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Mooney over Mars? Taken two weeks ago between Cortez, Colorado, and Moab, Utah, at 12,500 ft on a flight from Los Alamos (LAM) to South Valley Regional (U42) just south of SLC. Looking west, showing where the Colorado River has dissected the Colorado Plateau. If you enlarge it, the blue patch in at the right-edge of the photo is the potash mine on the bank of the Colorado River just west of Moab. I flew a total of 25 hours on this trip!

I’m going to take a different view point - I drove an hour each way and lived with it. My situation was different. I recovered from heart failure and had to go through the SI process. Once I got my 3rd Class medical, I couldn’t wait to fly solo again. I pretty much fly every week as I know how quickly this privilege can disappear. I now have about a 40 minute drive each way and still find a way to fly weekly. I do have a nice hanger and even go down sometimes just to clean and look over things. VFR or IFR doesn’t matter, I fly and I train often too with a CFII/Safety Pilot. Always something to work on. I do WINGS, Pilot Workshop etc. every month. I train with the Garmin PC stimulator too. I want to fly that much… no more waiting till later, I have a plane and I know how to use it- mostly ;o) -Don

In addition to what others said about reducing the G in the pullup after rolling level, there are two other reasons to push forward and reduce the G load prior to rolling level. First, the airplane (any airplane?) rolls much better with less G load, second, while not published, the rolling G structural limit is generally much less than the published “straight pull” limit. Even in something tame like a Citabria or C-152, you can put a couple Gs on it and see the reduced roll capability. Most aerobatic aircraft have a rolling G limit too. None of this means you need to completely unload and throw everything off the floor, but a quick unload/power reduction, roll level, then feed the g back in gently to get the nose back up works best.

Back in 2000 Mooney did a run of twelve Ovation2 Platinum Edition airplanes. In addition to having a Platinum Continental Engine (pistons & connecting rods balanced within 2 grams, precision balanced crankshaft, fine wire plugs, intake ports volume and flow matched), they also took extra care to fill in and smooth the wing and used a special primer before painting to optimize the airflow. They even used special paint if I remember correctly. If Mooney ever did start up again, attention to detail like this would attract certain buyers. The Platinum engine continued to be an option on Ovations, and later Acclaims. I have a Platinum Continental in my airplane and without a doubt it is the smoothest piston engine I've ever flown behind.

In my opinion no well designed aircraft can fill all of the seats and fill the tanks. If it could then you are giving up a whole lot of range for the majority of the time when there are empty seats. Another opinion, just about all four seat aircraft are good traveling machines for a couple, want to travel with four adults? Buy a six seater.

Ugh! The pressure! :-)

I've seen many aviation operations, in particular airlines chew up managers who failed to grasp the necessity for implicit trust which is gained only by ethical conduct. They think managing is an art transferable to any industry. Which brings me to the famous Captain Robert Buck answer from a reporter who asked, "Captain Buck what is the greatest threat to aviation safety". Captain Buck replied, "The Harvard MBA".

I agree. Based on vignettes, and observations of how corporate culture has evolved elsewhere, it sounds like there also was a disconnected managerial class with some cult-like thinking. E.g. the kind of people who tell each other how smart they are and pay each other bonuses*, while ignoring the engineers. And it sounds like they were downright harassing the objecting engineering voices. Who'd have thunk Boeing would ever have such a tarnished reputation. * the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone

@Sabremech needs to get his plane in the air to settle this…

Have you flown it on one mag at a time and see what happens? People seem loathe to do that, but that is why we have dual ignition, so you can eventually fly on one. Fly on each one for a few minutes, unless one is horrible. Most likely, one is smooth and the other is really bad. If that turns out to be the case, leave it on the smooth one, don’t put it back to both. You should do this on the way to Maxwells. You can’t legally take off with a flakey mag unless you have a ferry permit. But you can complete your flight.

