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gsxrpilot

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Everything posted by gsxrpilot

  1. Talk to Western Skyways in Montrose, CO.
  2. I'm pretty sure that Mooney will only sell parts to an MSC. I know shops that call SWTA regularly to buy parts from Mooney. SWTA can get them as they are an MSC. So is LASAR.
  3. The G and the F are very different airplanes. Send me a PM if you'd like to talk about it. I can walk you through the differences, pro's, con's of each, etc. But I'd much rather talk it through on the phone than try to write it all out here.
  4. If you're looking for an economical Mooney for this mission, it would need to be a mid-body. Those are the M20G, F, J, and K. Somewhere in the early to mid 1980's, the J's and K's started getting the removable back bucket seats. I have them in my 1987 M20K. I think the lay down/removable seats started in '82 or '84? I'm not 100% sure which year. I don't think any of the G's or F's have the removable back seats as they were too early. In that configuration, you could have three seats occupied and the clubs stacked up where the second back seat used to be. They would be laying parallel to the direction of flight. I could take my clubs out to the hangar and take a picture for you. It will be difficult to find a later model J with 1000 lbs useful load. Most of them will be in the 870 to 920 lb range. There will be outliers of course. The K's come in a few flavors, 231, 252, and Encore. And any of them with removable back seats would work. All of the 252's and Encores will have the removable back seats. But prices are all over the place. 231's start at about $90K, 252's at $140K and Encores at $220K. The Encores will have 1000+ lbs UL. But by the time you get to that price point, there are a lot of larger aircraft that you could own and would be more comfortable for 3 full size guys and 3 sets of golf clubs.
  5. We logged just a bit of IFR/IMC over the mountains on Saturday in my single engine Mooney To be sure, it was just a few minutes, I wanted to cross at FL180 and that required the IFR clearance, and then we were IMC for a couple of minutes on the descent but broke out with about 5000 ft ceilings.
  6. Exactly, and I'm thinking there is no spray bottle that would overcome the slipstream even just 80 knots. Maybe get out on the freeway and see if your right seat passenger can spray anything on the windshield while doing 80 mph. I don't think this is a viable option if the windshield iced over in IMC flight. But I'd be entertained by a video of someone trying it.
  7. That would be something interesting to try. You'd want to be slow on a clear VFR day with a pilot in the right seat as well, to test this out. I'd be interested to know if you were able to get anything on the windshield.
  8. I'd love to see a picture when you get a chance.
  9. You might look on Barnstormers or Beechtalk for a used one. Or you could go G5 for a new one. It's a game changer for an IFR student and new IFR pilot. BTW... I love my Avidyne navigator!
  10. You might look at ProAv at KPHD. They maintained the Mooney I'm flying for nearly 20 years and are currently maintaining it's replacement Mooney, an Acclaim. I was very impressed with their Mooney knowledge and experience.
  11. Reasons I have built in O2 I live in Denver so within 7K feet of O2 altitudes and by the time you leave the pattern to the west, you'll be higher than that. I fly a turbo Mooney which makes it easy to put yourself into O2 altitudes quickly. Always having the O2 option is worth the effort to have it built in and not have to load the tank, fittings, etc for each flight. Not having a portable bottle taking up space in the cockpit. Solving the bottle filling issue Use a Pulse-Demand system. I use the Mountain High system which gives me 4X usage out of the bottle. Find a local maintenance shop that will refill the bottle. This is usually a cheap and easy option. There is a shop on my field that will come to my hangar and fill my bottle for about $60. Set up your own fill station. Or find a friend who has one. @Warren has a two bottle fill station in his hangar and has offered to fill my built-in bottle. Away from home, I often ask the FBO if they'll fill the bottle and how much it costs. On the rare occasion that it's in the reasonable range of $50 to $75, I'll usually have them fill it, if needed. More often than not, I'll never need to fill it away from home because of the MH pulse demand system extends the use of O2 so much. A recent example: @Vance Harral and I flew KBJC to KANK for brunch yesterday. We planned to cross the mountains below 14K ft and would only be at that altitude for a few minutes. The whole flight would only be 30 min. On the return trip, there were clouds moving in along the highest ridge lines causing some mountain obscuration. While we had several options, one of them was to climb over the top. The tops turned out to be right at 18K. It was quick and easy in the Encore to climb on top. A quick call to ATC at 17,500 got us a pop up IFR clearance and permission to FL180. We had no intentions of climbing that high when we left the hangar that morning, but it was a nice option to have. It was also nice to just reach behind the seats, pull out the cannulas, plug into the ships O2, and keep going. If we'd been at FL180 or higher for more than just a few minutes, we'd have pulled out the masks that were on board also. I don't use all the capability in my Mooney on every flight, but having O2, always available, and easy to access, is one reason I like having it built-in.
