MooneyCFII

Being able to fix one's airplane in the field is a useful skill. I have overhauled my own engines on occasion. Changing props, mags, jugs, or fuel system components isn't that big a deal. I can't think of a field repair on my Mooney I would not be willing to undertake myself ... under the watchful eye of a licensed A&P, of course. But there are a lot more people out there with FAA A&P licenses than you might expect.

I did the Monroy extended fuel conversion. That increases the capacity of the wing tanks from 72 to 110 gallons. That by itself is almost enough in my 231 to do the leg from Hawaii. Normally that would be the longest leg you would ever encounter. I also added a 100 gallon TurtlePac ferry tank in place of the rear seats. Potentially my fuel capacity was 210 gallons. At 18 gph during climb (fully loaded it would take me 1 hour to get to FL230 at 90% power) and 9gph cruise at 60%, I had 22+ hours of fuel. I never used the full capacity of the TurtlePac but came close on the longest flight. I use 3 hours as my minimum reserve for a long flight. So for a 17 hour flight I would want 20 hours of fuel on board. I applied for and received approval (form 337) for a permanent modification to allow the ferry tank to be plumbed into the right tank fuel plumbing. I have a second fuel selector in the side wall just behind the door that allows me to select between right wing tank and ferry tank. It is a nice Andair selector with markings for "Right" and "Ferry". Both the feed and return lines are plumbed through this selector. So to use fuel from the ferry tank I would select "right" on the main fuel selector and "ferry" on the secondary fuel selector. I had no trouble using all but about 1 gallon from the ferry tank. There are no transfer pumps. I don't trust transfer pumps. People have gone down when they couldn't transfer fuel in flight. I like that I select a tank, including the ferry tank, and that tank feeds fuel to the engine using the standard pumps and plumbing. Even if I lost my electrical system I would be able to burn all my fuel and get to where I could land. No. Think about it. Even if your airplane burns one quart ever 5 hours, my 17.5 hour leg would only burn 3.5 quarts. That would be no problem. As it is, I know I get 12-15 hours per quart when the engine is running for extended periods at normal operating temperature. I did have a filter in my own electric pump. All fuel came from sealed barrels directly from the refinery. No partial barrels. There should have been no contamination. As it was, I do think I got contaminated fuel somewhere. The one place where I think it might have happened was 100 hours prior to the actual problem so I tend to discount that. Where the contamination came from will forever be a mystery. Would filtering the fuel have solved the problem? Maybe. There just wasn't very much contamination. But there was enough to cause a partial restriction of the fuel screen in the gascolator and to get caught in the fuel screen in the flow divider. It really was a tiny amount overall. But, to quote Mercutio, "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough." The quality of weather sources varied greatly from place to place. Africa was pretty minimal. In other places (Oman, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, and Singapore) the weather information was pretty good. Still, I am dependent on weather forecasting and not much enroute weather. In Singapore, Australia, and NZ ATC was able to steer me around weather. In the rest of the world I was pretty much on-my-own. Now that is not as bad as it sounds because the tropics do not tend to have frontal systems, only random CBs. But there are a LOT of CBs out there. So I found my eyes and my Stormscope to be of great use. Most of the time that was sufficient. However I did end up penetrating a CB just before it became mature and the lightning started, so it did not show up on my Stormscope. I was upset by severe turbulence during that. I am glad that I teach upset recovery. I was rolled to about 120 degrees and 30 degrees nose-up during the upset. One of the things I did try was to use others on the ground superimposing my ground track on the satellite IR charts and trying to steer me around the worst of the cells. That did not really work. I can only guess it is because of the delay in getting the satellite IR charts out there. I am guessing they are on the order of 30 minutes late -- useless for avoiding cells. I ended up using my eyes and my stormscope to penetrate the ITCZ. Yes. I used an Iridium phone. I equipped the aircraft with an Iridium antenna on the top of the fuselage. It just looks like another GPS antenna. I opted for the IridiumGO which uses my smartphone as a user interface. My smartphone interfaces through the audio panel bluetooth interface thus giving me 4 effective coms, i.e. VHF1, VHF2, HF, and satphone. Yes, some. I had spare plugs, and a pretty decent toolkit, which I ended up using rather extensively. I had oil filters, safety wire, etc. I debated carrying a spare magneto and opted not to, which turned out to be a bad decision. Next time I will carry a spare mag and a buzz-box to be able to set mag timing. Good questions.

