mooniac15u

You will have to replace the mounting hardware because the new discs are larger. The Mooney Service Bulletin is M20-161 (http://www.mooney.com/images/pdfs/sb-pdf/sbm20-161.pdf). You must also replace (or rework) a small bracket on the front of the gear bay to allow enough clearance to retract the gear with the new larger hardware (see item 4 on page 2 and figure 3 on page 5).

You could always stop by an MSC between annuals and have them take a look at your gear. A quick gear inspection and preload check shouldn't cost much.

Have you checked the connection at the back of the guage? If the MX was moving tubing around the connection may have come loose or the tubing may have cracked if it is old.

I don't think you need an account. You should be able to use a credit card via the PayPal site without signing up.

Welcome to MooneySpace. I flew an M20D for eight years (N6615U). It was a great little plane.

You are considering a $360,000 aircraft and you are worried about $10K-15K for ADS-B?

Is that a Florida destination? Since your Cyclones are home for the holidays you might want to swing by Tampa on the 1st to root for the Hawkeyes!

I don't think the FAA is going after fat people per se and this study is not related to the FAA in any way. There was a comment early in this thread about obesity not being an independent risk factor for heart disease. Now some new research suggests that it might be. Nobody said anything about the FAA using this study to justify anything. In terms of sleep apnea (which is what I think you are referring to with respect to the FAA) the correlation with body mass is well established. Whether or not the FAA is justified in pursuing pilots at risk for sleep apnea is a whole different topic and there's at least one other thread here on Mooneyspace on that topic.

This particular study doesn't draw any conclusions about sleep apnea.

It's a meta-analysis but it looks pretty solid as far as that type of study goes. It is in a legitimate, peer-reviewed journal (Ann Intern Med. 2013;159(11):758-769. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-159-11-201312030-00008). Here's the data summary from the abstract: "Data Synthesis: Eight studies (n = 61 386; 3988 events) evaluated participants for all-cause mortality and/or cardiovascular events. Metabolically healthy obese individuals (relative risk [RR], 1.24; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.55) had increased risk for events compared with metabolically healthy normal-weight individuals when only studies with 10 or more years of follow-up were considered. All metabolically unhealthy groups had a similarly elevated risk: normal weight (RR, 3.14; CI, 2.36 to 3.93), overweight (RR, 2.70; CI, 2.08 to 3.30), and obese (RR, 2.65; CI, 2.18 to 3.12)."

There's not much traffic in South Dakota so it's a pretty low-stress place to learn. I got a learner's permit at 14 in Iowa, and like South Dakota, the traffic was almost non-existant. It's an entirely different story in any large metro area.

Sorry, my access to some of these things is so seamless that I forget they require subscriptions. Here's a summary from a mainstream media source: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2013/12/02/healthy-obesity-is-a-myth-report-says

Some new research suggests that obesity may be a bigger independent risk factor than previously thought. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/815277

Since the discussion is about financing a plane the other fixed and operating costs don't factor in as they would be the same whether you finance or pay cash. You also haven't factored in rental costs in your calculation of what he could save. Assuming the same 40 hours per year he would spend around $5,000 per year to rent a plane which you would have to deduct from what he could save in a year.

Sierra, Tango, and Zulu are reserved for scheduled SIGMETS. Other non-convective SIGMETS are just assigned a phonetic alphabet designator from a limited list (November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, and Yankee).

Found it. My throttle was converted under the Mod Works STC (SA00943AT). Mod Works is long gone and I don't know who currently owns the STC.

I have the vernier throttle on my M20D. It takes a little getting used to but it is very nice for making fine adjustments to MP and you never have to mess with a friction lock. Once you get used to holding it a little differently to control the button you get all the same control feel as a regular throttle plus the precision of the vernier when you want it. There have been a couple of discussions on this topic. You will find some who have never used one telling you that you don't need it. I can't recall where mine came from. I will check the logs this afternoon.

Midwest M-20 in Flora is now Midwest Mooney. The big shop closed and it is now pretty much just Matt. He is very knowledgeable about Mooneys. Not sure if that other e-mail address still works but you can reach Matt at matt@midwestmooney.com.

I seem to recall paying about the same for labor as I did for the conversion kit so about $1500 total. It was worth every cent.

I had a similar problem a few years ago. It turned out the wires were routed a little too close to the exhaust and the insulation had melted allowing the wires to short.

I suppose if you can't have a backwards vertical stabilizer it's better to have none at all.

Are you sure it's the KX 165 that's broken and not your audio panel or something else in the wiring? Do you know someone else with a KX 165 that you could swap in and test?

In a few years you will need a WAAS source for ADS-B.

What's the useful load?

Dugosh just quoted me $1200 for an M20J prebuy inspection. That's $250 more than Maxwell. Beyond those quotes I have no actual experience with either shop.