A change in material really would render it a whole new airplane, the design isn’t where the money is, as you say airfoils etc are very well know you can literally shop them for just what you want, the money is in proving the design to the FAA and of course tooling etc, and to a great extent process specs on exactly how everything is to be manufactured have to be approved as well as your QC manual on exactly how everything is to be inspected etc. Building an airplane is actually not hard, hundreds are built by first time builders in garages every year, what’s real tough is gaining approval for serial manufacture of a Certified airplane. But honestly if you going to change materials you would be a fool not to take advantage of what the new materials coukd give you, and of course that’s a design change, slick as a Mooney is there is still significant drag in I think the fuselage, especially back near the tail, but wasp waiting a metal airplane is exceedingly hard, but not so much for plastic. Even the wings aren’t likely in truth really Laminar, it’s just too hard to get there with riveted metal, but plastic in a mold can hold very tight tolerences. Don't get me wrong as a mechanic I don’t like plastic airplanes, but you have to concede it’s easier to build a lower drag airplane out of the stuff.

I am sorry Gevertex, I truly do not mean to hijack your thread, and I certainly do not intend to drag you into my feud or insinuate in any way you did anything wrong, but the whole context needs to be documented here. Anyone that can be warned is a potential life saved, not everyone is going to be as precise as you who sensed something as small as a 50 degree EGT change to then discover an almost departed cylinder. VERY impressive that you caught this before it blew off 200' over the trees. The whole story starts right here and it was a ticking time bomb right out of their shop.

You could argue then that … every aircraft is peerless Mooney has always been a hell for leather design, and when they rolled out a piston aircraft doing 242kts, they had at least the Columbia 400 / Cessna TTx on their heels. But by the time the Acclaim Ultra came out, the TTx was dead and there was nothing close in the single-engine certified piston space. A composite cabin freed up enough weight for two doors with no speed penalty, and you had a gorgeous panel with a nice leather interior. If you wanted to go 242 knots in a SEP, there was nothing else out there, and full-fuel payload was not the mission.

Anytime the system is over banking there is a issue with the AI information or the alignment of the system. For example, if you rotate the heading bug 45deg right of the lubber line the aircraft should go into a 20-22 deg right bank and hold the bank until the HDG bug is approaching the lubber line. Without the AI information the system will continue to turn to the right until you tell it to stop. This is situation can lead to a dangerous attitude if you are not watching the bank attitude of the aircraft. All the interconnect drawings for the system and the alignment procedure are listed in the Garmin IM. If the shop is knowledgeable about how the GI275 is interconnected to the legacy system they will know how to test the attitude response on the ground. The GI275 ADAHRS +AP unit is perfectly capable of driving the legacy autopilot system. The key is knowing what information the system wants and how to get it to the system.

I need to convince my wife to spend some time with solidworks to see if we can get the 3d model for that. If we can, I think from a print point of view it should work fine.

I think a lot of people have had them weld repaired.

Your reasoning is logical, but that's not the way humans work. I've given about 1000 hours of instruction. That's not much compared to folks here with a lot more experience, but it's enough for me to have put a large number of pilots with varying experience in situations that make them slightly to largely uncomfortable, in a distracting environment. The idea that pilots will make a rational response to specific problems based on logic like you're stating here, just ain't true. I've seen pilots either lock up, or react "backwards" to all kinds of warning indicators: horns, buzzers, G-loads and so forth. And these are smart people who can tell you all the right answers on the ground over coffee. So I know based on what I've seen with my own eyes, that no one should take any comfort whatsoever from the idea they would "naturally" react properly to an unusual situation. The best you can do is actually induce the situation, and train for the recovery, until it hopefully becomes instinctual to do the right thing. Not instinctual because it's "logical", but just because it's what you did the last N times you actually experienced that situation, in training. Deliberately putting yourself in such situations with an instructor is reasonable for a certain class of problem: stalls, spiral divergence, etc. That's what Scott is doing in the video. There's another class of problem where it's not reasonable to deliberately put yourself in the situation in anything other than a simulator, e.g. engine failure immediately after takeoff. I try to get in the simulator to practice those sorts of things, but I don't do it as often as I should, and I don't suffer from any illusion that I'd be ice cool and always do the right thing in a pressure situation I've rarely or never experienced. I try my best to convince other pilots the same.

This has just given me a boost to get going!! David

Is that the group with about 3,000 members, and "no new posts today"? EDIT: Mooney Owners Group

The GI 275 most certainly was designed specifically for interface with many legacy Autopilots, when properly aligned they shine! I can assist your shop in troubleshooting this, Have them give me a call and I can point them in the right direction. 616 822 1999 mon-fri 9am-5pm Eastern. This should be simple to correct, the GI 275 is a wonderful upgrade from the KI 256 and this is certainly not the first attempt at interfacing one to a KC 19(x) computer..