  12. No offense, but this is a terrible idea in my mind. I'd replace the DG with an HSI. Have that wired up to your Avidyne. Next to an autopilot, nothing makes IFR flying quite as easy as an HSI.
  13. I'd love to take one of these up for a flight.
  14. There was certainly a risk. But there is risk every time we fly. In my estimation, the risk was exceedingly small. I was also flying in south east Texas which is flat, unpopulated, with endless landing opportunities. I wouldn't take off on a flight across the Rockies, night or IMC, in such a situation. But in this case, it was acceptable for me.
  15. Yep, I'm holding off on paint for my plane until there is absolutely nothing left to do. And I know you say it's your forever plane right now, but things can change, and at some point you will sell it. You'll probably only get 25% of the cost of the paint job back when you sell. Another reason I'm putting mine off as long as I possibly can.
  16. Time for a final PIREP on this saga. I'm not @Seth so don't hold me to that high standard of reporting. My annual has typically been due in August or September. I knew when I bought the plane that I'd probably have four years before I'd need an engine overhaul. I also bought the plane with the full intention to do the Encore conversion. My thought back when I was originally looking at the Mooney, was that a new modern panel and the Encore conversion would bring the UL up to a good place. I did the panel towards the end of the first year of ownership. And then I just flew it, a lot. During this time I collected parts for the Encore conversion. They're expensive and sometimes unobtainable, so giving myself few years to collect them, worked well. Each year at annual, JD would ask if I was ready to do the full Encore conversion. I always said "no", let's wait till next year. Finally in 2020, the engine was tired, it was just past TBO, the oil running down the belly was getting to embarrassing levels, and I knew it was time to overhaul the engine. That also meant it was time for the Encore conversion. When I dropped it off at SWTA, I thought it would be down for three months. The total work order was to include the following: Engine overhaul at Jewell Convert the engine during the overhaul from an MB to SB engine (Encore requirement) Encore airframe conversion Glareshield repair/recover by Hector at AeroComfort. Relocate the compass to the panel Replace the vacuum operated speed brakes with electric. Sign off the Annual. As it turned out, Jewell wouldn't be able to start on the engine until "late November". SWTA pulled the engine and crated it up but didn't send it to Jewell until he was ready to start on it. With lots of engines sitting around for months, it's easy for certain accessories/components to go missing. So JD suggested we hold on to the engine and ship it when Jewell was ready to start on it. Jewell finally said they were ready the first week of December. We sent the engine off and JD got to work on some of the other items on the list. The speed brake retro fit took more work than we anticipated. It also required some parts from Precise. There seemed to be only one person at Precise who knew anything about the process to retrofit the "old style" model 100 electric speed brakes into a Mooney wing from the vacuum speed brakes. And he ended up on an extended vacation/sick leave through the holidays. So we didn't get the required parts from Precise until late Feb. We were also missing a couple of parts for the Encore conversion. That was my fault as I was the one collecting the parts, but I'd somehow missed the middle gear doors and the counterweights for the elevators. The engine arrived at Jewell sometime around the 8th of Dec. But from a combination of COVID and the holidays, they didn't get started on the engine until late January. Because of the MB to SB conversion, there were parts that needed to be sent off for overhaul such as the fuel pump, governor, waste gate, and turbo. With the delay getting into the engine, those items took longer as well. We had planed a long weekend trip to Big Bend for the last week of Feb. We canceled that pretty early as it was just obvious the plane wouldn't be ready. We also had a week booked in Mexico for Spring Break in March and were planning to fly the Mooney. We were holding out hope we'd have the plane back for that trip up until the end of Feb but by then realized it wouldn't be ready then either. By late Feb, I was checking in on a daily basis. And pushing for information from Jewell about the status. Finally on March 8th Jewell said the engine had just come out of the testing room and was getting crated for shipment. They said it might be ready to go the next day. In the couple of weeks prior, I'd decided to try and sort out return shipment for the engine, myself. We'd heard of a couple of engines that had gone missing in shipment and also transit time between the big cities