IndyTim

7 knots @ 190 is a significant difference. Thanks for finding/sharing Lance. I'll reach out to the vendors, see if they have any recent data points. I'

I used Aerocomfort out of San Antonio. Would recommend.

@carusoam, thanks. So you're saying the speed differences aren't as significant up high? I like to fly at 16-17k, sometimes at FL21/22 if the winds are right. So that would mean I wouldn't see the speed advantage in probably 50% or more of my flying. I'm still trying to figure out what all the options are for my 252. I've got Hartzell, Macauley, and MT on my list of manufacturers - any others?

Since I'm now shopping for a prop, I thought it would be good to re-evaluate 2-blade vs 3-blade. I understand that a 3-bladed prop, which is on my 252 now, is supposed to be quieter and will climb better than a 2-bladed prop, while giving up a little top end speed, and 15 pounds in useful load. The 2 bladed is cheaper to buy, cheaper to service, and has the added benefit of not chewing up my cowling paint job every time I change the oil. My questions - can anyone be more precise about the magnitude of the differences -- -- How much top speed difference? And does the difference apply at all power settings, ie, a 2-bladed prop is about 2 kts faster across the board? -- I'm not sure I'm worried about climb. It's not a jet, but I have never been in a situation where climb was an issue. How much of a fifference are we talking? -- as for noise, how much noise? Enough that it becomes tiresome on a long flight? Even with noise-canceling headsets? I'm wary of making the change to a 2-bladed prop - most folks have 3-bladed props on their M20K's now, and there are probably good reasons for that. But cheaper overhauls, less weight, less propensity to ding the cowling paint, and a couple more knots are all appealing. And I'm not sure I care about the looks. I'm also thinking that, since my insurance agent is writing the check, a 2-bladed route might free up funds to be applied elsewhere.

@thinwing that gets my vote for a truly epic gear story. Especially the part about taxiing through the pay booth.

Congratulations! A license to learn. :-) If it makes you feel any better, it took me about a year also. I was working in WI, PA, and TX while living in MO. I had to work with 7 different instructors in order to actually fulfill the requirements and get ready to do the checkride.

Edit on 2/14: After I had posted this gripe about Aviation Consumer here, I sent a note to the editor, complaining about their antiquated ecommerce system - they sent back a nice note and set me up with a temporary user account, while my subscription processes through. Nice folks. ============================== I'm looking for a rebuild shop for my engine, and discovered there was a review of engine builders in a 2013 issue of Aviation Consumer. I went online and subscribed to Aviation Consumer, and then burned 30 minutes and several phone calls to learn that I would not be able to get web access to Aviation Consumer for "about a week". Seriously? Amazon can ship a diesel generator to my house in about a day, and a magazine cannot enable web access upon completion of the transaction? I recommend eCommerce platforms for a living, and I suggested that Aviation Consumer might want to look into a new digital commerce platform, since they are light-years behind the curve. Very disappointing. If anyone has info about the top 2 or 3 rebuilders for a Continental that they'd be willing to share, I would be very appreciative.

I''m working through the repair arrangements now. I have support from the insurer (AIG) to get a Mooney specialist involved in the repair work, even though it will have to be done in Defiance. Will try to work that out. So far I'm impressed with AIG. Great coverage, and they're being very good about making sure we return N252BH to full glory. I also have substitute aircraft rental coverage and would like to find somewhere in the Midwest to get some Mooney rental time in. Does anyone have any recommendations? Also working on finding the best engine shop to do the teardown - Poplar Grove would be at the top of my list. Any other recommendations, or recent experience with Poplar Grove?

Retracting step would be good.

Wow that's sweet. Would sure be nice to squeeze BRS into it though. I think that's one of the most significant advances in aviation safety to come along in a while.

Thanks. Looks like this is superceded by SB M20-282. However, that link on Mooney's site is a bad link or the .pdf isn't available. Anyone have SB M20-282.pdf?

Hank - there is a retraction procedure in my 252. See attached POH page.

A few pictures for those interested. All I had was my cell phone in the hangar, so not a great set of shots there, but they convey damage to underside. https://indytim.smugmug.com/Defiance/i-hX5Bdwq/A https://indytim.smugmug.com/Defiance/i-wJH2MLz/A https://indytim.smugmug.com/Defiance/i-MPVv9wG/A https://indytim.smugmug.com/Defiance/i-93LdmQR/A https://indytim.smugmug.com/Defiance/i-w7gxr3s/A https://indytim.smugmug.com/Defiance/i-pdWGZC9/A

Does anyone have any diagrams of this no back spring? What does it do?