Ditto. -dan

Agree. The constraints in manufacturing an aluminum wing make laminar flow impossible to achieve without wind tunnel testing each wing and using filler to custom optimize each airfoil. I’ve read that the early wooden airfoil birds would flirt with 140kts with just a 150hp O-320 pulling them along. Those wings were hand shaped and likely had much better boundary layer adhesion. A refined carbon wing would likely be even better and be cheaper to produce.

Same with my 64c. Door needs to be closed in the hangar and all other times as well. Took about 3-5 months for it to compress. Same with the baggage door.

Don Maxwell’s value of 28.8V for the buss voltage seems consistent with Concorde‘s RG Series Owner/Operator Manual: So when the battery sits in the uninsulated tailcone, it will be receiving the charge most of the time below 15°C/59°F and it is also my experience that even when I return from a longer flight and attach the battery to a charger in the hangar, it still will slowly charge for another hour before the charger indicates the battery to be fully charged. So adjusting the battery voltage to a lower value will result in a lower capacity available in case of an alternator failure. Of course the gold-standard would be a voltage regulator that takes the battery temperature into account.

Exactly. No evidence in my logs. That's why I started another thread earlier asking how many gear-ups are actually due to failure of the gearbox. Was the AD because of just ONE failure? Or, multiple ones. Not saying it can't happen, but have to wonder if properly inspected and lubed how big a risk this is.

Perhaps. But the motor may be easier to source, and likely can be rebuilt, if not.

If anyone wants more info on the 262 conversion of a 231 by Coy Jacobs feel free to pm me and include a phone number and I can provide answers to most of your questions.

That's where about half of navy primary flight school is. Keep an eye out for young mavericks and gooses learning their trade in t-6 texan 2s quite possibly doing aerobatics and formation flights and some young rotorheads doing whatever helicopter pilots do. Well be less busy on weekends.

i wired several old analog system to new digital systems (DAC or G5) i found it difficult to link the symptom to the cause. It either works or it does not. Check that the settings are configured correctly. If they are, the harness will need to be checked and maybe rebuild if they cannot trace every single wire to the right pin

Another slightly off topic question. Who rebuilds these Gear Actuators? Anybody? Aeromotors? I would think whoever rebuilds the entire actuator would have an interest in the gears too. I'm guessing I have an ITT actuator but I'm not sure; would have to dredge through logs or wait until the next annual. You can put me down for gear set just in case.

A DER is NOT REQUIRED for OPP but a foundation of the OPP (here we go again) is to use "approved" design information so the part is the equivalent of the original. Getting past this requirement is the crux of the problem. You can reverse engineer or even new engineer but some sort of "approved design info" is needed. You just can't say (40:1 gears) that they look like brass and make them out of any ol' brass. What type of brass were they made from? How can you prove that? Just as an example. The part has to be the equivalent of the original one. Use a DER and all things become easier in the areas that really need good work - like landing gears that actually go up and down. Herein is where the "Approval" of a DER comes in to make things easier.

If the real desire is there - there are ways to make any part on the airplane One route is to use a DER to design and approve the part for OPP by reverse engineering (or even original engineering). That covers the "approved " paperwork trail requirement for OPP (just one way of doing it) but it can be done IF THE REAL DESIRE IS THERE! 40:1 gears COULD be done if one wanted to do it enough ($$$$$). No Back up Springs COULD be done if one wanted to do it enough In the end its only money that is stopping any part from being made.

But for many of these parts, we, the owners of aircraft, will pay the higher price. No, they could not operate paying those prices for parts to put in a newly built airplane. But parts are different. They have been several cases of groups of owners offering to fund (pre-pay) to have a run of X part made and Mooney would not do it. That seems like a pretty nice cash flow. Get the money to pay for the order, plus your mark up/profit, all up front.

Your comment on "Extreme" threw me and I was about to point out that as @Pinecone mentioned, Simple Green is corrosive to aluminum. I thought the "Extreme" was going to be even worse. So I was looking up the correct name for what I thought used to be Simple Green Aircraft and now see they call it "Simple Green - Extreme Aircraft and Precision Cleaner."

