TCC

Good choice. Some v tails have an AL re-skin STC, but many of the later models don’t. Textron is out of mg skins and not real interested in producing more as their corrosion treatment can’t be done in the US due to environmental restrictions. Their type club estimates 30 sets of skin/year is the market and has pony’d up $500K to anyone who can deliver a long-term solution. None of the big shops are taking it on and neither is Textron. Meanwhile guys with serviceable sets are commanding a huge premium and anyone trying to sell an aftected Bo is taking a hit on offers.

Are you not familiar with the problem in that community on this very topic of mg ruddervator skins?

That’s a conversation between you and your doctor. I would be thinking about safely entering/exiting the plane, duration of flight, ability to feel (feedback) and manipulate rudder controls and ability to do an emergency egress from a physical standpoint. I’d also want to talk about medication and pain management.

Nope.

Last time I was at T89, the runway was growing weeds through the cracks; glad they fixed it. Lajitas is a neat little oasis in Big Bend.

Congratulations on a dream come true.

Yeah; the benefit of GA is our ability to flex the schedule. Adding an airline transition forces a fly or drive situation that pretty much requires an extra day on each end and the associated costs might just end up it a wash on both the time and the budget savings.

Minor update; spent some time yesterday flight planning a majority of the likely destinations and comparing against the airlines. The flights are split roughly down the middle. About half the destinations are in the 1K -1.3K NM range with the rest in the 300-600NM range. For the long flights, the shortest airline flight is 2-stops, clocking in at 8h 11m before waiting at the airport. That can be cut down to 1-stop/6hrs by getting on the airlines at DFW. Thinking differently, SJT - DFW or AUS is roughly 200NM, HOU is ~300NM, opening those airline departures up as being reasonable for the long hauls while still likely being able to do the short hauls by GA and softening up the hit to the pocketbook both initially and overtime. We’ve got some thinking to do on this.

I’ve explored it a bit with 310 Pilot and the guy behind Cloud Nine Dog Rescue who had one for a few years. A Colemill Executive or Bearcat I with avionics upgrades would be the target plane, split two or three ways. It’ll be tough to put the partnership together though. Sole ownership would be nice, but the thought of two new motors back to back is eye-watering.

Will do. Used to fly out of 5C1.

Sorry for the delay, it’s been a busy day. Thanks everyone for the input and holy crap thank you all for pointing out a huge typo I made using the small keyboard late at night on the phone. Pilot is 1.2 FAA pax, not 2. I gotta go fix that. ——————————— Other thoughts; we’re comfortable spending up to $180K all in. Realistically, the longest trips will be 2x - 4x annually and we have to budget a full day of driving and two-leg flights to the possible destinations and sometimes an overnight anyways. We both have the option to work remotely as well. I don’t mind an O2 mask, but prefer cannula. My better half does mind a mask, but will use a cannula if necessary. Our other consideration is partnering in a 310.

Unfortunately, the rentals are only suitable for the short trips. The variable is the long trip...every two years for the next 14 years it can change range from 150NM to the long trips. Realistically, we see 6 years of 1K-1.3K NM trips. Beyond that it’s 650NM to 1K NM trips. One kid is fast tracking Army leadership routes. Momma wants to see that kiddo often since that’s the first born. We have capex and opex available for *most* used Mooney’s and I know we’re not going to hit every trip. We’ll be lucky to hit half the trips. I refuse to fly 121 for CONUS routes given the location of SJT. We could relocate to AUS and it still won’t measurably impact the long trips. A 252 *seems* like the answer with a club or rental 182ish plane or drive the short bits.

Life is changing and we need a plane. We’re relocating to SJT. Our most common trip will be AUS, 162NM. Our worst case trip is to ART, 1382NM + reserves. The most common trip will be 169NM 12x annually with 1 pax who’s weight is .7 FAA pax and pilot who is 2x FAA pax. The worst case trip is 6x year with 2x pax who’s combined weight is 1.5 FAA pax. Pilot is 2 FAA pax. Worst case scenario will last for 2 years, then changes to a range between 150NM and 1382NM every two years depending on Army duty station. I know there will be stops for gas on the long trips and no, 121 isn’t an option as the nearest non-EAS terminal is 3 hrs drive. Pilot is IR rated, can’t afford a turbine and won’t fly plastic. Assume no rental available.

