wombat

@Fly Boomer Yes, that was intended to be part of my "In a perfect world" statement about how I wish it worked.

Just got off the phone with EI. For fuel gauge calibration the MVP-50 has 4 or 5 calibration points with what I'm assuming is linear interpolation between them. They are user-settable, so I can set them to whatever I want. I will probably set them to read however much is in the tanks when the travel is at the full upper limit, and of course empty, and pick two spots in the middle where the it will have good linear interpolation between them. The engine percentage power is configurable too, so I can fix that too. @midlifeflyer I can set my fuel totalizer to be 105 gallons, even though the gauges will only read a maximum of 72 gallons total, so it's not quite the same problem you have on the Diamond. EI sells the EI P-300M magnetic float sensor. Much cheaper than the CIES ones (< $500 each instead of $1,100 each). So I wonder if I should do this now since the fuel tanks will be getting resealed next month anyway.... But the current ones seem to work just fine. Hmm.... If it was just the $1,000 I'd probably do it, but it's also going to be a bunch of labor to drain, remove, then re-install the sensors. Hmmm....

I'm going to call EI today and ask about this.

Yes, those are my questions too. Additionally, since the fuel senders are in the main tanks, I think there will be significant fuel added after they are full but before the monroy long range tanks are full. After the last fill-up, I set the MVP-50 to 104 gallons. The official 'book' capacity is 105. At this point after one flight since then, the 'fuel remaining' and the fuel gauges are significantly different. 41 Gallons for fuel remaining (from the fuel totalizer) vs 25 for the gauges. In a perfect world, the gauges would read correct on empty, and for all fuel added until the fuel senders reach their 'full' limit, even though that is not actually full fuel. However much they read when they hit their limit of travel is what they would read for any actual quantity of fuel above that. Or if there is a way to make it say "At least XX gallons" If I fill the tanks to completely full, the gauges would start by reading a value less than 105 total and would stay there until I consume enough fuel to let the senders start moving. Then they would be accurate down to 0 gallons. So right now I don't know how much fuel I have. If I lost a lot of fuel that didn't go into the engine, the fuel gauges might be right. But I won't know until I fill the plane all the way back up. And I don't want to do that because I'll be dripping fuel.

That makes a bunch of sense.... Occasionally having the prop creating drag instead of thrust, and having the torque be backwards as the air is driving the engine speed faster than the engine power would actually make it go is probably OK but it wears the bearings (and maybe other parts) quickly. So if you regularly do this on a descent from FL230 it'll cause the engine to need maintenance early but if you only do it on final the bearings will outlast the normal expected life of the engine before overhaul.

I'm only 4 flights into my Rocket ownership and am finding that I sometimes want to fly at much lower power settings than even the lowest cruise setting in the manual. The manual does say not to go below 25" & 2,200 RPM on the descent so I've been using that as my minimum power for everything other than final approach. This results in being way too fast in the pattern of course. The "IFR By The Numbers" configuration sheet includes a 15" and a 20" power setting so I assume those are relatively safe. My specific questions are: What is the purpose of the 'minimum descent power' and if I go below that (as long as I reduce power by no more than 1" per minute), will that cause any damage? What do other pilots use for power settings in the traffic pattern and on final?

On the new-to-me Mooney Rocket, I'm noticing that the fuel gauges show gallons, and read about 36 Gallons per side when completely full. I've got the Monroy long range tanks, so I'd expect full to be 52.5. When I was flying, they seemed to decrease at about the rate of fuel burn (20 GPH). But they are starting at a total of 72 Gallons, so when the fuel burn shows I should have 41 Gallons left, the gauges are showing I've only got about 25. I don't know if the fuel is leaking out that fast or if the gauges are miscalibrated. Guess I'll know more the next time I fuel it up, since I now have a record of what the gauges and the 'fuel remaining' from the flow meter say after having it topped off to start.

These things were not present until after I bought the plane. Bad luck for me. The tire was fine during the prebuy. I even went in a flight in the plane. But when I went to fly it on Saturday, the air came out immediately, it wouldn't even start to lift the nose. And the bird nest and eggs were all from the last week that it sat outside; all of the grass and stuff that made up the nest was brand new. Stupid busy bird.

Everything worked out well enough today and I made it back to Iowa today from Manassas. Brutal headwinds and anything less than 10,500 MSL was incredibly rough. Diverted to an airport that had a runway that was more lined up with the winds. I didn't think I was ready to land this plane with a crosswind component over 25 KT. And METAR when I finally landed: KOTM 012253Z AUTO 31017G36KT 10SM CLR 15/M04 A2969 RMK AO2 PK WND 31038/2218 SLP055 T01501039

Kind of funny. I meet the requirements to give him transition training. But I'm not comfortable enough in a Mooney right now to go fly my own plane without receiving transition training myself.

This 90 degree stem fits correctly, a straight one would not. I'll get a picture tomorrow morning.

On FlightAware, you can look at the track log and it has the exact time and position data. ForeFlight does as well, so you can just cut-n-paste them into a single spreadsheet and insert empty cells as necessary for the times to line up. If I set the time correctly in my engine monitor, that would be even easier. But it's off by a little so I had to shift it manually too Oh, and this data is for a brand C aircraft. It's just to demonstrate that the analysis can be done

@Shadrach check out my spreadsheet that uses both ForeFlight and ADS-B data to calculate fuel economy. It could do climbs too, but I wasn't really paying attention to that at that time. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ixfZQPAsKIh59g-zvnmV05KYbNdMHMJ3dWYyBAGOaMM/edit?usp=sharing

Tire is fixed. It was a pinch flat between the two halves of the wheel. Flying with Jerry H tomorrow (I hope) in some winds that are honestly 'sporty' for my first time back in the Mooney cockpit. We also got the bird nest out and rinsed the area with water.

