wombat

I don't think LOP is better, it's different. It has some advantages, such as better MPG. It has some disadvantages, such as power settings you can't run. In my 182, I very rarely run any power settings that I could achieve LOP. At WOT at any given altitude you will have a lower power setting LOP than ROP because at WOT your power is limited by the amount of air you can get into the cylinder and if you change to limiting that by fuel, of course you are going to be lower power. If you are flying WOT ROP and switch to LOP, you will fly slower. For every LOP setting, there is a safe ROP setting that will cause you to fly faster. There are ROP settings for which there is no safe or achievable LOP setting. LOP has more restrictive limits than ROP. Some are temperature limits, some are not. At 8,500' in a NA engine, you can probably skip LOP and ROP, and just fly whatever mixture you want. If you want to fly at a power setting (including considering altitude) that is only available ROP, the nearest LOP is going to be lower power. And as such, you'll be flying slower. If you are already flying a power setting that is available in both ROP and LOP, you won't go faster or slower if you switch to the LOP version. I disagree that it's a safe statement to say that LOP makes less power than ROP. It is a safe statement to make that there are many power settings that are not available LOP but are available ROP, and that these are all going to be power settings higher than the closest available LOP power setting.

Congratulations on the re-issuance of your medical. That's a really tough process and it takes a lot of time and dedication; your effort was finally rewarded!! I hope you have a great time getting back into aviation and many great adventures in your plane.

LOP only hurts speed compared to a higher power setting. At the same amount of produced power, you will get the same speed. If you consider MP the measure of power you'll get lower speeds running LOP because you need a higher MP (and/or RPM) in order to achieve the same power output when running LOP. Some people cruise ROP at power settings that they cannot achieve LOP at, so you'd have to choose a lower power setting to fly LOP, and in that case you'd fly slower. If you consider fuel burn to be your power setting, you will fly faster LOP than ROP, since LOP has a higher BSFC. Of course you can pick LOP and ROP settings where this isn't true, like extreme LOP is actually less efficient than barely ROP, but in general, LOP is going to be more efficient, and therefore you'll be faster LOP than if you are burning the same amount of fuel ROP.

I'm not totally set on what I say. Usually "Mike Two Zero Tango" or "Mike Two Zero Tango, I'm a Turbo Mooney"

I fly this sort of thing fairly often (2-4 times a year) and usually try to land at new places. My typical approach to this is to start on skyvector.com with a direct route to my destination, determine how many fuel stops I'll need to make which is usually 1 or 2, depending on winds and destination. Then turn the fuel prices on and start scrolling around at about the 1/2 or 1/3 mark on the route to look for something 'near' to direct with low fuel prices. How far I am willing to go between stops and how far off course changes based on my time pressure and current opinion on my financial situation. As an example, if I was wanting to fly from Spokane to South St. Paul in Minnesota, while I would probably want to stop somewhere about halfway for fuel. I notice that at the 'about' halfway mark is Beach, ND with fuel prices of $5.65. Runway length 4,200', perfectly acceptable. So I find it on Google Maps and it looks small and frankly kind of boring, but the fuel point looks new and they are right next to the highway which is always fun. If I am willing to go a little further North, Poplar MT is also cheap and looks slightly more interesting. Oh, but also there is Killdeer, ND, (9Y1) that looks cool! again 4,200', but right on a little stream (Probably dry this time of year) and cheap gas! Or go South and hit Mondell Field in Wyoming for $6.09 It's just some place I've never been. On the way back, stop by Leadville, CO! Highest airport in North America.

@LANCECASPER Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. My comment about the fire extinguisher was an attempt to suggest something so ridiculous that nobody could reasonably agree: Removing fire extinguishers because they themselves can be a hazard. One of the videos I posted was about a fire extinguisher exploding and injuring the person in the car with it. Since fire extinguishers are provably dangerous explosion hazards, I suggested maybe we shouldn't fly with them in the aircraft. My actual point here is that we would be well served to have a way to analyze the risk of each different stored energy device in the cabin of the plane so we could make an informed decision. Unfortunately we don't and we have to rely on sensationalist media reports and anecdotes. I don't think the portable fire containment bags are a very good plan; most of the fires I've seen have been so sudden there was no chance to do anything about it before it was way too significant to grab to put into a bag. Sure, it's a possible solution where I say "just take the risk". But I don't think the cost of that solution in terms of money, complexity, training, time, and space is worth the reduction of risk. But that's just me and you can make your own decision in your plane.

