Vance Harral

I'm not disagreeing with your point. But everyone accepts some policy limit, and hopes the insurance company's duty to defend eliminates or at least mitigates any damage beyond that limit. $1M is also a "drop in the bucket" if a high net worth individual is killed. What makes $100K an unacceptable limit, and $1M acceptable? Why not $2M or $5M or $10M? The answer lies in the net worth of the individual purchasing the insurance. No matter how good a shark the damaged party's attorney is, they're not going to spend time pursuing a $10M judgement against an individual whose net worth consists of a Cessna 150, eighteen dollars in a checking account, and stack of pizza coupons. I grow tired of the accusation that pilots who accept $100K sublimits are cheap and naive. $100K sublimits are completely reasonable for a large percentage of aircraft owners.

Bear in mind that the "claimant" is often not the inured party themselves, but rather the injured party's own insurance company, who has already paid the injured party the full $1M, and is only attempting to subrogate against your insurer. The odds the injured party's insurance company will accept a $100K payout from your insurance company in the settlement, even though they just paid their own client $1M, are actually pretty decent. The $1M they paid their client is presumably already built into their own actuarial bets, and they're just trying to move the balance needle a little toward the side of profitability. Given a "take $100K right now or pay your own attorneys to fight us in court for a long time" offer, the injured party's insurance company is quite likely to take the settlement offer from your insurance company, even though it's only a fraction of what they paid out. None of this settlement negotiation involves either you or the injured party. It's just a dispassionate business discussion between two insurance companies, both of whom would like to avoid a court case. To be clear, you might be unlucky enough to injure someone who has absolutely no insurance of their own but subsequently hires a shark of an attorney; or the injured party's insurance company might be willing to go fight your insurance company in court, and win. But in most cases there are incentives not to press an individual for more than the limits of their policy. Interesting data point: during an insurance webinar given by Avemco, I asked why Avemco doesn't offer "smooth" insurance. The person on webinar claimed that industry-wide knowledge Avemco doesn't write smooth insurance and aggressively defends per-passenger sublimits, has resulted in a history of essentially every claim they process being settled for said sublimits. I have no way of verifying this is true, but it's interesting to think about.

The bracket on the airframe which your gear actuator mounts to, is in turn mounted to the floor pan directly under the pilot's seat. As the gear goes over center, compression of the springs in the system cause the rods to compress against the actuator on both the fore (nose gear) and aft (main gear) ends. This compression, combined with the aluminum floor pan not being perfectly rigid, will cause a "bump" under your butt in the left seat. Our 1976 M20F has consistently done this for the last 16 years, through numerous gear rigging checks, with no long-term ill effects. I've come to think of it as an additional "gear is down and locked" indicator. When I put the gear down, in addition to looking for the green light on the panel and checking the floor indicator alignment bars, I expect to feel a kick in the butt. On edit: if your log books indicate recent completion of Mooney Service Bulletin M20-190 (the AD that @Ron McBride refers to), I would not do anything at this time. If there is no record of this inspection being done recently, then yes, you ought to have the gear actuator checked out. But that is true independent of the "bump in the butt" observation. For further info, see https://www.donmaxwell.com/ad-75-23-04-sb-m20-190

Careful. The OP didn't say he had a "PC" system. He said he had a Brittain B6. That is a three-axis Brittain autopilot capable of nav tracking and altitude hold. In addition to the T&B and servos everyone correctly describes as simple, the B6 also has a control head unit full of electronics (not modern ones) with a complex rotary mode switch, as well as a complex altitude control unit, and the associated vacuum switches and relays required to make it work. Our own @211º has been through the Brittain saga, and was kind enough to collect a bunch of information from a bunch of different sources, and organize it at https://www.windfield.farm/brittain-autopilot. It's the best reference I know of on this class of Brittain autopilot. TLDR summary: it is feasible - if a little gray from a legal perspective - to patch cracked vacuum lines, re-seal servo boots, etc. But if there's an issue with the control head unit or the altitude control box, you're effectively out of luck. It is extremely difficult to get service for these modules, and any service you could actually get is one-hundred-percent not legal. Only Brittain holds the legal authority to do this work, and they're not taking any customers.

