Tim Jodice

Modified to me. Priorities for (my) personal transport, not a work machine... 1) Efficiency, is the main reason I bought a Mooney 2) UL with two aboard..., this is every flight i did the math to make sure it worked 3) FIKI, to fly in new England regularly I think it is a must. 4) WAAS, done 5) Maintenance, down time and cost. Like many I asked my mechanic for advice and he said for what your doing a Lycoming powered Mooney is hard to beat, buy the newest one you can afford. 6)Safety, definitely important but it did not factor in my purchase because it seems the machine fails much less than the pilot. 7) Speed, the trip is only 120 miles as I learned first hand flying the Baron at 190 against the Mooney at 150 is on average is only 10 min longer. 8) AC if i clean it up and loose a lot of weight i would consider having it 9) UL with four aboard..., currently if there were 4 people one of them is 11 (80) and the other is 16 (110) and the wife (155) doable but not practicable 10) Fuel tank and bladder size matching can be important..., it will be rare (dare I say never) for me to need more that the stock. 11) O2, not necessary, I don't fly high enough regularly to need it. the rare times that I do I use a portable system 12) Fancy paint and interior... more important for a forever-plane...

This is currently my normal load: about 250 pounds in gas 185 for me 200 for my passenger 60 TKS fluid and 50 +/- in parts. That said I completely agree about weight loss, I should loose 15 pounds. If I find that in two years or so that this airplane continues to be the right tool for the job and that at that time I am running in to a weight issue then game on!

Before I had the privilege in 2008 to fly a new (2007) Ovation I never under stood why useful loads were so low in new airplanes. I never thought a piston airplane could be so quiet and comfortable. I end up going to the other end and buying a 55 Bonanza and as expected the useful load was good, mostly comfortable but loud. next was a 61 baron that has a great useful load but also loud and not so comfortable. While I had the Baron a friend let me fly his F model frequently and it to has a good (1018) useful load but was loud and the comfort was better after about 2 hours in the air I would need to move around to be comfortable The 201 I have now has what most would consider a poor useful load of 760. it is Quiet, Comfortable, very well equipped relative the aircraft I had first hand flying. Except for a 430W and a MX20 it had the original avionics from 1985. To have a airplane that is so tight that even when it is -20 at altitude wearing a t shirt I would still dial the heat back is amazing to me. I do fantasize about going on a weight lost plan (me and the airplane). According to the avionics shop by redoing the panel all electric and eliminate all of the boxes in the tail I could loose about 75-80 pounds. composite prop, light weight starter and alternator I could loose over a 100 pounds total! All of that said I love it the way it is now and would give up very little to gain useful load. Why? I found if I am honest with my self and dismiss the "well I might" thoughts, 760 pounds does my mission without compromise 93% of the time. There will always be the once in a while flights that I say to myself "if I only bought the Pilatus PC-12 I could do this nonstop". Looking back how many times are you unable to accomplish you mission because you can't carry it?

Not meant to be fresh and this is not directed to anyone but if some people don't care how much an airplane really weighs, why do they care about useful load?

If everything else was exactly the same I would pick the one that has been geared up. But it is splitting hairs to me, if the hail damaged one had something that didn't add much if any to market value but was important to me I would buy that one. For instance if both engines technically had 800 hours on them but the geared up one was IRANed in 2011 for the prop strike and the other was original to the airplane from say 1995. I definitely would buy the geared up one. At about 100 hrs a year corrosion is unlikely and that would have value to me. I said that backwards but you know what I mean.

If overall sales are down and assuming that their cost of fuel has also gone down then not changing the price will increase their gross margins however they are likely still making less money after the bills are paid. Just a thought. The airports that I frequently go to haven't changed there prices much. Shockingly Signature at MHT did go down about $.15

What rpm are you setting?

I second a M20C. Hard to beat for the money to buy and operating cost.

What is you goal with your Mooney?

The only way they have newer wide deck roller cam engines is if someone upgraded

I have heard that for a Beechcraft Duke they (not sure who) make carbide lifters. Any correlation?

What are DLC lifters?

Rebuilt has to built to new limits. Overhaul CAN be built to service limits. Rebuilt typically come with more new parts. Good shops sell overhauled engines to new limits.

I should add that when I say unsupported I mean Lycoming won't overhaul your narrow deck engine you would need to get rebuilt or new from Lycoming. I base this on an experience a year ago when a friend of mine that has a 1958 Travel Air that also had a cracked case on one side and both engines were overhauled in 1981 so he decided to put 2 factory rebuilt engines on it. He had a good experience with Lycoming. I forget the suffix but they are carbed 360s and they had them on the shelf shipped the same day.