I think that a top-mounted antenna will work better, at least on the ground. Moving the wire farther away from the airplane makes it a lot easier to feed and it makes for a more efficient antenna. The losses in the wire increase at the low impedance caused by the wire being so close to the belly. OTOH the small gauge wire that José uses is going to experience a lot of resistive loss too. It probably all evens out in the end. One thing I do know, his will be cheaper than mine. I paid a fair bit for aircraft antenna parts from Dayton Granger. My antenna probably cost $1000 in parts, not to mention the stiffeners in the belly skin to carry the loads from the stand-offs.

Yeah, probably. My flight is over. Perhaps the operational questions would be good here or even in another thread. I know *I* learned a lot from the flight, starting with why I picked a 231. A 252 would have been a slightly better choice but the differences are pretty small, especially when one slows down to achieve better efficiency. Yes. It doesn't matter if we ever find her. It was her attempt that was important. For me it was walking 30,000 nm in her shoes to see what it was like. Much of my flight was NORDO. Most of my flight was without useful weather information. It was literally me and the airplane against the elements. OK, I had GPS, satphone, working HF, etc. But that didn't help me actually make the flight. It only kept me in touch with others. It didn't help me with weather. I had to figure that out on my own as I was flying. I think, in some small way, I *NOW* understand, and in ways that were not possible before. I did my best to bring people along with me but there is no substitute for sitting in the cockpit for 10+ hours at a time, wondering if you are going to be able to punch through the weather and get where you are going. No one can help you. No one can make the decisions for you.

Urine is corrosive. Nasty stuff if it just sits there. I never found any urine residue on the belly but I haven't looked too persistently. When I use the relief tube I normally follow it up with water to rinse the inside of the funnel, the tubing, and the venturi. I didn't want the relief tube stinking up the cockpit. (Don't you just love these frank conversations?)

Today we have Iridium, SPOT, GPS, Stormscope, RADAR, Satellite-based weather spotting, and a host of other things that make a trip like this easier. Hey, I love HF. My first choice was to put the antenna on the top but the Mooney's pivoting tail with the 11" travel at the top of the vertical stabilizer made crafting a reliable, long-lived antenna very difficult. What I have on the belly is pretty darned robust. Only a gear-up landing is going to take it out. OK, it won't work well on the ground but I don't care. On the ground I have other means to communicate. So, after evaluating all options I decided to do what I did. Bonnie modeled it and determined it would work adequately well. In fact, it works better than the models suggest it should. Anyone contemplating installing an HF, I recommend talking to Bonnie. After all, it is all about the antenna.

I guess it doesn't matter that much. After all, in flight, the antenna on the belly of my plane works very well, probably just as well as the antenna on top. Bonnie Crystal did a stellar job modeling how the antenna would work and what was needed to make it work well. After all, she is an electrical engineer who specializes in the design of HF antennas. As for top-mounted vs. belly-mounted, your statement is spot on in the case of VHF antennas. I specifically moved my two VHF antennas so that one was on the top and one was on the bottom. Not only did it provids better isolation between the radios (making it possible to use both VHF transceivers at the same time) but the differing radiation patterns allows me to optimize coverage simply by switching radios. It really makes a difference. That having been said, it appears that, in flight, it really doesn't make much difference whether the HF antenna is on the top or the bottom of the airplane. Your point about the survivors of a crash using the HF, well, I figured my plane is going to sink very quickly and the HF is not going to play much part in my search-and-rescue. I figure that my SPOT tracker and/or my IridiumGO is going to play a much bigger part than my HF will in securing rescue. YMMV.

