPS, an Aspen PFD or some other glass panel with a good autopilot shall be the basic equipment today. A good trransponder with ADSB in and out is also important. Problem with the avionics is that it is very expensive to install. Especially with the old panels, most of the time you also have to rebuild the whole panel. So updating outdated avionics is always a very expensive task. The final costs and downtime are not really predictable. I would not care so much about the interior. This is very psersonal and can be upgraded easily. You can even do some of the work yourself. This is from my own experience. I bought a M20F for a good price with outdated avionics, panel, interior. If I add up my investments for speed mods, avionics …. I could have easily bought a very well equipped J model and left additional money in the bank. My F flyes wonderfully and is not slower than most of the Js, but the upgrades took not only money, there was also downtime needed.

I just got this figured out with Garmin. They switched to a new warranty system a while back and my email address didn’t get transferred. I did verify that all my warranty information is entered. So, it is likely that your email address got dropped also. You might try contacting aviation.registration@garmin.com. One thing I have learned is that a lot of Garmin’s internal systems are not highly automated and humans make mistakes from time to time. Skip

Thanks! I'm just here to help and try to answer questions. Without knowing the backstory or the people involved, people sometimes get the wrong ideas or jump to the wrong conclusions. It happens in all walks of life. I'm guilty of it myself from time to time. John-Paul

FIFY. 100LL was always going to get banned. It was just a matter of when.

That's a weird way to look at it. We're trying to incentivize early adoption of the STCs to fund a more rapid deveployment of the fuel. Remember, this isn't a government program, where we just print whatever money we need. We're a small aviation R&D company, and those efforts are funded by the sale of our products and services. When you buy a set of GAMIjectors, tip tanks, G100UL STCs, etc, a generous portion of that money goes to developing some next GA improvement. John-Paul

Okay all purchase orders with Whelen have been correct to account for 28V and 14V versions. Like 98% of the lamps are going to be 28V. If you have a 28V electrical system you need the 28V lamp (regardless of the resistor) and if you have a 14V version you need the 14V lamp. I intend to stock these when they come out but you can preorder them at the links below. Lights are shipped in the order they are received and I will start working on collecting the remaining balance due when I have an absolute clear delivery date from Whelen, which right now is mid February. Mooney LED Recognition Light Pre-order Deposit (10%) <-- Make sure you select the correct voltage in the drop down menu when you click on this.

There is an alternative! You could develop and certify your own fuel. It only took us 12 years and cost many, many millions of dollars of non-taxpayer money. Hopefully, the sales of the STC will fund the deployment of the fuel to places that are (wrongly or rightly, you decide) banning or threatening to ban the current fuel. I'm guessing a ~$500 STC will be much cheaper and easier for you. John-Paul

Here’s some advice - that is not a 90k airplane. not by a long shot.

Spot on! That's why I never miss an opportunity to point out to people that my plane cost me less than their humongous SUV, which often carries 1 person or is sitting on a parking lot, or their manly truck, which rides with no load, not to mention all the precious land wasted for temples which don't pay any taxes and produce nothing, whereas imagine how many mcmansions you can fit there... It usually doesn't accomplish anything but if they ruin my day, I should at least share the joy...

If you don’t have one… Mooney also supplies the manuals… Nice to see the factory still in business… Best regards, -a-

Mathew, Find Jimmy… aka jgarrison He writes a sorta blue book for Mooneys… He is the most knowledgable person in the world of pre-flown Mooney sales… Another resource is the e-mag MooneyFlyer… they offer a pricing strategy that may have aged a bit… Inflation is going to make accurate pricing of pre-flown planes extra challenging… Best regards, -a-

I keep mine LOP down final too as 90% of my approaches are to a landing. If you do this you must train yourself on a go-around to always start from the right and work your way left pushing in knobs. I. E. Mixture knob full forward full rich first check prop knob full forward then push throttle knob forward so that you are not applying full power with a leaned mixture.

Hi Chuck, I replied to your message. I have sets of them available. Thanks, David

I wonder what the logbook entry for this maintenance is going to look like?