This is the best advice in the thread, and I'd add that it's true any time of year, not just in the summer. No matter how many weather sites, Foreflight features, etc. you find that promise "5 day" or "10 day" forecasts, none of them can help you make a strategic go/no-go decision a week in advance. Any weather forecast more than a couple of days in the future is for entertainment purposes only. I spent years agonizing over this sort of stuff, but I've stopped. My dispatch rate is just as good, and I sleep better at night, by simply ignoring weather planning until 24-48 hours before intended departure. This means I sometimes have to move departure dates, cancel trips, or go via last-minute expensive airline tickets. But that was true when I used to agonize over the weather days in advance, too. Such is the nature of GA travel. The sooner you accept that reality, the more you can actually enjoy it.

If $7500 for an engine monitor causes you to balk, suggest you install a much less expensive engine monitor, and consider working with an A&P to do some/all of the work yourself to save on labor cost. I am not claiming a JPI EDM 700 or EI UBG-16 is just as good as an EDM950/MVP-50. But those choices are literally thousands of dollars cheaper, still well supported, and still provide all the basic functionality you need for good engine management. Very reasonable in any airplane, especially one in which the owner is reasonably choosing not to turn it into a $100K glass panel beast.

I appreciate the replies about the Continental fuel system setup. I remain of the opinion that the design is not great. Statements like, "It's not that complex once you get used to it, but many people do it wrong anyway"; and, "I don't know why mechanics can't correctly follow the maintenance manual procedure", make my engineering spidey sense tingle. I've learned in my career that when people keep messing up a procedure you've carefully documented, and you find yourself increasingly frustrated that they can't follow what you think are simple directions... it's generally a clue that your system is at fault, not the people operating it.

APS = Advanced Pilot Seminars. An educational endeavor from three guys who really pushed for advanced understanding of engine management in the GA pilot community, see https://www.advancedpilot.com/staff.html. My understanding is they got a little cross-ways with each other about the business a few years back, and I believe one of the principles has flown west. Not sure you can actually attend a seminar with them any longer, but their articles and online courses are still pervasive. OWT = "Old Wives Tales". The APS guys used this phrase to describe a lot of misinformation about engine management that was and remains prominent in the community. Like most catch phrases, it wound up becoming a bit of a lightning rod. Sometimes people say "that's an OWT" about any airplane management technique they don't like, justified or not.

Shadrach, I appreciate you taking the time to explain your thinking. It made me think more about the subject, and that's always a good thing. A salient point you make is that there is definitely an upper limit of measured EGT. No matter how close the probe is to the exhaust port, what the compression ratio is, measured EGT will never exceed "X". That's a fair point, no argument from me. But it's my understanding that the actual "X" limit is higher than you've been saying here. High enough to think it's sketchy when you say that if your EGTs are over (some number), you have a fuel flow or ignition problem. Furthermore, given that some airplanes have much lower peak numbers than others due to probe placement, analyzing absolute EGT values creates a communication problem that concerns me. I get that you're only saying numbers approaching this theoretical "X" limit are probably bad. But it's very difficult to steer people away from the incorrect corollary conclusion that numbers significantly lower than "X" must be OK. Again using my own airplane as an example, my peak EGTs are nowhere near the 1600F you argue is "normal" peak, due to the placement of the probes. If I tell you I'm seeing 1350F on full-power climb-out, is that OK? Is my fuel flow decent? Ignition OK? The answer is, you can't say one way or the other, because I haven't told you how far from peak that is in my airplane. I guess what would settle this is a large-enough survey of pilots reporting their observed peak EGTs under normal operation conditions. If an overwhelming percentage report absolute numbers in a very narrow range, your argument has merit. If the range varies by, say, a couple hundred degrees, it doesn't. I freely admit I don't have enough data to say one way or the other. But in the absence of such data, I feel like "absolute EGTs don't matter" is the best way of thinking and talking about the subject.

Good grief, this all seems so complex and error prone. Why is the fuel flow and mixture control systems in these turbo Continental engines so sensitive that it requires two different boost pump settings, one of which can actually cause more problems than it solves? Why is choking and coughing and sputtering at idle/low power so common that it's considered normal? Is everyone running around with mal-adjusted engines because it's impractical to get them tuned correctly, or is the design just that poor? If these problems are just inherent to turbocharged engines, please educate me.