In addition to a roller cam a factory engine would have other benefits. If your engine is original it is likely is a narrow deck that Lycoming doesn't support. The cases are beefed up in week areas learned over the years. Most think that it would be crazy to put that much money in an old airplane but, if you keep it you likely will get many years of service out of it. I might be an exception but if I was looking for an E model I would pay a premium for for one with a factory roller cam engine instead of an ancient unsupported narrow deck engine.

RG35AXC! I had a gill that was 4 years old I replaced it because one day I was playing with the avionics for about 15 at most 20 min. When I tried to start it (cold) it didn't make over one compression stroke. At the time I had owned the airplane about a month and didn't think much about the crank speed. After replacing the battery it was amazing how fast it cranked over! I was glad it happened the way it did. An alt failure in the air with only an hour of reserve would have be an unwelcome surprise. For fun hook a battery through an ammeter to the external power of the airplane and turned everything on except the pitot heat. It used about 14 amps. With everything off except the 430 I fully charged the gill then hooked it to a 150W landing light. It took only 35 min to bring it down to 10 volts. I didn't do the real test to the new battery but based on the specs on Concorde's website it would last about 2 hours with no load shedding. With everything off except for the 430 and turn coordinator it used 6 amps. Now you have almost 5 hours before your out of power.

It is all relative. What do you think the guy that is taking most of his discretionary income to rent a 172 a few time a month thinks about the guy that has sole ownership of a 10 year old Acclaim?

They put beads of welding in crack prone areas learned from experience. Then they do the usual machining of the case half mating surfaces followed by line boring.

I have seen 500 hour inspections on front mount gear driven continental because failure of the alternator might also dump its guts in the engine and even if it doesn't stop running it likely did substantial damage. Not that anyone wants an alternator failure but at least belt driven failure even catastrophic ones dont harm the engine. If he is willing to do it and it is not a lot of money I would do it for piece of mind. Somewhat off topic. I needed to replace my battery last year and when I was shopping for one the nerd in me couldn't just buy a battery but i had to read all of the specs. I found the Concorde RG35AXC rocks. Because batteries degrade I used 80% of reserve power. I found if you do go down to minimum equipment the battery would likely last longer than your fuel. Not suggesting to over look your alternator but having a great not just ok battery is good insurance.

Steve Brown based in Nashua. PM me for his number. He checked me out 2 years ago. He has owned his Mooney since 1982.

Two reasons, 1. Reading on here the drop test of the landing gear is what limits gross weight on some models. 2. I love my Mooney, but two airplanes I have experience with, a Bonanza and Arrow with conventional air/oil strut offer more forgiveness when landing and able to handle taxiways in poor condition better. More expensive I don't know. At about $100 per disk plus labor Mooney landing gear isn't maintenance free either. I had to replace the seals on a nose gear on a 1955 Bonanza I had. Based on the logs it had been 32 years since it was resealed. Compared to replacing the discs on my Mooney earlier this year parts and labor were about the same. Seal kit was cheap for the Bonanza but more labor. As you know replacing the discs on a mooney is not hard provided you have the tool. But you have $300 in discs. Definitely heavier. It is always possible for a regular strut to instantly blow a seal and leave you with an unairworthy airplane but I have never seen it happen.

Landing gear with some kind of damping. Would it be possible to make a damping cartridge as wide and short stroked to replace the rubber discs?

90 (88) being best glide is why that was the fastest speed I wrote the numbers down for. Like spinning the prop faster going down at I higher indicated airspeed has more drag. BUT if you are going in to a head wind it may be better to be less efficient aerodynamically so that the head wind is smaller component of your ground speed. Or if you want to get the most out of a tail wind fly at minimum sink rate and ride as long as you can/need.

I didn't write it down this is off memory so take it with a grain of salt. It was about 1200 at 90, 900 at 70 and 600 at 65. Another thing I found interesting that I forgot to write is with the prop stopped depending on the position (I forget) of the blades I could feel turbulent air in the rudder pedals.

When I stopped the prop I had the throttle closed, prop all the way out to the stop(low RPM) and mixture cut off. The rest of it was done with the throttle open prop out and mixture cut off. With the prop windmilling closing the throttle slowed down the engine by 50 RPM confirming as many have said that using the engine as a vaccuum pump take more energy than simply compressing and releasing the air. Slowest as in windmilling?