My opinion, but max G /G limits ≠ max aircraft performance. My experience is the pilot is the limiting factor when trying to get max performance out an aircraft.

KAPA is probably closest to Castle Rock. Meadow Lake (FLY) is a good alternative to COS, but I haven’t been to either in 3+ years. FLY is maybe 30-45 mins to Castle Rock on US24.

Actually, I don’t feel bad at all about this topic. Collectively, the worldwide piston GA impact is a drop in the bucket. I say that based on the experience of burning 90,000 lbs of JP-8 daily for each of the aircraft in my squadron. That’s about 1.5M lbs per week or 75M lbs per year. And that’s one of five squadrons in the wing, which is one of 40+ flying wings in the Air Force. A combined arms brigade burns 256gph at idle just for the 16 M1A1s; it’s not unheard to have 50K gallon weeks in garrison. For just one platform in one of 42 combat crusades. Let’s not even get into boats. Or any of the other 192 countries with some type of government forces in the world. If someone wants to give money away to feel better about themselves for their hobby, they are more than welcome to do so. But don’t think it’s making a difference, because it’s not.

Even if you take every energy-saving step, if you are a human, you will leave a carbon footprint. Theoretically, carbon offsets counteract the greenhouse gas emissions that cannot avoid being caused. If simply being alive requires an ‘ethical’ donation to offset your existence, there seems to be an issue with understanding ethics, as none of us made the moral decision to be born. Seems to me like carbon offset programs are at the intersection of black magic and Ponzi schemes.

Unfortunately, that’s what the market is bearing these days.

Jimmy’s got a couple. http://m.allamericanaircraft.com/List/Aircraft/ForSale

Thank you for the clarification. One way to ensure separation is instrument arrival and departure.

This has been an interesting thread. Your last sentence is intriguing. If I understand you correctly, you have a specific reason to believe another pilot, one with instructor privileges and a student on-board, deliberately intended to cause a mid-air collision. How do you know this to be the case? Why haven’t you informed your FSDO?

I’m not sure Ci refurbs their pre-owned planes. Depending on how deep one goes on the refurb, that’s pretty labor intensive. I’m wondering if the Ci model is taking in planes on trade at wholesale and then resell at market rate.

I would not, even at zero added cost because the chute isn’t a must-have feature for me. I’m more intrigued by the Mooneyshares program, but would prefer a 4- or 5-way partnership option and don’t see the value prop of the program over DIY partnering and ordering. I’d also be interested in seeing a factory pre-owned program similar to the Cirrus Pre-owned program.

I don’t know; GA trends are moving toward business aviation and away from personal aviation. That generally means cabin class, crewed aircraft. I’d probably start looking at the people who are moving up to a owner operated SETP and work backwards from there to find the gaps, both in product and market. There’s an assumption there. It’s that Mooney’s current product and service offerings have a market to position in. In essence, is Mooney’s product a big square peg and the market a little round hole. I don’t know the answer to that, either. But production numbers indicate there’s a mismatch somewhere. Unless Mooney’s goal is to barely survive in new production numbers while profiting in other areas, such as legacy fleet sustainment.

Why should Mooney target that market? Cirrus targeted that market and basically built two products that were differentiated enough from the rest of the competition to support their value proposition and literally captured that market. A market survey should identify where gaps exist; those gaps are where Mooney should focus their efforts; that begins with understanding profitability....can the product be positioned and profitable in the target market? If so, where do you expand next? Factory refurb’ing/updating existing Js is labor intensive and not very scalable; out the door would probably be close to current Ultra prices. The Mooneyshares product doesn’t appear to be boosting production, and neither does any of the Mooney Experience ™ offerings. That should tell you something about product/market fit.