The OP is flying an M20K, presumably with the Continental TSIO-360, and both high and low boost pump switches. It's important to distinguish the engine and fuel system in answering his question. I have nearly 1000 hours behind Lycoming 4-bangers in low wing airplanes, and regularly use the boost pump for takeoff, landing, and when switching tanks. If a Mooney pilot told me their IO-360 variant (M20E/M20F/M20J) stumbled when turning on the boost pump, I'd say something is wrong with the fuel system and needs to be fixed. There is no good reason why turning on the boost pump in these airplanes should cause an issue. In contrast, I have limited experience with the TSIO-360, but SOP is to *not* use either high or low boost pump, except in an emergency. The POH not withstanding, most pilots I know flying behind this engine never select either boost pump switch, except to prime. My understanding is that turning on low boost should not cause issues, and the fact the POH prescribes it when switching tanks matches that understanding. But my understanding is that selecting high boost can actually flood the engine to the point of quitting under normal circumstances, and is intended only for a situation in which some sort of fuel system malfunction is actively restricting fuel flow. I don't claim to understand the details, and confess a bias that the Continental fuel flow system seems poorly designed. If others chime in and say that low boost sometimes causing the engine to stumble is a "normal" characteristic of this engine, it will further reinforce my bias. Happy to be educated otherwise, though.

I notice you listed CFI as one of your professional flying categories. It's an interesting thing to talk about. I answered "no" to the pro flying question, though I do earn a few dollars from flight instruction on the side. It's not my day job, and I'm not as good at it as those who practice more-or-less full time. But I do work hard to be professional about it, and I've given enough instruction to feel like I know the lay of the land... ... and the lay of the land is that - just like the regulations say - flight instruction is a teaching job, not a flying job. I spend far more instructional time outside aircraft than I do inside, and much of that doesn't involve the student at all: it's lesson planning, progress tracking, etc. When I'm actually flying with a student, I hardly ever touch the controls. Indeed, I feel a bit guilty any time I do, because that's time the student isn't learning motor skills. The point of saying so is that you may find your poll slightly skewed/flawed by the CFI option. Not a big deal, but I can't help commenting every time this sort of thing comes up. If you love teaching, being a CFI is a cool way to do that. I love helping people gain knowledge, accomplish big goals, boost confidence, and all the other stuff that comes with the best of teaching. I also love being in the air, and what I call the "human servo challenge" of coaching students through maneuvers, flight deck programming, and decision making. But it's not a flying job. It has more in common with being a college prof than being an airline/charter/business/banner/jump pilot, and that's an important thing to understand for those contemplating ways to earn income in aviation.

There is no way for you to know the "healthy" upper and lower limits of someone else's airplane. The biggest reason for this is that the temperature sensed by an EGT probe varies dramatically with the placement of the probe in the exhaust pipe. There is no universal standard for this, and probe placement differences of less than an inch can result in indicated temperature differences of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. My own airplane is a good example of this. Most modern engine monitor installations place the EGT probes 2-3" from the cylinder flange. Ours is about 4" out, simply because there were pre-existing holes in that location from an older, analog, 4-cylinder EGT rig, that we chose to reuse. The result is that our EGTs indicate cooler than most numbers I typically see posted on aviation forums. But as several of us are saying here, the absolute numbers don't matter. In particular, an indicated EGT of 1600 is not necessarily "too hot". Engines with probe placements near the short end of the recommended range will commonly show this.

The feedlots at KGXY make instrument approaches there safer. No need for GPS waypoints, just level off when you smell the ripeness. Note that I'm only 90% joking about this. When my airplane partner fails every GPS and moving map in the airplane and asks me to fly the VOR-A approach from GLL, I fully expect to smell the feedlot as the clock ticks up to the MAP time. @Marc_B, I unfortunately don't have a good line on a KFNL hangar for you, but I'd be happy to fly over from KLMO one day and meet you at the Barnstormer to chat. Always glad to meet another Mooney owner.

