wombat

My suggestion here is not a recipe for absolute safety, but maybe it's something that can help a little, some of the time. I'd like to do something to help. Hand wringing and finger pointing doesn't seem to me to be helpful so I tried to make a suggestion that would help at least a little. What you are saying sounds a little like the hazardous attitude of Resignation. I think we can make a difference even if we don't have absolute control over it. https://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/ALC/course_content.aspx?cID=723&sID=1448&preview=true The antidote for that is "I’m not helpless. ?I can make a difference. You do bring up a really good point with your friend... If I had a friend like that, what actions could I or should I take? Would it be reasonable to at some point sabotage the plane to make it so airworthy he couldn't even try to take off? Document specific provable FAR violations to send to the FAA? I've got a friend whose actions as a pilot make me cringe so much because they are risky, but as far as I know, they are legal.... He loves flying that way, but... Ugh.

Good point, I should have picked up on the fact that the pilot is pretty old and this might be a factor as well. I'll add that to the list of things to watch for. How many of us ever actually say anything to our fellow pilots when we see something that is a slight indicator of potential risky behaviors and actions? I'm a CFI and unless I'm being paid to do so, I find it really hard to criticize other people's behaviors unless it's very clearly dangerous.

I really don't like this thread. It feels to me like a lot of finger pointing and blaming and more than a little holier-than-thou. And nothing we can take away from it other than this dude's name, home address, and previous mistakes. So I'll try to change that. Based on the facts we know so far, what are some things we could do to keep ourselves, the flying fleet, and other pilots, passengers and others safe? I think we should look for things where we might be able to find a similar situation that is about to happen and intervene. By 'intervene' I mean have a friendly chat with the pilot, which might turn a little more preachy and less friendly depending on how it goes, or if you are a CFI being less willing to sign off on a BFR, or if things are actually bad enough, going to the FAA. One thing that is pretty obvious is that he's had two previous incidents. If we know anyone with even one incident it's probably worth taking extra time as a fellow pilot to watch how they behave and be willing to offer helpful advice when we see them doing things not by the book. Things like using the checklists, or fuel planning, or preflight and maintenance. And their medical, currency, and proficiency. Maybe if one of us knows a pilot like this, be willing to lend a hand and go fly with them. Either demonstrate in our own plane the behaviors we wish they had, or as a pilot-rated passenger (or low-cost CFI) to urge them to follow the correct procedures in their own plane. The ADS-B mismatch is another thing. This I think gives us advance warning that this owner isn't doing everything by the book; in my opinion it's more likely that if this thing is wrong there are other things wrong with the plane. Maybe there are significant fuel leaks and/or the fuel gauges don't work right. This could be the cause of this specific accident and if a friendly hanger neighbor had been looking, they could have chatted with this guy and helped him understand the value in following all of the regulations and ended up catching this before the plane went into the water. Anything else that we could identify before the incident itself in another pilot our ourselves where we should make take an action to prevent something like this in the future?

Interesting. I fly into KTTD occasionally so I'm somewhat familiar with the area. It sounds like he was arriving from the North to land, and when I do that I always just fly the approach directly into base, but the news reports the pilot as saying "“I was coming downwind to land in Troutdale. As I was turning to base..." So I'm a little confused what was going on. I would expect the ATC radio traffic is a more clear picture. A approach from the North with a base that far out is very typical, at the North side of the Columbia river the Portland class C has a floor of 1,700' and even further North is only has a floor of 2,000'. It's easiest to stay further East of that so you can descend at a normal rate rather than having to stay down below the C for so long.

There are cars that park long term at many airport that I know of. KBFI, KORS, 6S9, S52....I think it's pretty common

The trim motor humming but not moving is very indicative of a trim motor failure. You might give the folks at https://www.autopilotscentral.com/ a call. They IRAN'd mine and it works perfectly. Apparently there are a couple of other common problems that might be very inexpensive to troubleshoot or solve. The three microswitches in the 'trim up' and 'trim down' switches on the yoke can fail and either the normally closed parts are open, or the normally open parts are closed. But you can just take a multimeter and figure that out. The normally closed switches in the "AP Disconnect" switch in the yoke can fail and be open. This is also pretty easy to measure with a multimeter.

Yes, I did end up taking that off to get the bottom.

Worked on my door seal over the last two days. So far I've gotten the old one off and the old glue cleaned up. It was kind of painful, probably took me 5 hours. But I think there were at least three layers of old adhesive under there, so the new one should stick well. The Peerco 321 Adhesive Remover was critical to getting this stuff off. No way would it have worked without something. I bought the 3M "Yellow Super Weatherstrip and Gasket Adhesive" part 08001. We'll see how that works I guess.

I am not sure that the cable is adjusted properly. It doesn't go all the way to the panel in the cockpit, even when I have everything near the cowl flaps themselves disconnected. It moves very easily until it hits a hard stop. I didn't know that there was a mid position at all, I thought it had only 'open' and 'closed'. A few weeks ago I called Rocket Engineering and that guy said they should be 1.5" open in flight. Specifically, he said "One and a half", so if someone mis-read the book, it was him. But mine are very clearly way wrong.

Glad you figured out how to make that work! That's a pretty complex series of steps required.

@Z W I don't know if they are a normal part or a Rocket conversion part. I have been hoping to find some pictures of another K model and/or a Rocket that has a similar setup. One of the things I don't really know is if the arm coming off the torque tube is supposed to be pointing forward or aft. If it's pointing forward it's got a really acute angle to the cowl flap.