Got my plane out of its first annual under my ownership and I had no surprises. Whew! The Alpha Shoulder harnesses are now installed. Plane has been down with avionics upgrades and then the annual since Mid February. Looking forward to flying her the rest of this year. I decided my daily driver in retirement (after 38.5 years of "free" company cars) will also be blue. Picked this CPO up on Saturday.

I would not call that hangar 'tight' with two planes. Check out my hangar. Driving an hour to go fly seems crazy. I lament the 15 minute drive I have. For me the nearest instrument approach is an hour drive away and there is no way I'd ever consider keeping a plane there instead of near home. Maybe take a look at historical weather and see how often the conditions are below the MVA, and if so, how long they are below. It might be faster to just wait out the weather in a hold or at another airport than to do an instrument approach and drive an hour.

+1 for @jetdriven at KGAI. Asked for an oil change while I was in the area on business and during the post change runup he noticed a sketchy sounding bearing in my starter. Juggled his schedule and found a replacement starter that could be overnighted. Was fixed within an hour of the starter being delivered the next day. Great service and likely prevented me from being stuck on a tarmac somewhere. Oh, and allowed me to get out of KGAI before the tornado hit last night….

We've been to AirVenture every year since 1999 except Covid year when they didn't have it and last year. We've flown in with the Caravan a few times and they were all good experiences. Very professionally handled! For ease of entry and exit we fly into Madison and rent a car for the hour and fifteen minute drive to Oshkosh through beautiful farm country. We've rented the same house for all the years we've attended. I think the lead was originally gotten through the Tourist Bureau. If you buy a lifetime EAA Membership you get the perk of using the Oasis, an air-conditioned building on the front line that supplies free drinks, candy, ice cream, tables for sitting, and other goodies to members only. I wish I had known about it 20 years ago. I had purchased the lifetime membership a few years earlier, but only accidentally found out about the Oasis last year. Learn the Tram System, if you want to save yourself miles of walking. Traffic getting in in the morning is terrible, so plan accordingly. Some of the discounts could just about pay for your trip, if you were planning on buying stuff like avionics anyway. I saved thousands on Garmin products when I did my upgrade. They were giving great rebates when buying multiple products at the time. I think I got a 20% discount on my Jeppesen subscriptions last time there. A lot of great dinners or breakfasts from AOPA, SAFE, NAFI, and others. Hangars A, B, C, D are usually packed, and the Flymart has interesting products. Of course there's all the airplane exhibits. Anybody whose anybody in GA displays their products there. Then there are the many, many seminars given by leading experts in the industry. They're all listed in the EAA app that's updated yearly. And don't forget the daily airshows with top performers starting in the early afternoon and the night airshow a couple of nights during the week.. I miss MAPA and Mooney. We always had a great time meeting Mooney people and sitting around and talking. Not to be forgotten is the journey itself. Planning and executing a long cross country trip in our magic Mooney carpet is a good part of the adventure of AirVenture.

The issue of who dropped the bushing is not something you will be able to get a definitive answer on. You can try to negotiate something with the shop but if they really weren’t the ones who dropped it then I could see why they wouldn’t be interested. The bigger issue is what direction you gave them as to what kind of communication and permission was required before commencing work. When you go in for an annual the shop should understand clearly that they have authorization to do the annual inspection and whatever preventative maintenance you approve before hand and that any additional work needs to be talked about and approved before they start work. There are some people who just drop off their plane and say call me when it’s done and I’ll settle the bill- these people have trained some shops to take liberty with peoples airplanes. That’s unfortunate but still common. So the question is did you communicate this process clearly? If you did then that gives some ground to challenge the work provided. If you didn’t then this is a good lesson to you what happens when you don’t communicate proper expectations. If the shop was given proper expectations and took liberties with your airplane anyway then you don’t want to do business with them.

This is a VERY important lesson to learn here and not the hard way.