Wow! Bonnie, you do good work!

Thank you. I have some really solid numbers and some fuzzy ones. Distance flown was 29,948 nm for the route. Given the turn-backs and the test flights I am confident in saying I flew 31,000 nm. 220.1 hours on the hobbs meter in 66 days. Longest leg 17.5 hours by the hobbs meter. (Pago Pago to Honolulu) My longest week was 61.7 flight hours in 7 days (Natal to Karachi) and that included a down-day for maintenance in Dakar. I realized I couldn't keep that pace up. This is where my respect for Amelia Earhart started to get really high. TAS when fully loaded and 63% power was about 147 kts and I couldn't climb higher than FL210, even with the variable waste-gate controller and the intercooler. ROC at sea level was right at 500fpm. TAS when light increased to about 165 kts at my 58% cruise power. Yes, my 231 is slower than other 231's. I don't know why but I'm going to figure it out. I can't tell you for sure what the economy was but the lowest I saw in cruise was about 14nm/gal and highest 22nm/gal. The variations are mostly due to winds. Fuel cost me anywhere from $3.50/gal to $25/gal, with the average being around $11/gal. I burned about 2200 gallons of fuel so my original estimate of 10 gph for flight planning was about right. I was told to expect to pay $1500 per barrel of avgas along the way. Fortunately it never got that high. Not many Electras flying these days. There are a lot more Twin Beeches. Still, both are very cool airplanes.

BTW, it wasn't the contamination itself that made my engine quit just N of NZ. Turns out it was vapor lock. The restriction in the fuel screen created enough of a pressure drop in the fuel line to the engine driven pump that, when combined with the high altitude and engine compartment temperature rise when I closed the cowl flaps, that vapor lock happened. I saw someone comment on my flight where I just went in circles over NZ. That was my test flight after cleaning out the fuel system. I went up to FL230 and let the engine get pretty hot looking to create a worst-case situation to determine whether I had killed the vapor monster or not. Apparently I had and left for Pago Pago pretty soon after.

Well, perhaps it is time for me to chime in here. I didn't realize there was such a thread here or I would have gotten on here sooner. But I was doing something ... and it kept me pretty occupied ... darn, can't remember what it was but I think it was important at the time ... ;-) As I read your comments I kept wanting to jump in, but it is a little late for that. Piloto: Don't argue antennas with Bonnie. She designs antennas for a living and understands them upside down and backwards. Also, I couldn't have done this trip without your long-range tank mod. Thank you. Garmin Guy: I happen to like my Aspens and IFD540. The G500 was a non-starter due to its size and requirement for backup pitot-static instruments. I teach both the GTN and IFD series. I prefer the IFD series on the basis of functionality and ergonomics. YMMV. Attached is a picture of my panel. This is just before we put the glare shield back on. There is no way the Garmin stuff would have fit. As it is, I am quite happy with it and reliability is quite good. It got a pretty good workout over the last two months. ;-) Everyone else, thank you for following along and being so supportive. Sorry I couldn't make OSH but that comes under the heading of "stuff happens". Spirit and I will be there next year. And, yes, I was disappointed. But I wasn't about to leave Hamilton until I was 100% sure that Spirit's fuel system was 100% again. We did take most of the fuel system apart to look for contamination in other places. That crap that was in the gascolator screen was found all the way up in the flow-divider screen. All the fuel system components from the gascolator forward were cleaned and flushed out. That is where my week went. Now that I am on this thread I will be happy to answer questions. "Pinky"

Um, well, I like Carl but I think he may be mistaken about the 201 being usable. Speeds and power settings are completely different from the real airplane. (The sim doesn't stall until about 30KIAS.) I borrowed a known-stock 201 with a good engine and did some data collection and sent that off to FTS. The electric pitch trim is WAY too fast. There is no manual pitch trim. Flaps do not work as they do in the Mooney. (They used a flap model with presets instead of having to hold the switch to extend the flaps.) It is all little stuff and I have reported it to them. And it may be that they have fixed all the problems and I just haven't received V2.0 yet. It would be good if others wanted the Mooney and wanted a different panel from the one I spec'd. Also we need an Acclaim and an Ovation. That requires new flight dynamic data from the 201. Personally, I spec'd a 201 but I really would like to have a 231 or 252. But how many different planes do you need? I wanted them all because most of the planes FTS offers on the TT are here at my home field and I wanted to be able to make it easy for my neighbors to use the TT. Most people don't need very many aircraft models.