That was me on FB complaining about my cowl flaps. Here is what they look like fully closed. Yes, this is closed, not open. They about double their distance down when open. The second picture is just a little closer shot of the mechanism. In order to keep the engine cool with the cowl flaps in this position I have to be climbing at about 130 KT. But I think this is caused by the fact that I'm running about 2 to 3 GPH too lean at full rich. That's about 10%.

I'm flying mine this morning. It's 5 AM and I'm up. It won't wear off

The avionics are totally fine for basically ANY flight you might want to do. Sure, better is better, but it's also more expensive. I'd say a couple of things you can do short term: Get rid of the ADF and the Area. Get an iPad mount and use an iPad. The iPad is just as legal as the Area from Garmin for any flying and it's a way better interface, IMO Plus you can play music on it to your headphones. I see you have the S-Tec autopilot. Not bad, I had one and wow does it make things better. Other than my suggestions above, I'd leave the panel as it is for a couple of years. Then decide if you want to do the GI-275 route or the G3X route. You *could* upgrade to the GTN (6|7)50 in the meantime, but the 530 is more than capable enough and I'd just leave it. Tearing the panel open twice going to cost you an extra $10k compared to saving up and doing it once.

https://www.aircraft.com/aircraft/216677309/n651rk-1968-mooney-m20f-exec-21 And congratulations, that looks like an amazing plane, I hope you get lots of use out of it and have so much fun!!

I ordered the ADS-M1201 from Aircraft Door Seals, LLC. Is it the best? I don't know. Will it work? I'm highly confident it will.

@haymak3r Based on your name, I figured you were in the midwest. But the Willamette Valley is also fitting for making hay. My father-in-law flies out of Corvallis so I get down there fairly often. Yeah, you can get stuck away from home fairly easily there in the winter. The MVAs are quite low out there and you can get quite low with the approach at Albany or Corvallis and you could fly VFR back. Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe think of it this way... Every so often you'll need someone to go pick you up at KEUG, KCVO, or S12... But most of the time you will be able to just land at 'home'.... If you consider every flight as 2 hours of driving, but on *some* flights you need someone to go to one of the other airports to pick you up, you can calculate the average drive time per flight. A 'normal' flight 'saves' you 90 minutes (45 minutes each way) but a 'bad' flight costs you. Assuming you always go to Eugene when you can't make it to Lebanon, since every landing at KEUG requires 2 spousal drives (1 round trip to pick you up, 1 round trip to drop you off later) that's 4 hours, plus the 'regular' 2 hours for you, plus the 30 minutes for a round trip to Lebanon, so you 'lose' by 270 minutes. So it's basically a ratio of 3 to 1... If you think you'll actually land at Lebanon 3/4 of the time, it's probably worth it. This does assume that you value your spouse's 'last minute' time is the same value as yours. And that the repositioning flight is neutral value, as well as leaving the plane at Eugene for a night or two until the weather improves. In order for the average drive time to be worse, you'd need to have to be unable to land at 1/3 of the flights you take. You could leave a car or something at Eugene in the winters which would help, but you'd need an extra car.

I think there is a problem like that wire on my GTN-750Xi When I transmit while the engine at low RPM the whole engine monitor freaks out (temps show values beyond reasonable limits - CHTs of 8k degrees for 1/2 second then back to normal) And ATC says I'm kind of hard to hear sometimes, and I don't receive all that well either. This is after trying two separate GTN 750's in the same tray.

Well, long story short, I'm getting a new door seal. I replaced the storm window seal on my Mooney about a week ago. The plane has always (since I bought it last year) been quite noisy and I discovered when I pressed against the back of the storm window it would reduce the hissing quite a bit. In flight it's now incredibly obvious that the majority of the noise is now coming from the door instead of "all over" like I thought before. I'm very much looking forward to having this done.

I don't have an answer for you, but wow, that's too bad. Sounds like it's probably one of three things: A misconfiguration in the GI-275 A wiring issue A tuning/thresholds issue in the KAP-150 If you had the KFC-150 it'd be easier because you'd have the flight director to check it against

I would not call that hangar 'tight' with two planes. Check out my hangar. Driving an hour to go fly seems crazy. I lament the 15 minute drive I have. For me the nearest instrument approach is an hour drive away and there is no way I'd ever consider keeping a plane there instead of near home. Maybe take a look at historical weather and see how often the conditions are below the MVA, and if so, how long they are below. It might be faster to just wait out the weather in a hold or at another airport than to do an instrument approach and drive an hour.

This is what I got from ASEI with a replacement spinner. For mine (which I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of) the forward bulkhead is a plastic piece that fits over the front of the propeller hub that is shaped to fit with the inner wall of the spinner. You shim it forward and backward with rings like giant thin washers such that it has just a little tension on it when the back of the spinner is screwed onto the backplate.

Be sure you get the right connector for your plane. I think all of the permanent installs use the Scott connector. This is what I bought: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/pnpages/13-18992.php

It's kind of hacky, but I load up a new flight plan on my iPad with ForeFlight, then transfer that flight plan through the FlightStream to the Garmin. This overwrites the old flight plan. You can even do that with the same flight plan just to start 'fresh'.

I installed one in a 182. It worked fine. The engine (Continental O-470L ) started a bit easier with that mag. Not enough performance difference to be noticeable. It did show slightly better fuel usage (either reduced fuel burn or increased speed) but it was such a small amount I could only tell through careful measurement. Although I could run a little leaner at low power settings (wide open throttle above 10,000 MSL) where it wouldn't run smoothly before. I could tell which one was which when doing the mag checks both on the ground and in the air. Turning off the regular mag did next to nothing, a slight rise in EGT. Turning off the electronic ignition had a much bigger effect.