Should we keep our phones out of the cockpit? What about fire extinguishers? Seriously though, anything with stored energy can go catastrophically wrong. I suspect the incidence rate of high energy density batteries made by low-cost manufacturers in China have a much higher rate than other manufacturers. But what is the rate of an event when not being charged or used? What would be an acceptable rate? And 'none' is not a reasonable answer because I don't know of anyone who won't fly with a cell phone, and every cell phone has an incidence rate greater than 0. No real easy answers here, we have to rely on anecdotes and media that seems to always have some angle they are trying to work that isn't just reporting accurate information.

Funny, I was just about to make a post asking if fuel tank calibration should be done in wheels-level or aircraft-level attitude but decided to search first!

Ahh... Wasn't clear to me that you were not the pilot for that flight. Actually that distance isn't as long as I thought it was. Only 113 miles farther than the longest single leg I've done in my plane. (S35 to KFFL, 1250.9 miles direct https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N5773S/history/20240518/1630Z/S35/KFFL vs. the topic's flight of CYYR to BIRK, which is 1339.2 direct, and 1364 actual) I thought the Monroy long range tanks held 115 gallons if you didn't have speed brakes, and 105 if you did. I have the long range tanks and speed brakes in my plane and with patience was able to get 54 gallons in one side from completely empty.

@Aerodon What power setting and fuel burn (and KTAS) were you using? 6.5 hours with IFR reserves on a (Assuming you have no speed brakes) 115 gallon tanks gives you a maximum fuel burn of 15 GPH, which isn't unreasonable. When I am at those altitudes (above FL210) and low power settings I need to hold some right rudder, which is annoying on long flights. Does your plane have rudder trim?

There are at least three ways to interpret 'something to be concerned about'. #1 is if you will have any additional risk in this plane compared to one that didn't have this damage. #2 is possible additional maintenance costs. #3 is the resale value. For #1 I think the answer is effectively 'no'. With any plane that is 45 years old, there could be unknown wear, stress, or damage. This one has had some known damage and while we know that pretty much everything got badly stressed on that day in '97, there was probably extensive inspection after that for anything that might be a safety of flight risk. For #2 I think the answer is 'very low, almost zero'. There were probably a lot of rivets and skins that got stretched a little more than normal that day. Some parts might wear out sooner. For #3 I think the answer is 'no' because it's baked into the price you pay. Some people only want planes with any damage unrecorded, they will just ignore any plane where damage history has been recorded. So your pool of potential buyers is smaller. But the current seller's pool is smaller too and you are able to take advantage of the same discount. Personally I think it's fine, and my Mooney has previous damage history.

This matches with what I know. I've got a 1984 model year 231 "Special Edition" The special part is just the interior. I'm planning on repainting and getting a new interior installed next year and despite the fact that it will no longer have anything that made it a 'special edition' I'm going to keep the special edition label on the new paint job. I'm going to label it a Mooney 305 Rocket Special Edition (with the little rocket logo)

I've been making a separate 'gear is down' callout at about 100' AGL on final in addition to 'gear down and locked' on mid-field downwind and on the turn to base and the turn to final. Hopefully that'll be enough that I don't miss all of those at once. @Pinecone I'm pretty sure mine does too, but as you say, it's not in a very good spot for easy reference. @GeeBee What would be an acceptable cost to reduce our gear up rate? And what do you propose we do to reduce it?

I think that's where we are now. But it's causing enough gear-ups that it's a financial burden on some of us. Or at least enough of one that it's worth complaining about. Do you think we should do anything different from what we do now, or should we just accept this rate of gear-up accidents as part of the cost of flying with the level of freedom we have?