I'll add two other morning conclusions on how I can deal with emergencies like this more effectively. First: live in the moment. Once we had the gear unsafe, my anxiety level went up. I was working to stay calm, think straight, fly the aircraft. When I went back through the POH last night, it brought back the memory of how hard it was, in the plane, to find the freaking passage on emergency landing gear extension. And I know where it is! I think I did right to gain altitude, turn on autopilot, and just fly a nice square pattern where I had all the time in the world to figure things out. What I didn't do was to give myself permission to just hang out in that pattern, all afternoon if necessary, take a few deep breaths, and just work the problem. Again, It doesn't seem there was much else I could do, but it's a real luxury to have fuel, good weather, and nothing to do but fly in a circle while pondering the issue. In the future, setting that up and exploiting it if possible will be on my list. The other thing I wish I would have done better was, um, passenger management. Taking a minute to explain gear up landings would have been good, I have since learned. And a critical mistake from a CRM perspective: I should have given my wife the job of helping to scan for traffic while I was sorting out the problem. She knows to do this anyway, especially down low, but I didn't specifically ask for it then and should have. I did assign her the task of watching engine temps, but we should have had more eyes outside - it would have given her more to do and possibly saved our bacon. Passengers like to know they're doing something to help.

Went to sleep thinking about this, woke up (early) thinking about this. Mostly about whether the extension release latch had anything to do with it, and whether I should have gone through a couple more cycles of atch/up/down. I still believe that the key data point was that the cable pull wasn't doing anything, not one millimeter of movement there. And I was in the air, reading in the POH the statement "Do not continue to pull the cable once resistance is felt or damage to the gear could result". Or words to that effect. I followed that advice. What I also woke up thinking about was something else I did NOT try, and now wish I would have. if for no other reason than to know I exhausted every last possibility: the emergency RETRACTION procedure. Perhaps that would have unlocked whatever was doing the locking. To Loogie's earlier point, I also now wish I would have gotten some eyes on the belly to ascertain the gear state. Knowing for certain that it was not down would have made me fight harder to fix it. But then we have @Two Oh One's post above which sounds a lot like what I experienced, which was the sense that nothing was doing any good at all. Thinking about the power-off-at-flare decision again, on second, or actually third thought, I don't think it would have been good. Chopping the power, even if low power, right at that point would slightly destabilize the approach, and cause the plane to drop more abruptly onto the gear/doors. I think more airframe damage could have occurred, and some slightly higher risk of a less controlled, um, slide-out. I think the decision to cut engine needs to be implemented further up the glide slope, where you still have time to re-stabilize. My sense during the slide-out was that one rapidly loses ability to control the attitude of the aircraft: you've got a little rudder and maybe some aileron for about 4 seconds, and then the physics of metal-sliding-on-tarmac take over. At that point you're a passenger. So having a controlled, level, straight entry into that phase takes precedence over engine - that's one of my early morning conclusions. What do y'all think?

Yeah, I wish I would have gone with shutting down in the flare. I think that would have been doable, and I also think it would have helped. As I mentioned, I didn't feel like I could get the 3-bladed prop positioned just right, but shutting down at the last second is something I wish I would have done differently.

Thanks Alan - I was going to give you a call. Hi to Brenda. The salmon was excellent!

All, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. The 2nd worst part of something like this is the damage to the plane. The worst part is wondering whether you could have/should have done something more, or done something different. @Parker_Woodruff and @Piloto -- I did note that the emergency extension latch was properly latched before I unlatched it, and I did close it for one cycle of up/down but neglected to close it on the 2nd attempt. I'd like to think that it didn't matter, based on the difficult the maintenance crew had in getting the gear to move at all. Hopefully a post mortem will help in identifying what actually failed, and whether there was anything I could have done that would have made a difference. @Loogie I should have mentioned that I did not consider a high G maneuver. My son and I discussed that after I landed - he's an AC-130W pilot stationed out at Cannon AFB. Again, I'd sure like to think that it would not have mattered with the difficulty the crew had in getting the gear extended. But this is one aspect that will sort of bug me probably for years to come. It would not have been easy, given my wife's concern; unfortunately, while I viewed a gear up landing as relatively low-risk, she didn't (and doesn't) have the benefit of all the discussion on forums like this one. She was seriously worried, and a G maneuver would not have helped. But if I had thought of it at the time, and thought it might do any good, I would have tried it.

