gsxrpilot

It's certainly in the eye of the beholder (owner/pilot)... I've always thought the short bodies look a lot better with the 201 windshield than with the original vertical glass. And the long bodies look good, except for the long rear windows with the bulkhead showing through it. Personally the mid-bodies are the best proportioned if you ask me... especially the ones with a little longer nose. And I really like the slightly longer rounded windows.

Interesting... they couldn't find one closer?

Yes, mine cost about $50/yoke to disconnect and reconnect the wiring through the yokes after getting them covered. And worth every penny.

During one of these many panel upgrades, you should let Hector at Aerocomfort cover your yokes.

Just click the Option button... this is only available to the person making the post.

I might make one small change in your route and that is instead of HVE over fly OAB instead or maybe even land at KCNY. You're going right by it, you might as well overfly Canyonlands, Moab, and Arches National Parks. Back at Christmas time we flew KFLG to KCNY via the Grand Canyon corridor as well. That, plus Glen Canyon dam, Horseshoe Bend, Canyonlands, are spectacular from the air. All of it!

I'm not an A&P, CFI, nor any other cool alphabet titles... but I'd welcome a chance to get in that airplane with @chrixxer and see what it's doing first hand.

It's plain as day.

Fair enough but I've seen plenty of pilots trying to do the LOP thing stop at the first hint of roughness... only to later find it's the same "auto rough" we feel anytime we're over water, mountains, or other unsuitable landing area. I was doing the same thing until a more experienced pilot showed me... "that's not rough... keep pulling the mixture... now this is rough, so richen it back just a touch"

Yes. For determining in flight, when you are LOP and how much LOP you are, the LF mode is perfect. I still use it after hundreds of hours of LOP operations. But for the purposes of the GAMI lean test or sweeps, you really don't care when LOP happens and how lean you are. You're just trying to generate data for download later. For that, just leaving the EDM in it's default mode is fine. And possibly even better for doing these very sloooooowwww, GAMI sweeps.

Yep, this is good advice. Just lean as slow and steady as you can until the engine is running really rough. Not until the first hint of roughness, but just before it quits at mixture cut-off. Then push it back up slowly too rich. Keep uploading and sharing the data. This is helpful for others just learning how to use an engine monitor as well. So thanks.

We all operate with limited budgets. And so with an eye towards protecting my investment and the lives of those who fly with me, the very first money I spend on my Mooneys is an engine monitor and working, accurate, fuel gauges (CiES). These are not luxury items like a nice autopilot or moving map GPS. So unless I'm going to just use my Mooney for lunch runs and pattern practice, I can't think of many parameters more important than fuel. I realize this is of outsized importance with the M20K's (possibly others) because of the flapper's in the filler necks and therefore being unable to accurately determine the volume of fuel from the tank filler neck. This includes looking, dipping, etc. There's no way to accurately know the volume of fuel. When I bought my 252 there was a wish list of things I wanted to do to improve it. But I flying it home from NE Ohio to Texas with stock fuel gauges, a Hoskins totalizer, and an EDM 700, was all I needed to see. I immediately ordered and EDM900 and CiES senders for it. The result is I can confidently use the range afforded by this wonderful traveling machine. I've made other upgrades as funds have allowed, but top of the list is keeping the engine running and the prop turning. That means an engine monitor with good fuel gauges and senders to feed it accurate data.

A bit late to the party here... I like flying high as well. And not just for the wind. Altitude is range when the prop stops making power. I like keeping the glide ring on my ForeFlight screen as large as possible. Having said that, when I owned a C, my default altitude eastbound was 13,500. It flies fine up there and just sips the fuel. I flew my C east from Seattle to Omaha and then south to Austin. It was with my wife and our dog and so I never topped 11,500. And it was no problem. Our route was roughly Seattle to Kalispell, West Yellowstone, Omaha. We stayed over big wide valleys the whole time with plenty of options. Have fun, enjoy the trip. Long solo cross countries are one of the things I really enjoy with my Mooney.

You want to ping @mooniac58, he's the administrator.

A 252 with long range tanks will go further than anyone wants to go in a piston single. I kinda wish I had the long range tanks in mine. Although I'd only use them when solo. My wife would rather take an extra suitcase, and doesn't want to sit in the plane more than 4 hours at a stretch anyway.

Thanks for posting the Savvy graphs. I don't see a good run-up mag check on either. Or if there is a good mag check there, you've got some ignition issues. Do a nice and slow mag check. Set power to a steady RPM, I use 1500. When you switch off one mag, let it run there for 30 seconds. Then back to both for 30 seconds, then the other 30 seconds. Better yet, go fly and do an inflight mag check, nice and slow, just as prescribed in the Savvy Test Profile. Post the resulting data. And what @Yetti said, get a different A&P.

The correct answer here is Lockhart, TX. It's a 10 min flight from Austin and the Capital of Texas BBQ. We'll talk later when you get to Austin.

Yep, I read his articles on the K's. He wrote one on the 231's and then another on the 252's. Next thing I knew N6XM was up for sale and N252AD became my forever Mooney.

Let us know when you get to Austin. I can definitely recommend the good BBQ, actually the best Texas BBQ anywhere. And there are lots of other things to do as well.

No, I really like my 252. But I wish she was still flying somewhere. It was a really special C.

A blast from the past. My favorite M20Charlie. RIP

Thanks. That could be the autopilot or it could be the shop that installed it, problems with the original servos, etc. It's obviously not causing these problems with all of their installs. And if the GFC500 and 600 were equivalent except for cost, you wouldn't see @donkaye and several others on this board pushing Garmin so hard to approve the GFC600 for Mooneys.

Can you provide details? All I've seen are examples where the 3100 is working great. On paper the 3100 is equivalent to the GFC600, a step above the GFC500.

I disagree. No autopilot, no WAAS GPS, no engine monitor, non-standard panel layout, no HSI. For the same money you should get at least one, maybe two of those items. For an additional $5K you'll get two or three of them and for an additional $10K you can get a plane with all of them.

Damn, values are going up! I should have bought the last one you posted.