I got stuck on "Gear" being part of GUMPS for a while, but after a while it became natural for the G to stand for Gas. Personally I don't think I need a 'seatbelts' item because I put my seatbelt (and shoulder harness, if the aircraft is equipped) on before starting the engine, and leave it on the whole flight(*) Should we as a Mooney community or as part of the 'Light GA' pilot community standardize on something do you think? Or should we have a couple of options (GUMPS, PUFFS, GUMPS-S, etc) to choose from? I'd like to have a printed list for each plane I fly regularly that matches both the aircraft and my personal inclination. But maybe each aircraft should have a pre-landing checklist printed somewhere that is easy to reference? I think my Mooney has one, but I never use it. (*) Using a gatorade bottle for in-flight relief sometimes requires some shimmying and work.

If we really wanted to do that sort of thing, I'd say the first 1000 hours of Mooney time have to be with a pilot that already has 1000 hours or more of Mooney time. Pretty lucrative for those of us that already have that! Oh wait, I've only got about 500 hours of Mooney time!!! NOOooooo!!!!

@Echo I agree that no amount of training will 'fix' this 100%. It can help, but not totally fix. Regarding your comment about the voice in your headset.... Mostly I agree with you, but back to the human factor, I've seen a lot of women able to ignore their children saying "hey mom... mom... MOM!!!! MMMOOOMMMM!!!!" and not even notice it was going on. People will be people, no matter how hard we try to stop that from being the case. But I've been considering getting a voice-based gear warning system. My plane beeps so much anyway I can easily imagine myself hearing more beeping and ignoring it. @GeeBee You are suggesting what basically amounts to more training, but following a different/better procedure than most people follow. Personally I use GUMPS (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop) but find that's actually missing the cowl flaps, which I'd like to have open at that point. It's more of a challenge when switching between multiple aircraft types. Some things apply to some aircraft and not others and I personally find it difficult to repeatedly follow a procedure that doesn't apply most of the time. Most of my landings these days are still in fixed gear aircraft and it's hard to keep pointing at the gear lever that doesn't exist and say 'gear down'. The same with cowl flaps and with prop controls on fixed-pitch prop planes.

Let's work this out.... If the average gear-up costs $100 to pay out, and the average premium is $4k a year, and the average overhead (profit margin, overhead, taxes, etc) for the insurance companies is 50% in order for the gear-up payouts to cost 33% of all payouts from premiums, that means out of every 100 insured Mooneys, we need X gear-ups a year. For each 'premium' of $4k, the insurance company is paying out $2k. Of that $2k, we are assuming that $0.66k is going towards gear-up payments. So that means 0.66% of all Mooneys are having a gear-up every year, or 1 out of 150. Does everyone think this is a reasonable number? Every year, at least 1 out of every 150 Mooneys lands gear-up? Personally, I think this is a bit higher than reality. How many flying Mooneys are there in the US? How many Mooney gear-ups are there in the US? These are assumptions that are on the conservative end for both percentage paid out to gear-ups and insurance overhead. Any choices for those that are otherwise would result in a requirement for a higher percentage of gear-ups per Mooney. Although I didn't actually separate the physical damage portion of the premium from the liability portion, which would make the required percentage of Mooneys gear-ups per year lower. I leave that as an exercise for the student. @Parker_Woodruff Can you elaborate on the reasons? The only reason I'm able to come up with is that there isn't enough volume to be worth it and the variability at those low numbers makes that line of business too unpredictable. And out of curiosity, are you separating 'gear up' payouts from similar incidents like 'gear failure' payouts? Then ALSO, I'd like to mention that just sitting here complaining about it isn't going to do any of us any good. Does anyone have ANY ideas for how to make this better? Prohibit flying Mooneys until you have at least 1000 hours of Mooney time? Require a type rating? Specialized training? Recurrent training? Additional hardware such as a landing height system or voice alert? It seems like Mooney gear-ups cost about $666 per plane per year, so any training requirements should cost less than that in order to make financial sense. Or if we want to add hardware, about $3k cost installed will have a 5 year payback if it's 100% effective in preventing gear-ups.

