IvanP

I had to repair mine when replacing the recog lights and it is a PITA. Would love to get replacement, but as with most Mooney parts these days they seem to be made of unobtainium. It would be a nice complement to the wingtip light kits that you sell for Mooneys.

I am thinking about replacing the position lights and strobes on my Bravo with LEDs, but my concern was about the dimmers. I replaced the recognition lights with WAt LEDs last year and they are great. Based on your post, it seems that as long as the rear-facing halogens are left in place, the dimmers work fine when everything else is LED, correct?

Interesting. Sounds like a positive development in unleaded avgas area. Hope to see more info soon.

Delay tactics are commonly used by parties litigating on the losing side of the argument. I think that SC county folks have a reason to believe the jig is up and thus they will use any available stall tactics to delay the final adjudication of the matter.

If the city/county intentionally made certain product the only choice available for a lawful commercial activity, then they they did, in fact, compel the users to use it. Of course, the crux of the claim would be the misrepresentation of the product as a "safe drop-in replacement" by its purveyor(s). Your posts seem to indicate that you have a vast experience in litigating product liability lawsuits. Perhaps you could educate us stupid pilots on how the legal system really works in US. Maybe a refresher on the Restatement of Torts for those of us who have long forgotten that from our law school years .

This is yet another example of local govt s^$#heads trying to be holier than thou and "lead" the good fight to becoming a complete nanny govt with complete absence of common sense. Govt officials love to impose nonsensical mandates so long as they are exempt from such themselves. Look at COVID restrictions in the Bay are few years back and how the govt officials, including the governor, flaunted their disregard for the very restrictions and mandates they imposed on everyone else. Rant off

If your speedbrakes are still working, you may consider lubing the inside of the cables with some TriFlow to prevent brakes from sticking. To the best of my knowledge, Precise Flight no longer offers repacement parts for vaccum speedbrakes and replacement cables may be hard to find if yours are damaged beyond repair. You may need to have them cutom fabricated. Of course, there is the option to upgrade to electric speedbrakes for more than 10 AMUs.

Possibly speedbrake cables if your plane has the older vacuum operated ones. Where does it go in the belly?

I am glad that at least one person here has a positive experience with insurance companies. I deal with various insurers in my line of work quite often and, regrettably, my expeirence has not been that great. When I had a personal claim on my plane few years ago, the insurance did pay the claim and offered me a renewal for the same plane at a greatly inflated premium (something like 4x what I was paying before the claim) and declined to insure additional plane that I acquired. After all, most insurances appear to be represented by the famous law firm Dowey, Screwem & Howe

Word of caution on retreads - I thkn that there have been some issues documented elsewhere on MS with retraction when using certain retreads as the wheel wells are pretty tight on Mooneys and if the tore is too lagre, it may affect the operation of the gear mechanism.

S%$# happens! That is the fact of life. What should not have happened is the poor "fix" they tried. Owning up to one's mistakes and maknig the owner whole again is wht a good shop would have done. I guess I am lucky that my mechanic does not hesitate to admit that something has gone sideways when the plane was in his shop. Simple call to let me know what happened and that it will be promptly fixed at no cost to me is all it took. Trying to conceal screw-ups would make me think what else did they not tell me about.

F&^#$*# AI bots are taking over the forums. As much as I am a CB, I second the paywall proposal, so long as it is reasonable.

Judging lateral visibility limits in haze/smoke is rather difficult from the cockpit if you do not have known reference points. While it may be legal to fly VFR in smoke/haze, it may not necessarily be safe. I usually file IFR when I have to fly through smoke. Most controllers have no issue with pop-up clearances in such situations and it adds an additional margin of safety.

The yellowing may not be limited to the surface layer. You can try any acrylic polishing kit, but by the time you add the time you spend on this, it may be easier to replace the lens with a new piece of polycarbonate material.

@MikeOH who is frequent MS contributor is also based at KPOC. He may be able to help with your training. Enjoy the plane!

I do not know about the newer Barvo headliners, but on my 90 it is impossible to get to the cabin light switches and resistors without removing the headliner (at least partially). I have been through this exercise recently and it is definitely not a fun job.

My fuel tanks have much larger capacity than my bladder and thus I plan on 3-4 hour legs for the sake of my personal comfort and that of my passenger(s). Mileage will vary depending on winds. While there are options for in-light relief, these are activities I just refuse to undertake while flying a Mooney unles absolutely necessary when landing is not an option.

Yes. I had my E sharing such hangar for few months with C-182. Worked fine, but required some finesse when maneuvering the planes around. WIth C model you should have no issues.

If I recall correctly, Bravos have 10 bulbs in the cabin lights with Hi/Lo setting via resistor. LED replacement may not be able to maintain the two output levels??

Older Bravos have a clock that was also used in Porsche 944. Found this out when looking for replacement backlight bulb which is a PITA to get to. I think that there has been a post on MS where somene described a failure of this clock in a way that it created siginficant parasitic drain leading to premature discharge of battery over relatively short time.

If the plane will sit long enough without being flown or plugged into a battery minder it will. Athough it only takes very little current, it is not zero. One surefire way of draining your battery, at least on the older Bravos, is to accidentally bump the cabin light switch on the overhead console during daytime and leaving the plane for couple of days. You cannot see that the lights are on during the day and it will drain the battery becasue this circuit is always hot even with the master off. Maybe the newer Bravos have a timer circuit on these lights but mine does not.

I do not think it is a panel fuse. Look for in-line fuse housing on one of the wires running from #1 battery. That is how it is on my Bravo (1990) in the tail compartment.

Compromise...leave some fuel in but not full. I cannot take full fuel on most of my missions anyway due to weight limitations. My tanks hold 118 gal (Monroy STC) and with that load my plane essentially becomes 1 person plane. There is no perfect solution.

I can find cheaper gas here as well in some places (Nor Cal), but would have to go to other airports to fuel up. By the time I add the fuel burned for the fueling flight, time wasted on unneeded fuel stop, etc., it is a wash. Also, I do not want to leave the plane full of gas in the hangar - the gear pucks are not cheap these days and I jsut replaced mine about a year ago.

I envy you the cheap gas. In our neck of the woods, $6-7 is considered normal thanks to the environuts who run California.