of Kennet, MO and Smithville, TX is at least a week. And I didn't want to spend a week. I reached out to my friend an former Mooney owner Doug in Dallas. He's in logistics for American Airlines and said he could hook me up with shipping. The engine was finally crated and ready for pickup late on the 9th of March. The shipping company picked it up at 8am on the 10th and dropped it off at SWTA at 8:30am on the 11th. JD and Laura worked seemingly around the clock to get it back in the plane and finish up the last few items on the list. I went to Texas on the 29th of March with the intention to stay until the job was finished and then fly it home. I was there two weeks. The first week was consumed just finishing up the install. There are just so many things involved with the installation of a turbo engine. It's a big job. The second week was a lot of testing, engine runs, setting up the fuel flow, RPM, and MP for the new engine and new settings. The max MP is now 39", max RPM is 2600, and FF is around 25 gph. I flew the now 252 Encore home to Denver on Sunday the 11th of April. It's strong and seems to keep the oil inside the engine which is a very nice change. There are a few remaining squawks Right inner gear door - sometime during the flight back from Texas, a linkage in the inner gear door mechanism broke leaving the door open and back against the belly. It was easy to see which connecting rod was broken upon a quick inspection after landing. JD called Mooney and they had the part on the shelf. It was in my hands two days later, quickly installed and this is now working correctly. Middle gear doors - Mooney only had one door (we bought it) and a couple of other places that said they had a set, turned out to be errors in inventory. So we're flying without the middle doors which are often removed anyway because they hang so low. I'll install mine as soon as Mooney makes me a second one. No idea on that time frame. #1 EGT probe. This started acting up on the flight back to Denver. I've since replaced the probe. It was probably just a loose connection, but I took the opportunity to install a new probe. It's working well now. Fuel Flow indication - I've had non-stop issues with the FF indication for the last year or so. We put on a new transducer with the new engine. I'm now looking at the wiring as the probable issue. We worked on it just a bit this last weekend and it might be resolved. EDM900 Settings - JPI sent us a file with the Encore red lines for the EDM900. That is all working fine but a few settings still need adjustment. K factor - the fuel flow read out is not 100% correct yet so need to adjust this %HP - this also needs adjustment as the engine is now 220 HP up from 210. These are all minor issues and I'm still flying it to break-in the cylinders. But overall I think this whole process was entirely worth it. I now own an Encore with a much higher resale value than the 252. It also has a much higher useful load. I'd misstated in my earlier post, but the new Useful Load is 1068 lbs. When I bought the plane the UL was 796 lbs. Pictures of Hector's handiwork on the glare shield. We also eliminated the screws holding it in place. It's just a nice snug fit. Notice the leather wrap on the center bar and the missing compass. The compass in it's new location. Now that the vacuum gauge is not being used, I was not as hesitant to drill a hole through the bottom of that piece of the center console to route my O2 line to the MH O2D2. It's a nice clean installation and out of the way. The only thing I'm not 100% happy with is the way the electric speed brakes go in. This is the approved installation method from Precise flight. Anything else would have involved a re-skin or skin patch on the wing. I didn't want to spend the time or money for that at this time. I'll likely do that if/when I get the plane repainted. I still think this is a small price to pay for having an all electric airplane. The part I don't like is obviously the chrome "cap" on the speed brake cassette. It's tight and only proud about a mm. But it's certainly not as nice as flush with the wing surface. It was painful to be down for 6 months. But totally worth it in the end. I'm not sure I'd feel the same way if I started out ownership with this level of maintenance and down time. It was made palatable by the memories of five years of quality flying. And the knowledge that I'll probably have another 10 years of even better flying in front of me after this effort. I can't thank JD and Laura at SWTA enough for all their efforts on this project. I'm very privileged to be in the seemingly exclusive group of their customers. They're trying to expand and hire additional mechanics. But right now it's just the two of them and they can only get so much work out the door each day. And so I also own a beer or two to a long list of their customers who where held up while they finished up this huge job on N252AD.