@Parker_Woodruff If I understand this right, 1/3 to 1/2 of all payout dollars for Mooney policies are for gear-up landings? That is a shocking amount! Could you offer a policy that excludes gear-up landings for people like @GeeBeeand @1980Mooney? (Or maybe me? I might decide to self-insure against gear-up landings if it reduces my premium by 33% to 50%)

I'm with @Aviationist and @MikeOH on this topic, @GeeBee. What you are doing is not promoting safety in a meaningful way. What you are doing is shaming other pilots for their mistakes and blaming your financial problems on them. Come up with a plan that will result in a net gain for Mooney pilots. Or maybe you should switch to an airframe that doesn't have this issue. There have been other aircraft (and types of aircraft) that are notably hard to fly safely to the point that insurance companies and/or the FAA decided to take action to encourage and/or require additional training in order to make them 'safe enough' to insure or fly at all. Examples: MU2, R22, M46, and tailwheel airplanes. And you might as well throw Cirrus into the mix too although for Cirrus the manufacturer is the one that decided that additional training was worthwhile. How much additional training affects the risk of gear-up accidents is of course a major factor, but measuring that is a challenge. For example the self-selection for additional training is also selecting the population that might be less prone to gear-up incidents to begin with. People who choose to wear bike helmets have lower accident rates, even though bike helmets clearly do not prevent accidents. If 100% of Mooney pilots were to adopt anti-gear-up training every year, even if we assume this made the fleet have a lower gear-up rate, the net value might be negative, as the cost of the training could be larger than the reduction of cost of gear-up repairs/payouts. @Parker_Woodruff We understand that the gear-up payouts are already integrated into premiums. But how much of the premiums are used for gear-up payouts? This would include both repairs and hull value payouts. If we devised some training and a measurement that showed that our training reduced the probability of a gear-up by 100% (it's ridiculous, I know, but for the sake of the discussion it's easier if this training were perfectly effective), how much of a discount could someone get by participating and therefore eliminating the risk of a gear-up landing?

Finally took it flying this morning. The result was disappointing to say the least. There is no contact at all between the seal and the door frame for about 1/3 of the way around the door. Before I just rip this one off and go for the inflatable seal I'll try to shim this one out to meet the door frame.

I'm pretty happy with my rocket, but I'd also be basically just as happy with a FIKI Bravo.

@Skates97I've been contacting them about my plane because I'd been planning on having them paint it next year but I'm having trouble getting some answers back from them. Did you do any pre-work to fix minor skin issues prior to painting? I've got a few things that I'd like fixed first like the oxygen door that was shoved too far open and is now bent out away from the fuselage by 1/4". And where the paint has popped off of some of the rivets, I can't tell if there is an underlying issue that needs to be fixed or if just a new paint job will last another 40 years.

Exactly. Yes, it's a difficult situation. The only reason we are talking about this is because there isn't a well known clear answer. For me it makes things easier if I have thought it out ahead of time and have a plan. But what I won't do is just close my eyes to opportunities to maybe save a plane or a life by having a conversation. I have not 'confronted' my friend. I've had one subtle (perhaps too subtle) conversation about if the flying he does is really worth the risk. While his flying makes me very uncomfortable, I doubt I'll ever get to the point of 'confronting' him about it. And there is no way I'd block him in or disable his plane. He's not doing anything that dangerous. And also he had a near miss last summer that has resulted in a change of behavior that I hope is permanent. Hmm... So maybe it is that dangerous after all? *sigh*

@1980Mooney I don't claim that every accident or incident is preventable. But if someone had stopped and talked to him and expressed any interest, he might have changed his mind. Maybe he was desperate for someone to come help him and if he'd had another person there for an hour to help him on the magnetos he would have thought different by the time he was done. Maybe the other person could have invited him out to to a bar for a drink and the guy would have spilled his guts and then called the FAA the next day an surrendered his medical. And from what you have posted it doesn't seem like anybody did, although there may have been lots of effort put into trying to help him. We'll never know, nobody was successful. If you don't want to take a risk to save someone's life, that's your decision to make. I am willing to take some personal risk to try to save someone's life. I am inclined to take action to make the world better.