I believe you are getting shafted also. I would make one attempt of sitting down with the owner and calmly presenting your concerns. Calmly and confidently tell him what you think is fair for both of you (maybe split the extra labor?). At this point I wouldn't go further than that or they'll hold your airplane hostage. Get it signed off and get it out of there and don't go back. (Also just a point of reference I keep my logbooks locked up and shops that work on my airplane get a .pdf of my logs, if they request them. I ask for stickers that I'll put in my logs. The shop never has possession of my logs.) Education always carries with it tuition. Your education here is never go back. Once it's done please share the name of the shop so someone else doesn't sign up for that course also.

Last Saturday morning above western North Dakota. It's amazing how green it gets here... for a few weeks.

Took Mooney for family camping during airshow at OldWarden (EGTH) Followed by goodbye to Daks (DC3 and C47) on their way to Cherbourg "Then, it's a dogfight"

Another thing that matters is the regulated voltage during operation. A friend was going through Concordes too quickly, and ultimately swapped out the ancient regulator (this is on a Cherokee) and now he gets consistent ~14V rather than the 13-ish he was getting before. This seems to be helping.

Bolts are springs. They work by preloading them so that they stretch within the elastic limit of the material and the spring force thus created is what holds the parts together. The design requirement is that the preload must exceed the force on the stud under load. In this way, the stud doesn't feel the load and the joint stays tight. It is important that the materials being joined have less elasticity than the bolt. This is why paint under the nut or sealant between the joint is problematic. It is also why lock washers are not used under cylinder nuts. The first thread from the shank is the most heavily loaded, and that's usually where the stud fails. There are two primary failure modes: 1. The nut was installed with insufficient preload (torque), or lost it's preload, which allows the stud to feel the load and eventually fail due to fatigue. This causes a pretty clean break. 2. The nut was overtightened which causes the stud to stretch beyond its elastic limit and neck down leading to a tension stress failure. From the pictures, it looks like 1 to me. If the cylinder had actually become loose enough to move a mm or two, the studs would have all stretched under the load and failed under tension and the cylinder would likely have departed the crankcase.

On our last flight down to Spruce Creek we took a little trip from Port Orange (Daytona Beach area) down to Punta Gorda to visit with some friends. We departed a bit before sunset and captured this sunset over Tampa Bay that evening. Clearly one of the most colorful ones I've ever seen.

When I was looking, as intriguing as the Rocket line was, longer term support was a concern I had so the more units of a model available in my mission parameters the better. As a first time owner, after a long hiatus from GA making a living getting paid to fly jets instead, the fewer variables, the better for me. Probably should have hopped back in GA 5-6 years ago, with a 182. However, while the learning curve has been steep, many thanks to those here keeping it shallower, I'm really enjoying my Bravo.

I don’t know an owner of any aircraft that isn’t struggling with some parts issues, required and discretionary. Owning an aircraft of any make or model is a labor of love these days. if you want to separate the wheat from the chaff about any plane, all you have to do is to talk to actual owners. Everything is a trade off…

Yes. My attempt at humor was missed. Shame on me.

In my information consumption of the Richard Mcspadden fatal accident, I came across this excerpt. I heard it, in his own words, in the last two minutes of the most recent AOPA Hangar Talk Podcast, dedicated to his memory. It was striking enough that I felt it useful to transcribe his words into text here. Please excuse the grammatical exceptions, used to enunciate his words. Well said indeed. "Gratitude, consumes me when I fly my Super Cub. This bright yellow magic carpet that takes me to wondrous places- physically and mentally. Morning flights are especially magical. The air is smooth. The Super Cub rigged so well, that it's akin to having an autopilot. I can take my hand off the stick to sip some home roasted coffee. Or adjust the satellite music flowing through my headset. I feel some warmth from the paltry cabin heat which knocks the chill off my legs in sporadic waves. I'm viewing an imax movie out my front windscreen but I'm not just watching the action- I'm in it. Immersed in this spectacular panorama. The smells and sounds are real, and I'm so grateful to capture it. well aware that it's transient; both in a moment, and in a lifetime. Flying has brought so much to my life. In many ways, has been my life. The feeling of gratitude to the many people who boosted me here comes back frequently. In ways, it seems unfair that I was exposed to aviation and given opportunities few have. And I feel a growing urge to give back. Cast a wider net. And expose more people to this splendid experience that can change the trajectory of a life. Flying inspires, and fosters connection- in a community. And we could use more of that now." -Col. Richard "Spad" McSpadden