When you purchase the TouchTrainer from FlyThisSim, you get all the aircraft from one manufacturer with your purchase. You have a choice of current-production aircraft from Piper, Cessna, Beechcraft, Diamond, and Cirrus. So if you choose Beechcraft, you get both the Bonanza and the Barron, and each comes with several panels including steam gauges, Aspen, G500, or G1000. You pay extra for each additional manufacturer's aircraft. Since I use mine for flight instruction, I opted to get all the manufacturers. Now, since I do a fair bit of instruction in Mooneys, I wanted a Mooney. But FTS did not offer a Mooney. So I cut a deal to pay to build the first Mooney sim. I got to choose the panel layout but they are free to sell this to other customers as well. In the case of the Mooney, they only let me pick one panel layout and one model of aircraft. I opted for a 201 with HSI, Garmin GNS530W, and a full King stack with King autopilot. I figured this would be a really good middle-of-the-road Mooney that most Mooney owners would be comfortable flying IFR. If your Mooney doesn't have a GNS530 then just turn it off and practice your IFR using the King radios. If you don't have an HSI then just don't use it. Anyway, that was my logic. I do recommend the TT. Frankly, I find it more usable than the Redbird sims. I have now done some of my own training the Redbird and I have run a student through a Redbird sim. I found it had some very annoying quirks and bugs. You also are locked into a very limited number of aircraft and panels. The TT allows customization of the panel and all the switches and knobs work due to the touch screen. I know Redbird has the marketing traction but for me, the TT is easier to use and MUCH more cost-effective. That is my opinion. But I did vote with my wallet.

(Gawd I hate stupid forum software. I went to bed in the middle of answering this and when I finally posted this morning, I had been logged out and my entire response lost. Why can't we use an email group? <sigh>) Where to start? I think the answer to your question is actually a book, not a message in a forum. First, loading yourself up to fail is not a learning experience. I don't think it helps you to learn at all. I think that isolating individual skills and exercising them until they become "muscle memory" is the right answer. That implies using the sim for repetition on simple stuff until you reach the level of unconscious competence. (Stages of learning: Unconscious incompetence -- you don't know that you don't know. Conscious incompetence -- you have been introduced so you know what you don't know -- the beginning of learning a new skill Conscious competence -- you know the skill and when you focus you can do it -- where we are late in the instruction cycle Unconscious competence -- you perform the skill well even when you aren't thinking about it.) One of the problems I have seen with most GA IFR owner-pilots is that they never really get beyond the level of conscious competence and that is a VERY perishable commodity. The airlines don't have that problem because the pilots exercise the skills on a daily basis and then do recurring training every 6 months or so in the sim on things they don't do every day. They operate at the level of unconscious competence most of the time ... on the automation. Flying the "raw" for them is not an unconscious process and we have seen the erosion of basic flying skills in the airlines. (I have a friend who used to be a test pilot for one of the biz-jet manufacturers. His ability to "fly the raw" was gone when he came to me. Nonetheless, he is a qualified ATP flying high-tech kerosene-burners.) So the sim is great for just maintaining competency. It doesn't matter if you can log the time or not. Just being able to fly the sim, maintain altitude, heading, AS, and RoC is a huge win. (Think about it, how long does it take you to settle down and do a good job of hand flying your airplane on the gauges? And it *is* hard to convince yourself to hand-fly when the AP does a good job and ATC has you poking buttons in the FMS all the time.) Break down your exercises into simple, repetitive things. Enter a hold from different directions over and over. Intercept and nail the localizer over and over. The goal is to push yourself over the edge from conscious competence into unconscious competence. When you get to the point where you can do it while carrying on a conversation with your wife about the kids, you know you are there. :-) As I said at the beginning of this, the right answer is to turn this into a book. Maybe I will. In the mean time, hopefully this has given you some ideas. And I think this should probably turn into another thread.