Right. You guys chose a connector that had tons of problems in the field, as evidenced by the fact you had to employ someone full time just to answer questions about them. Then you staked out a position for a long time that issues with the connectors were "likely" due to improper installation, citing a few anecdotes as evidence. Look, I get it. Lots of people crimp stuff with a four dollar crimp tool from Autozone, don't ensure the wire shows through the witness hole before ham-fisting it shut, bend the connector while crimping, etc. etc. etc. There are lots of failure modes. So maybe don't choose those connectors in the first place for a product that requires widespread field installation? I'm an engineer too. When I choose components for my company's products, one of the criteria is reasonable performance in the field across a broad variety of skill sets, without a support engineer standing next to the installer and holding their hand. Why EI didn't just tell me at the time that there were lots of problems with spade connectors - maybe installer induced - and that maybe I should consider soldering them or whatever, is lost to history. Instead, I was specifically told at the time there were "no widespread installation problems". Now I know that's not true, and that's why I'm being so grumpy about it. You're admitting right now that wasn't the case. There's a good reason lots of companies - including now you - avoid spade connectors in difficult environments. You guys were just late to the party in figuring that out, but that's not an unforgivable sin. I'm not complaining about the engineering history, I'm complaining about transparency and customer support. I do appreciate the reply, and I understand you're just trying to do right by your company. I like EI, and want them to succeed. I don't want you to get run off of Mooneyspace or other public forums. What I'm trying to communicate to you as a fan of the company is, EI has an established history of connector problems. Claiming that's not true, and/or blaming the problem on your customers, is not a winning strategy. Were I running the EI PR department, the story would go like this: "We originally chose spade connectors based on widespread industry use, but it turns out those were not a good solution for our particular application, due to a combination of installation issues and the environment in which they operate. While we wish we'd been able to foresee that problem, we acknowledged the issue, and designed a new connector to resolve it. We encourage our customers who hear about connector problems to understand this history, and the steps we've taken to fix it." Instead, we get, "Yeah, it was all the installers' fault, and we were forced to design around their incompetence". Again, not a winning strategy. Even if that's what you really believe. Even if it is, in fact, somewhat or even largely true. The main thing I'll say in closing is, we haven't had a lick of connector trouble since moving to the new style connector; and because of that, I'm still happy to recommend EI products to friends and colleagues.

I wasn't planning on selling but if you must have it, I'll accept offers starting a a million

Why would you lean for takeoff or pattern work with a turbocharged engine at 4600ft? Are you not using the same MP settings that you would use at sea level?

Same- 12-year old's sports physical, doc reports clean bill of health. Paperwork says, "possible covid". Not a doc, not an anti-vaxer but my common sense says there is some F...ery afoot.

Politicizing what should have been medical decisions broke our health care system, just as politicizing combat efforts overseas broke our military system just a few years after winning the second (and hopefully LAST!) World War . . . . Because no career politician ever met a human of equal or greater intelligence, knowledge or experience. Shakespeare's solution to lawyers should be enforced on politicians, too, along with strict, short term limits,

Turbo planes require a little more attention to the engine monitor. However, it sounds like your current plane needs a modern engine analyzer. The Ovation engine is awesome. Flies LOP and ROP, and is pretty darn simple to set for power settings. I recommend learning in the plane you plan to use for your mission, whatever that is. If you are in the market, look at what you have, how much to upgrade the plane to what you'd like, then look at what you're willing to purchase for an Ovation. All Mooney models are stable IFR platforms. Memorize and fly your pitch and power settings for climbout, enroute, descent, holding, precision and non-precision. That's the best thing you can do to build some thinking space for the procedures. Too many pilots guesstimate their pitch and power settings, which breaks down their instrument crosscheck. Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

I thought that was a great idea. But, most CO monitors need replacing after a few years. I did some initial reading, and never found an answer to this. How will you replace the monitor over time? Can you? I sure hope so!