Not a thing I enjoy discussing, but should get the information out here. My wife and I were flying N252BH to KDFI - Defiance Ohio last Saturday. It was an uneventful flight with good weather. We stopped and refueled in Indiana (Kentland - $3.40/gal), and had a normal landing/takeoff there with no signs of any problems. Then 40 mins in the air over to Defiance. Downwind in the pattern at KDFI, I lowered the gear, only to see a "gear unsafe" light. The hatches were showing in the floor indicator in addition to the annunciator on the panel. There was plenty of drag, it actually felt like the gear might actually be down, and I wondered if it wasn't a faulty indication. I left the pattern, climbed to 2500, put it on autopilot, and flew in a big square while I tried to address the problem. By memory, I knew what to do, but got the POH out anyway and went through the emergency gear extension procedure. Looking at the gear motor fuse, it had already popped. Gear lever was already in the down position, will get back to that. I unlatched the cover over the emergency cable actuator / t-handle, and quickly discovered it had no travel at all. Normally it takes something like 15 pulls of maybe 10-12" travel or so to get the gear down. It's been a little while since I did that, so don't quote me. But, net-net, there was no action available. Which let me to wonder again if the gear wasn't already fully down - there was plenty of drag when I climbed to 2500. I tried several iterations on pushing the breaker back in, moving the gear lever up (which did not retract the gear), moving the lever back down, tried the cable again. Nothing got any results -- the gear remained in whatever position it was in. In hindsight, the one thing I did NOT try was to push the fuse in, move the gear lever up, back down, while at the same time pulling the cable. But as it turned out, I doubt it would have made any difference. I was worried about overloading a circuit and causing a fire, which would have sucked. I was also worried about trying too hard to force the gear down, possibly resulting in one down/one up, which would have compromised a safe landing. Especially since I had mostly full tanks. Not that I could think of anything else to try... I also considered flying to a towered airport for a check on the gear, but discarded that since knowing the gear wasn't completely down wasn't going to help - I still had to land. Besides my father-in-law was waiting at the airport to pick us up so we had transportation (and a surgeon!) if the worst happened. So we went ahead and landed. I considered shutting down the engine and trying to get the prop just right, but discarded that idea also, for several reasons. First, my engine ALWAYS stops with one of the three blades pointing straight down. I also wasn't sure whether it would be windmilling anyway, and I wanted to focus on the landing, not the prop. And I knew it would be tough to arrange just the right position, with a 3-bladed prop. With a 2-blader, perhaps I'd have had an option there. Finally, I wanted to have power in case I needed to go around. I gave my wife something to do which was to crack the door on short final. As we came out of ground effect I heard the scraping of the gear doors, and it was obvious that the gear was indeed not down. We settled on the "mains", and then the nose dropped as the front gear gave way. I could see concrete-dust spray as the prop made contact. I focused on keeping the aircraft straight - for a while I had rudder yaw control. It didn't take long to stop, and we were able to remain on the runway with just a little turn to the left at the very end of our, um, rollout. As it turned out the airport was attended, and the FBO crew came out to pick us up. I think they were more excited than I was - I was just sad. They closed the airport for the night since it was nearly dusk. The next morning they got her blocked up, and found that the gear was locked halfway down - they only way to get it fully extended was to disconnect the actuator rods. Which they did, and got it safely towed into the hangar. The FAA came up on Monday, and are calling it an "incident", not an "accident". No NTSB. Both FAA and FBO agree it was minimal damage, considering, most of it confined to the single-piece belly pan. I ground the GPS antenna to a nub, and there are minimal scrapes right on the very edges of the cowl flap and gear doors. Of course the prop is history. And I get a tear down on my 150-hour engine. :-( :-( I will post again when we find out what happened to the gear. If there was something else I coulda / shoulda done, I'd like to hear it. But wait a couple weeks, not sure I'm ready to hear it just yet.

A lot of soaring violins but nice video. Air France retirement of Boeing 747. http://allthingsaero.com/airlines/video-stunning-this-is-how-you-say-goodbye-to-an-icon

http://controversialtimes.com/funny/classic-military-sr-71-blackbird-pilots-troll-navy-pilot-and-civilian-aircraft-with-ground-speed-check/

Nice old video of Baron von Richthofen as the crew pulls his triplane out of the hangar, and he gets suited up and takes off. Baron von Richthofen's preflight

By my estimates, $60-65k assuming new equipment. Not counting the antennas, and any necessary connectors, cables, etc etc etc.

Mine did not fail that way. In fact mine has failed twice, both times at high altitude, and both times (I believe) because of my battery choice. But it wasn't until the second failure that I was able to attribute it to the batteries, and it unsettled me enough (doh) that I developed the protocol I mentioned. I don't recal reading the information you describe, will have to go check that out. But mine failed closed.