  17. This is where I am as well. Normally I'd say fly it for a year first. See how it goes with regular flying. This will tell you a couple of things... or more. Is the plane truly airworthy and worthy of upgrading. If the first year of regular flying reveals major problems, you might re-think putting big money into a panel or you might spend that money just to keep it flying. If it sails through the first year with you flying 100 to 150 hours and all is good, you'll feel better about upgrading stuff. Is this truly the airplane for you. Either you'll love it, or you'll be lusting after a J, or K, or a twin, or a plastic airplane with a parachute. If you love it after 150 hours, by all means spend the money and upgrade it. If after 150 hours you're already thinking of upgrading, then you probably don't. You'll also learn exactly where your priorities are with regards to the panel. For me the priorities are Engine monitor, Autopilot, WAAS Navigator. You'll know your priorities after a year of flying. Bonus: Spend the year finding the right shop to do the work. This is not a trivial undertaking. Take your time, visit a few shops, talk to people, get to know them., build a relationship... before you drop your bird off for 6 months and $$$$$ of work. The one reason to move ahead now is that regardless if you keep the plane or not, it will be much more enjoyable to fly and you'll have a much easier time selling it if it has an autopilot.
  18. I picked up a trace of rime ice this afternoon descending into Denver from FL180. We were on top at FL180 but then instructed to descend maintain 16, then 14, then 13, etc. We were IMC from about 17K to 14K and picked up just a trace. Hot prop, pitot heat, descending, no problem.
  19. My experience with an M20C was that Carb ice really wasn't a thing. It did happen once for me, 12,000 ft. IMC, lots of summertime moisture, roughly 50° F. It didn't last long and a touch of carb heat and it cleared right up. I flew many hours in IMC and that was the one and only time I had carb ice. I've picked up a little rime ice, twice in my K. Both were short events as I was able to quickly get out of the icing conditions. It never effected the windshield or vision.
  20. My 252 spends more time LOP than not. My rule of thumb is simple, never run LOP over 65% power. That way the "red box" doesn't exist, your engine is working easy, temps are cool, and it all take you to TBO without the need to replace cylinders or turbo on the way. Your engine will thank you. Want to go faster? Go higher. (65% x 210hp)/13.7 = 9.96 or 10 gph - TSIO360MB. Fly at 10gph or less LOP in the 252 for 65% or less HP. (65% x 220hp)/13.7 = 10.43 or 10.5 gph - TSIO360SB. Fly at 10.5 gph or less LOP in the Encore for 65% or less HP. I flew my 252 at 9.5 gph for 5 years and the final 700 or so hours to TBO.
  21. This is the perfect situation for a non WAAS G1000 Mooney. Buy it at a significant discount because the owner wouldn't step up and buy the WAAS upgrade back when it was available. SWTA did the first WAAS upgrade in a G1000 Mooney back in 2016, so it's been around awhile and the owner had plenty of time to get it done. But he didn't, and now the Ovation will take a huge hit on the value. Then the buyer will take it home and register it in Argentina where WAAS isn't available anyway and the Ovation will live out it's days in an area where WAAS isn't an issue. Win, Win, if you ask me.
  22. Send me a PM and we can set up a time to talk. I can explain the entire line up and the differences of each.
  23. It WAS... but not available anymore. The current situation is... 231's stay 231's 262's stay 262's Missiles stay Missiles Rockets stay Rockets The only movement still available is that 252's can become Encores.
  24. Our one and only hobby has always been travel. Which was completely shut down by COVID. Living here in Colorado, there is plenty to see and places to go without even leaving the state. Even with all the State and National Parks closed, there is so much public land that is available and really no way to close it. So we decided to take up camping/RV'ing. I built up a 2014 4Runner to be able to pull an off road trailer and to be able to go anywhere we wanted to go. Then we found a trailer for sale in Boston. We took a weekend and drove to Boston and back to pick it up. We spent the summer and fall camping almost every weekend somewhere, but never in a camp ground. We just head into the back country and find a place to spend the weekend.
  25. Note that an autopilot will provide the largest increase in value to your airplane. We're seeing the values of airplanes being sold diverging. If you have an autopilot, the values are going up quickly and selling immediately, if you don't have an autopilot, they're actually getting harder and harder to sell.
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