Mike, you are so right about TIT. I was editing my my response to correct that oversight while you were writing your reply. But absolutely TIT plays a very important role by increasing the wear rate as the TIT climbs to higher temps. The turbo charger is already glowing with cherry red color at 1550F yet TIT limitations are another 100-200F higher than that. Most of the earlier turbos have a TIT limitation of 1650F while some of more modern designs, theoretically with better metallurgy, have pushed that up to 1750F. Yet even with those, we recommend not exceeding 1600F to improve turbo and other exhaust component longevity. I should back up a bit though begin with the different controllers used to regulate the upper deck pressure (UDP) since different controllers influence how hard the turbo is working and then go into more detail about what wears out in the turbo and what causes it. Some of the controllers strive to maintain a constant UDP a few inches above redline MAP regardless of how much MAP you're maintaining. This is one fundamental reason why MAP alone doesn't influence wear. An example of this is the Absolute Pressure Controller (APC). Imagine in this case, flying with lower MAP isn't helping reduce the turbo output since it trying to maintain a constant set point UDP. In fact as the pilot reduces power, the controller will increase oil pressure to close the wastegate to force more exhaust through the turbo to maintain UDP at the desired constant. A better controller used by most pressurized twins, and my Mooney, is the the Variable Absolute Pressure Controller (VAPC). The variable part of the controller is that it no longer strives to maintains as constant UDP but variable one limited too a couple inches over the required MAP setting. At full WOT it operates just like a APC, but below that its variable to be just above the required MAP. As such its not working nearly as hard as the APC type. Moving onto wear points. We find the turbo fails or exceeds limits in two principal areas, i) the garlock oil shaft seals on the shaft connecting the turbine to the compressor and the i) the compressor blades. The spinning turbo shaft is constantly cooled with oil pressure fed from an engine galley and then scavenged back into the engine case with a separate oil scavenger pump. The turbo shaft doesn't have anything like real bearings but only a metal shaft rubbing against a metal housing except the shaft and housing is pressurized with oil held in with a garlock seal which is also only metal. The shaft is spinning at very high rpms in excess of 50,000 rpm with only a film of oil to protect it. When the garlock seals begin to wear excessively they leak oil that is either pumped overboard out the exhaust or even worse into the induction stream out the compressor side; depending on what part of the shaft the seal is failing. Also as the seal and/or the shaft wears, the shaft develops too much free play which leads to blades touching the outer housing leading to accelerated blade wear and sometimes blade failure. The blade wear is the other common cause of turbo replacement. Blade wear due to excessive shaft free play is only one mode. Blade wear also stems from blade stretch which is directly related to blade temperature and the rotational speed of the blades which can well above 50K rpm. When rotating at very high rpm's at high altitudes and operating at very high temperatures blade stretch wears the thin curved compressor blades at a higher rate. The garlock seal is also under greater stress as shaft RPM increases, and temperature increases. In fact as the turbo ages, it suffers from some degree of internal coking from burnt oil that reduces the effectiveness of lubrication to prevent wear and hot spots. This is why its recommended to flush the turbo every few hundred hours to reduce coking before it gets bad enough to cause premature failure. Other indirect signs of the turbo working much harder at altitude is the significantly increased CDT or Compressor Discharge Temperature. CDT redline is a limitation on installations without a factory intercooler since too high of an induction air temperature significantly reduces detonation margin of the mixture. Down at low altitudes the CDT is never a concern but as we climb higher and higher the CDT goes up as the compressor has to breathe more air or spin faster to get to the desired MAP. Interestingly, another indirect sign is oil consumption. When the garlock seal is first beginning to leak it will first appear to the pilot as very sporadic changes in oil consumption. One flight it'll appear to burn a quart or more of oil over a relatively short flight, such as 1-2 hrs. Then no oil consumption at all for several flights. And then excessive oil consumption returns on another flight, frustrating the pilot. What's happening is that the garlock seal is wearing out but at lower altitudes, say 6-10K, the turbo is hardly spinning. But take the plane up to the upper teens or flight levels and now the turbo is spinning much faster since its compressing air nearly only half as dense and with its great increased rpm its pumping a lot more oil out the shaft. There are other turbo failures not really related to how hard the the turbo is working or how hard the pilot may be pushing it which I didn't go into, such as blade erosion. The quickest way I know of on how to ruin a perfectly good turbo is to run it up on the ground with alternate air door open (which can pop open on its own; especially if de-cowled for maintenance) or even worse de-cowled with no air filter on it and it then sucks in some light FOD ruining the compressor blades - ouch! sorry, didn't mean to write such a lengthy reply but its a great question!

I try to avoid having to bleed the system. At each annual, I drain about an ounce of the old brake fluid from each brake and refill the reservoir. Maybe not as good as a complete flush and refill, but a lot simpler.