The Mooney 201 sim for the FTS TouchTrainer will work without the Visx external view. I equipped mine with the external view because I like to be able to simulate the transition from the gauges to visual when breaking out at minimums. I am still waiting for FTS to fix the errors in the initial version. There are some small systems problems but the big problem was that the flight-dynamics were off. I hope to see a new version any time now.

In the continuing saga of the FlyThisSim TouchTrainer, FTS has sent me the first iteration of the Mooney sim for the TT. I wanted a representative M20 that pretty much any Mooney pilot would be comfortable flying so I opted for an M20J. The panel is a standard "6-Pack" with an HSI. Avionics are a GNS530W GPS/FMS, KX155 NavCom, KR87 ADF, and KN63 DME. (I wanted to be able to fly and teach any published approach.) In addition to the standard engine instrumentation it also has a JPI700 engine monitor. There were a few bugs but I sent them back a bug list and they are working to remove them. Hopefully they will get the squawk list cleared quickly and can offer the sim to others. Now that I have had my TT for a couple months I have become rather attached to it. It is nice to be able just walk over, boot it up, and fly an approach. I believe that, as a result, my proficiency now is higher than it has been any time since I got my instrument rating (39 years ago). I like that I can switch to an aircraft with a G1000, G500, Aspen 1500, or steam gauges just so I can gain experience with hardware I don't have. I like being able to fail systems and then practice. For the first time in a long time I am really comfortable with partial panel. (I feel that if I had to, I could fly an ILS to minimums using just needle/ball and airspeed.) So 'Rocket', burn some 100LL and come visit me. I'll show you the sim and then we can go fly some form. BTW, here is what the new panel looks like: http://mooneyspace.com/gallery/image/36298-new-flythissim-touchtrainer-m20j-panel/

Redbird has done an excellent job of marketing themselves. As a result of what I heard at last-year's "Migrations" I decided to do my CFII add-on at Redbird in San Marcos. I wanted to both experience their sim in a training environment and to see how they are using the sim in new ways to speed and improve instruction. I am now using their sims again with one of my students -- a new, low-time Mooney pilot who has decided to get his instrument rating. With something like 50 hours in the Redbird sims, i.e. the TD and the FMX, I think I can say I have a pretty good idea how they work. They are nice but they are very limited in the number and types of aircraft that they can simulate. Avionics complement is fixed due to the hardware switch panel overlays. Knobs tend to work backwards or not at all if turned too quickly. This is especially annoying when trying to change the OBS or heading bug while busy in a turn during an instrument approach. The software appears finicky with the instructor's console doing strange things and crashing often. As a result of this experience I have voted with my own money on the TouchTrainer from FlyThisSim. I am sold on the idea that FTS can create panels that really operate like the airplanes I have on my line so the transference for my students is very good. "That which is learned first is learned best," is one of the key parts of teaching. So learning something one way in the sim and then getting into the plane where things are different doesn't help. In fact, when I was first considering getting a Redbird LD I was seriously considering reconfiguring the panels of the planes to match the sim. (I was going to do this because I was going to redo the panels in the planes anyway.) With the TT I won't have to do that and I will be free to select what I feel to be the right avionics complement for the planes and then have FTS adjust the sim to match. Of course, as with all things, your milage may vary. ;-)

Well, I happen to agree with you almost exactly. So the question is, "what will be the first Mooney sim they produce?" I have "bent" the process in my desired direction by being "the guy with the coinage". They have agreed to produce *one* Mooney for me for the money I have paid. I told them that I want my one Mooney to be the J and the K. My logic is that the airframe and panel are essentially identical and the only real mod is to change the altitude behavior of the engine. Hopefully they will agree. I also think that will cover the greatest number of users in one shot. Most of my students own J's, or F's with the J mods. An F with the J mods is close enough to a J that it really doesn't make that much difference for flying instrument approaches. The panels are a bit different but not hugely so. We'll see. Do others agree or disagree and why? Thanks!

