Ragsf15e

Most of them are fully closed in cruise and descent but open during climb and ground operations. There are some folks who need to keep them partially open in cruise to keep cylinder temperatures acceptable. They can normally be closed in cruise because you have accelerated and there’s more cool air to cool cylinders. Some turbo models or NA at higher altitudes need the cowl flaps partially open in cruise as the thin air doesn’t cool as well.

While it sounds like your pump died, a little digging could be in order. These other guys know more, but the electric pumps usually start leaking pretty good before totally giving up. There's a little drain below it. Any chance there’s a blue fuel streak behind it or on the ground below it where you shut down or where you start the engine?

@N201MKTurbo has them on his and he hasn’t complained yet, but he seems like a pretty easy going guy. They have been available from continental for a few years.

Supposedly there are also 2 different switches on that as switch and only one is commonly used. You can try the other one.

It’s fine there and that dropoff in knots seems reasonable. If you’re much leaner than ~40ish lop, power starts to drop off rapidly, thus airspeed decreases rapidly. Power is fairly constant right near peak, and drops off much more slowly if you’re rich of peak.

Hi! Welcome! Gmax is a great place to start. He’s a straight shooter, so just ask him if there’s anything obvious that the airplane will need soon - paint, interior crappy, etc. There shouldn’t be anything mechanically glaring from him, but a prebuy will still help you find expensive stuff that’s not obvious. If they have the airplane you can ask if they’ll send you the logs electronically. You probably want to know the basics of what year the engine was overhauled, how much it’s been flying, damage history, etc. Also prop times. DC is tough because you’ll definitely want a hanger but they’re expensive too! The prebuy and any fixes will take a little while, so you might be able to find a cfi to fly it home for you. Lots of good prebuy shops around GMax. You can use an aircraft escrow service to handle the transaction. good luck!

Yes that’s a good point. Nobody should be using the override as a normal means of retracting the gear and the shop should definitely fix it, but the override only overrides the airspeed switch, so it’s an effective way to troubleshoot that issue specifically.

I hope they logged all the instruction you actually received in your logbook…

Do you have the override button? That overrides the airspeed switch. Hopefully they just didn’t hook it up right instead of breaking the AS switch because those are expensive.

Oh, well the hydrogen theory is probably better then. Maybe not stick your head in there to test that one…

Sounds like you don’t want new, but did you try New Horizons? They make the Maggie harness. They are in SoCal too. Maybe they can fix yours or make a new one. They’re great to work with in the past. https://www.maggieignitionsystems.com/contact-5

The “clunk” from the master solenoid is pretty loud in a quiet hangar. Maybe open the battery access panel and stick your head back there while someone else turns it off?

I also give you kudos for bailing out. I agree totally with what @N201MKTurbo said above. Sorry about your $$. I think 6 days to actually become proficient in ifr is overly optimistic. In my experience, a couple hours per day fills up your brain and you need a rest before being able to properly receive more instruction.

Yep, what @bluehighwayflyer said, with independent mags you’ll need to do them both at 500 hours anyway, so it’s probably similar.

Yeah, absolutely nothing wrong with that. My cylinders would be at similar temps there. Your monitor is probably correct there. Increase mixture to ~11gph for ~100 rich of peak and i bet you see all the chts climb to ~330+. You’ll likely gain 5kts, but your original setting is more efficient and cooler. It’s where I fly.

I believe you, but I’m wondering how the pucks affect the gear retracting? Did you have a squat switch that wouldn’t compress to allow retraction to happen? Other than the squat switch I can’t figure out how the pucks can do that?

Ha! Yeah, first annual you need to replace all the tinnermans and all the screws. It’s cheap and it makes removing and replacing the panels much easier. All the sizes are shown in the parts manual. B type screws. The washers are nylon to protect your paint, mine doesn’t have them. Aircraft spruce has the screws, tinnermans and washers. Get some of the machine screws for the aft panels too and the ones for wing inspection panels. Seriously, it makes annual much better.

I know this is blasphemous, but I do everything like @MikeOH, but I don’t do the bmp. I use the lean find function and slowly decrease the mixture so I can get it just barely lean of peak on the last cylinder and see where each one peaks. There’s enough variation in the setting based on exact cruise altitude, temperature, altimeter setting, etc, that I kind of like to see it. At the 8-10,000’ (with an na engine) mike mentioned, you are low enough power that you aren’t going to hurt anything leaning slowly, and power drops off rapidly if 9 gph happens to be farther lean of peak than you intended. The bmp is for higher power settings (low alt or a turbo) so that you don’t dwell in the “red box” at high power.

The indicator slides back maybe an inch. Just barely out of view when the gear is up, and the light goes off. If you hand crank the gear down or watch the indicator as you select gear down, you’ll see it moving slowly up to the line and the light turns on. You should have an additional green light on your panel. It’s common for that floor light not to work as the bottom of the socket is in a rough place in the belly area and the wires can get corroded or broken. Easy fix though if it’s not. You can still see the indicator line up with the line on the top piece of plexi to indicate gear down even if the light doesn’t work.

Welcome! there’s several threads on this, but some years appear different… mine doesn’t have nutplates to take that apart from above so i went in from below, but mine is a 68F. Its the belly panel directly below, but yeah it’s a lot of screws. Be sure to get the light you like. Some use a 24v light in a 14v plane to make it dim. There are also some led options. The indicator attaches on the gear rod which is easy to see from below, so make sure you get it back on and connected just right. Good luck! i went with a 14v led in a 14v plane and its bright. Maybe too bright if you fly a lot at night but it’s great in the day!

One thing to keep in mind about battery capacity… it will decrease over time. They are supposed to be checked at annual and the standard is 80%, so you should hopefully get 80% of capacity as a minimum. As far as draw? Depends a lot on your equipment, glass vs old stuff? Led vs old lights? Radios draw a lot. Theoretically, you should get at least a half hour (although I don’t have the reference for that so could be off). You can shut off stuff (radios) to get more. Also, your amp meter is normally wired to show the charge/discharge flow to/from the battery, not the total power load on the system. So you pretty much have to run everything with the engine off and look at the amp meter (drawing power from the battery) to see what your total load might be. With the alternator running, you will only see the charge current to the battery which could be high with a discharged battery or low with a fully charged battery. I usually see ~3amps in cruise. Maybe 10amps right after engine start.

Merry Christmas! we took a short family flight to go look at the ski areas and see how the snow looks for some skiing on Wednesday!

Seems like one more reason to prefer a j bar. Along with no Ad on the 40/1 gears, no airspeed switch and no impossible to find emergency crank cable. How hard is it to convert one back? Mine was built with a j bar, modified at the factory after.

Try this to get you started… https://www.donmaxwell.com/cabin-door-handle-upgrade

Is it the interior one? I’m thinking there’s an SB or modification to that handle that was published a long time ago. The document might have a diagram with specs. Probably worth searching through the older Mooney docs. Is it not identified in the parts manual?