Thanks for the offer, @jetdriven, @Shadrach has a tube too and he's planning on bringing it down on Monday morning. The shop here I was using for the prebuy will be able to install it, or we'll be able to do it ourselves, but for other reasons, I think the shop will be willing to do the install at a steeply discounted price.

Unfortunately it'll take more than just air. I found a helpful nearby RV builder who had a 2.5 gallon tank, and the air came hissing out as soon as I put it in. I don't see a puncture or anything, so I don't know what's actually wrong. Edit: I don't actually know if this tire has a tube or not. It might inflate if I just got the nose lifted to let the tire set back on its bead.

Trying to pick up my new plane (N5773S) but the nose tire is totally flat. All the shops are closed. Anyone have a 5.00 x 5 tube and tools that is looking for something to do? If not, I'll stay at the hotel a few nights and get it fixed on Monday.

My guess is you have some wire that has a resonant frequency with your cruise engine RPM. Next guess is that at cruise speed and configuration you have airflow pushing wires around in the cowling. So maybe try to cruise at a different RPM or different airspeed or configuration.

Thanks. I'll be trying my very first FS510 update on Saturday. With a brand new computer, no less.

I watch his videos on 1.75X speed on YouTube.

@GeeBee I could be snarky about how you can have all that experience and still miss my point. So what I'll say instead is that I think all of us should withhold our criticism and judgmental statements until all the facts are known and there are ways this pilot could have been doing everything right. Or at least close to right. The theories I've got so far are: Intentional so they could fly through the TFR The pilot is flat out incompetent Maybe too old. Maybe not instrument rated or current. Pilot error of inattentiveness Switched the radio to a different frequency that ATC didn't try to talk to them on? Switched the radio off? Missed multiple calls? ATC failure (Combined with a lesser pilot error of not confirming with ATC periodically) Equipment failure (Combined with a lesser pilot error again) The plane seems to fly quite a lot, but the altitudes shown in FlightAware are rarely either on the 500' mark or 1,000' mark, so I don't know for sure if they are flying IFR or VFR. If I had to guess though they are flying mostly VFR, because when Westbound their altitudes (from my spot checks) are even thousands plus 700' or 800', which is much closer to a VFR altitude than IFR. https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N91396/history

@GeeBee Why don't you tone down a notch here? I don't know what your experience is, but you don't seem to understand that there are plenty of situations that happen that don't match with your experience. Things like planes without a dedicated radio for 121.5, or areas where the frequency ATC wants you on isn't published on the chart, or that ATC might not hand you off to the next facility before you fly out of the previous one's range. I've provided several examples where the pilot could be doing everything right and by the book but could still be not able to hear or be received by ATC for some time and not know it until they make a radio call and ATC doesn't respond. And the immediate question then is how long is OK for a pilot to not have a confirmed communication with ATC to them before the pilot must take action or is in violation of some regulation. The real answer that I expect would be supported by the FAA is that it depends on a lot of things, including the pilot. You are extremely confident in your condemnation of the pilot of N91396, but you don't know what happened, and from my interactions with you, you can't, don't, or won't imagine that anything that you have not personally experienced might occur. All that being said, I suspect that the pilot of N91396 was doing something wrong. How do you fly for as long as they did in that crowded of airspace without talking directly to ATC and not think something is wrong enough to call them and ask? (9 minutes + however long it is ATC was trying to reach them before enlisting the help of other aircraft) But I don't know what their last interaction with ATC was, or how long ago it had been, or what the pilot could hear on the radio. And while I have my suspicions, what I know for sure is that this thread doesn't contain enough information for us to be sure.

@GeeBee This is the question I've been asking a lot over the last few days here....How long of not having an interaction with them can I wait before asking them before it's a violation? If someone is flying North over KCVO (Corvallis, WA) at 9,000' on an IFR flight and is on 125.8 and 5 minutes ago was the last time they had to respond to a radio call from Seattle Center, are they in violation? FYI, they are not on the correct frequency for that altitude, but it's not charted on the IFR charts. They should be on Cascade Approach on 127.5. There are several reasons why someone could not have switched over and without knowing what that reason was we don't know if there was a pilot deviation. "Last Assigned" is not necessarily the appropriate frequency. I've had flights where I was unable to receive ATC in some locations due to their transmitter failing and had to switch to a different frequency (and wait a few miles) before I could talk to them again. I'm not overthinking this, these incidents happen and we have to be able to deal with them. Just because you have not experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

@GeeBee No, at 9,000' you need to be listening to Cascade Approach or Portland Approach, not Seattle Center. If you are listening to Seattle Center which is the charted frequency, you are not watching the appropriate frequency. But if the controller missed the handoff call, how would the pilot know? Now controllers are very good at their jobs, and they usually try multiple times. But mistakes happen to both pilots and controllers.

@Hank Thanks for pointing that out. I assume that ATC tried to talk to him for a while before he actually entered the TFR, and they had other aircraft trying to talk to him before he entered it as well. But I've certainly had times when I was flying towards a TFR (Firefighting TFRs over the Cascades) and while I knew about them, ATC wouldn't necessarily say anything until maybe five minutes before. And even then I've had to remind ATC that the TFRs are 3 dimensional and they have a top, which I was usually above. So all said..... possible pilot deviation. But I don't know enough.