The VA-400 seems to be the sweet spot for an articulating borescope for us amateurs: pretty capable, not too expensive. Strongly suggest the WiFi adapter (just buy the "WiFi bundle" kit), which as others said, allows it to work with essentially any phone/tablet/laptop. I wish mine had a better-resolution sensor than 640x480, but not because it has actually been a problem, it just seems "old" relative to what you're paying. Vividia does have higher-res products, but they command a significant price premium. Prior to the VA-400, I got several annual's worth of pretty good borescope pictures with a cheapie DEPSTECH Wireless Endoscope. That one and other cheapies like it don't articulate. But you can bend the head around so it points back along the flexible rod, use safety wire to secure it, and get pretty good inside-the-cylinder shots. That's preferable to trying to use the mirror attachments that come with cheapie endoscopes. Those are mostly useless, and even if they were good, you have to worry about the attachment falling off inside the cylinder. I still keep the DEPSTECH scope around to look at other things besides cylinders, because the flexible rod is long enough to get into lots of interesting nooks and crannies - both in the airplane and around the house. But the VA-400 is a nice tool.

Cullen, there are several of us Mooney owners in the Denver area. My airplane is an electric gear F model based at Longmont, you're welcome to come fly in it and we can chat about cost details (in my case, I'm in a 4-person partnership). I won't speak for others, but I know a couple of Johnson-bar era Mooneyspacers based in these parts who would probably be willing to give you a ride, if manual gear is of significant interest to you. Hopefully they'll speak up. Anyway, PM me if you're interested.

Again, thanks for being so willing to share details. Your $2500 decision is certainly rational, though it's worth noting the markup your shop quoted vs. buy-it-yourself prices is much higher on the G5 option than the GI-275 option. e.g. G5 certified ADI is $2345 at Sarasota Avionics vs. $4000 in your quote (70% markup), whereas the GI-275 ADI is $4689 at Sarasota vs. $5500 in your quote (18% markup). I have no issues with installers marking up the cost of parts, and it may be that Garmin themselves is offering installers significant incentives on the GI-275 vs. list price. Please don't interpret any of my comments as criticism or nit-picking of your choices. The GI-275 is an awesome instrument, I'm sure you're very happy with yours, and you certainly shouldn't care about my opinions. Just discussing the state of the market, in the finest Mooney CB tradition. The certified version of the G5 is only about 4 years old, and at the time of introduction was seen as an incredible, game-changing option for price vs. features. Now it's second fiddle, and for those of us who ride the trailing wave of 2nd generation depreciation, it seems like a heck of a deal as the latest-and-greatest crowd gravitates to the GI-275. When/if it comes to installing a second G5 in our airplane, I'm hoping to pick up a used one from someone who wants the GI-275 enough to upgrade. Any of you Mooneyspacers contemplating this upgrade?

Sure, but the quotes I'm seeing and comparing with G5 installations are comparable: sometimes interfaced to an autopilot, sometimes not; sometimes with additional work like a panel recut and/or new audio panel, sometimes not. I've been careful not to compare the most basic G5 installation with the highest-end GI-275 installation. Still, best as I can tell, there has been and continues to be an installation premium for the 275. It sure seems like either it's more complicated to install in a similar capacity vs. a G5, or that installers are padding the labor required to do the job (again, not that there's anything wrong with that). Full disclosure: when our mechanical AI went belly up a few months ago, we opted for the G5, based on cost/benefit tradeoff. But I don't mean to suggest the GI-275 isn't worth a premium. Just curious about the actual installation time/cost for what is theoretically supposed to be an easier install. My understanding is the GI-275 essentially always slides right in to holes vacated by another 3.25" instrument, whereas the G5 sometimes requires oval-ing out holes to fit, and of course requires more significant surgery if you want a flush mount. It's also my understanding that few GI-275 installations require the additional part/labor cost of a GAD29/B or similar due to native ARINC-429 support, whereas many G5 installations require the extra box. Still, walk-away prices seem consistently, dramatically higher for the 275.