Well, that is the TouchTrainer from FlyThisSim. They have quite a library of instruments, components, and avionics. In fact, they call their avionics simulation SimAVIO. So once they create the Mooney flight dynamic model we can have pretty much any panel we want in it. One cool idea would be to be able to "try out" a new panel before you ask the shop to build it for you. Fly your new panel around in your airplane on the sim for a couple of weeks to decide if you want to change anything.

If you could have a one Mooney model configured only one way, which would it be? My feeling is that a 'J' with six-pack, HSI, 430W, and a KX155 for a #2 nav/com is probably the most generic Mooney out there. Thoughts?

Wow, nice. BTW, you are local to me. We ought to get together.

Well, I have been dealing with both FTS and Redbird rather extensively. Seems that there are no universal rules but there are some broad guidelines. Sims seem to fall into a couple of broad categories with the Basic Air Training Device (BATD) and Advanced Air Training Device (AATD) being the ones of greatest interest to mere mortals like me. (This implies something about the depth of one's wallet.) Typically, with the BATD you can log all the standard sim training for an instrument rating (10 hours) and you can do recurring training for currency. This seems to cover about 90% of the need for a sim. The AATD goes one step further and allows one to log ALL the hours necessary for an instrument rating and it may be used to perform the instrument proficiency check (IPC). I can see where it would be nice to put someone in the AATD and get them back up to speed, and then sign off their IPC without ever so much as a whiff of burned avgas. But as I understand it, each sim receives its own set of "operating limitations" that determines what may and may not be logged in that particular sim. So that implies to me that not all BATDs or AATDs are created equal. You still need to go read the FAA certification letter that comes with the sim to know in detail what you may and may not log. Still, it appears to me that the FTS TouchTrainer provides a lot of bang-for-your-buck. At first I thought that the touch screen would be hard to use and it is a little awkward for knobs, but it works flawlessly for switches and pushbuttons. It really is nice having all the controls be where you expect them to be and to behave the way you want them to behave. Case in point, when I visited the FTS factory, I was able to see them working on some systems malfunction simulation. The TT simulates the systems in the target aircraft in detail. Systems failures are as correct as they can be because they simulate the components in each subsystem. They were working on a particular system failure for their Cirrus sim where the sim wasn't quite behaving like the real aircraft. (It was an electrical system failure mode.) That level of detail appeals to me a lot because the troubleshooting a pilot or A&P would do would be identical to the real plane and not just sort-of similar. This is what I would like to have for a procedures trainer.

Well, I do have my CFII rating. But if your comment is meant to suggest that a CFII must be present for the pilot to be able to log the time toward currency then I believe you may be in error. As I understand it, a pilot may use the FTS TouchTrainer for IFR currency without the presence of a CFI. That is what FTS says clearly on their web site. See the first bullet item at http://flythissim.com/touchtrainer.php. It states, "Train, Maintain and Log Time. Log IFR Currency without an Instructor." So, if they are not lying, you do not need a CFII present to log time for currency. I do know that some some BATD's the maximum interval for recurring training using the sim is 2 months rather than 6 months. That seems reasonable to me. Given how easy it is to bang out 6 approaches on the sim, having to do that every 2 months is not a hardship. Flying IFR is a perishable skill. With the cost of avgas what it is, how many of us actually fly enough to stay *really* proficient? I see the sim as a way to stay proficient without breaking the bank. I figured my break-even point at about 100 hours. Between maintaining my own currency and instructing, I expect to break even in about year.

Wilco. And thanks for the offer.