It's kind of 58Victor to post his quote, I'm sure many appreciate it. I continue to be intrigued by the difference in installed price between the G5 and GI-275. The latter is a more capable instrument, but walk-away price is dramatically higher than a G5, not just slightly higher. The instrument itself only retails for about $1100 more, i.e. $2200 for a dual installation. But I've seen numerous posts in numerous places of $15K+ dual GI-275 installations, which seems to be $5K or more above a comparable dual G5 installation. This seems at odds with claims from decent sources that the GI-275 is actually easier to install. Seems to me that shops are still charging a premium for the latest shiny new toy. Nothing wrong with that, I just keep wondering if I'm missing something else.

This is pretty easy to visualize in the comparison photos, because both aircraft have horizontal striping that follows the fuselage side skin lap joint used as the level reference for the airframe. On the M20F, that level line is parallel to the strip of white between the red and gold stripes. On the M20R it's parallel to all the gold striping. There's no question the M20R "squats" relative to the M20F. Just look at the ground relative to the striping.

Thanks Matthias!

I borrowed this picture from a for-sale ad, hope the owner doesn't mind. What is the purpose of the large exit scoop on the bottom of the fuselage, aft of the wing? Saw an airplane similar to this one on the ramp this week, and it's the first time I've seen a Mooney with this feature. Looking at a gallery of photos, some long bodies have it, some don't. Guessing it has something to do with a factory A/C option?

For reference, here's a comparison photo of long vs. mid-body at rest. I realize the M20R is 12" longer behind the gear, but that doesn't really account for why the tail is so much lower. Look at the line of the fuselage bottom behind the wing. It's essentially parallel to the ground on the long-body, but distinctly rising on the M20F. Every line on the long body is tilted rearward, relative to the ground: bottom of the fuselage, chord angle of wing and horizontal stab, vertical stab, top of cowl, prop arc, etc. If the difference in the gear leg design is just the thickness of the tubing, that doesn't change the overall geometry. The difference in sitting-on-the-ground angle has gotta be the greater weight compressing the shock disks more, right?

Interesting. What exactly is different? I got my information about greater compression on long bodies causing the tail-down/nose high attitude from this LASAR article, which specifically says, "You may notice that the long bodies are “dragging” their tail -so to speak- but that’s usually due to the more extreme compression of the main gear shock biscuits, due to their weight." I was under the impression the greater gross weight allowed on long-body Mooneys is due to more robust brakes and slightly higher stall speeds, rather than a change in the leg design. But all I really know is the part number and count of shock disks appear to be identical for all Mooneys, other than the very ancient models that used the Firestone disks (of which essentially all have been converted to Lord). When you order shock disks from LASAR or other sources, there is not one type/count for long bodies and another for older airplanes. So I'd like to understand how the landing gear leg design is different on long bodies, while still using the same type and count of shock disks.

I see this assertion a lot here. But having replaced both main and the nose gear pucks twice over 17 years of ownership, I'll offer a contrary data point: we couldn't tell any difference at all with new pucks vs. old, either during taxi or on landing. Note that we didn't replace the pucks "just because", we replaced them because they exceeded the prescribed limits in the maintenance manual. Still, no detectable difference reported by anyone in the partnership before/after, and that's from multiple partners with varying levels of skill and seat-of-the pants sensitivity. Possible explanations: Puck flexibility may be more of a feel factor on heavier, later model Mooneys, vs. our lighter vintage model. I was actually looking at this just yesterday. Someone parked a late model long body on the ramp next to the fuel pump, and compared with ours at fuel up, it sits considerably lower on the same gear. The tail in particular was about 8" closer to the ground, which I can only assume is due to greater compression of the mains. We replace pucks as soon as they exceed tolerances, and we've gotten about 10 years of service per set. But I occasionally see owners here talking about replacing 20-, 30- even 40-year old pucks. Who knows how far out of tolerance those have gotten? I'm sure it's possible to let them get in such horrible condition that they're effectively made of stone, in which case there will obviously be a noticeable difference when replaced with new. Anyway, the point is not to dispute others observations. Just want to reassure owners - at least of vintage era Mooneys - who follow the maintenance manual recommendations, that they didn't get swindled just because changing out the gear pucks doesn't automatically produce greaser landings and luxurious taxi rides.