Vance Harral

Which leads to the interesting situations where even though a flight is legal and there is an acting PIC, no one may log PIC time.

I second glbtrottr's recommendation to just use a mobile power brick. Problems with cigarette-lighter chargers are ubiquitous on Mooneyspace and other aviation forums: some chargers don't push enough current, others generate noise in the audio system, sometimes the lighter or the wire connection to it gets really hot because it's carrying more constant current than it was designed for, etc. For about $30 you can buy a power brick that will keep your iPad fully charged for an entire day. Spend 0.1 AMU and buy two or three - keep one in your flight bag, one on charge at the hangar, one on charge at home, etc. No worries about routing charging cables from the cigarette lighter past yoke shafts and across the panel, just put the brick on your lap or in a side pocket. I haven't used a cigarette charger in an airplane in several years, and haven't missed it.

Same experience here. Our partnership bought an airplane with original sealant, which had been patched by the prior owner a few years before we bought it. We've owned it another 16 years since, and have taken it to a nearby MSC three times for patching, i.e. about every 5-6 years. Total amount shelled out for the 3 patches is in the neighborhood of $3-4K, spread across those 16 years. The alternative would have been a full strip-and-reseal to the tune of $8-10K (including travel expenses) at the first sign of trouble. The shops that do this work are good, and they stand behind their long warranties. But even the best warranty on a full strip-and-reseal would have expired about a decade ago, and who's to say we wouldn't have needed a patch or two since? We still have some issues at the top of the tanks, which seep a little with full fuel. But they meet airworthiness requirements, and we generally fill to the tabs only. Our airplane is also a "workhorse" rather than "show plane", so the top-side seeps are not an issue in practice. The point of saying all this is not to pooh-pooh people who have a full strip and reseal done, or who negotiate down the purchase price of a wet wing airplane with old sealant. Both of those things are reasonable. But I also think some people get a little carried away about tank sealant concerns. There are a lot more shops that do decent patch work than there are shops that do full strip/reseal, and patch work can keep wet wings in reasonable shape for a very long time at relatively low cost. Robert, out of curiosity, what convinced you to go the full strip/reseal in the end?

One cause of this is finding a tire a little low on preflight, adding some air, and having the Schrader valve not quite close on removing the chuck. An hour or more later, you land on an unexpectedly flat tire. Ask me how I know. I no longer air up tires immediately before a flight. If a tire is slightly low, I fly as-is, and air it up at the end of the flight.

For those of you who recently installed or plan to install GI-275s, what specific features or differences led you to prefer that unit over the less expensive G5? Our mechanical AI is going south, we'll be replacing with an electronic ADI, and we're considering both options. I've read the marketing blurbs, I think I understand the differences (form factor, touch screen, interface capabilities, etc.) and I can see why the GI-275 has more "value". But between the price difference of the hardware itself, and the considerably more expensive installation quotes we're getting, I'm having a hard time feeling the additional features are worth the premium cost vs. the G5, especially after having seen them side-by-side. Would love to hear other Mooneyspacers' opinions, just to make sure I'm not missing something.

I've never seen a fuel O-ring like that. Not disputing that it "works", but it seems unusual/non-standard. The main reason I'm chiming in here is to point out that you can remove that cotter pin, and turn the nut, to adjust the spacing between the "stator" and "rotor" of the fuel cap. I'd bet if you turn the nut a few threads counter-clockwise, you'll find you can twist the cap to close it when the standard O-ring is installed. Keep adjusting until you get the desired feel, then re-install the cotter pin. If you're swapping O-rings, make sure you swap the little one in the center of the shaft, not just the big one being discussed here.

In 16 years of ownership, we've chased several popping/crackling/whining noises. Looked at alternators, voltage regulators, etc. In the end, every single one of these gremlins turned out to be a loose ground connection, fixed by tightening or replacing a screw. It's a pain to look "everywhere" and chase them down, but it's inexpensive/free to look. So I strongly concur with Andy95W's advice. Check the grounds first. If you don't find anything, check again before pursuing other ideas.

Not regulatory to do it every 100 hours, agreed. However, while maintainers are not obligated to follow the schedule in a Service manual, they are obligated to follow the techniques in the service manual any time a service is performed. So if you ever lubricate a post-J airframe (and note that doing so is required by they annual inspection guide), you must follow the rod-end lubrication guidance.

The Parts catalog Hank linked to won't have a reference for the PTT switch. For whatever reason, Mooney puts the electrical schematics and the part numbers for most electrical components in the Service Manual, not the Parts Manual. Worse yet, the schematics in the Service Manual don't cover any radio gear, including yoke-mounted PTT switches. I expect the best source for information is Mooney themselves. But note that you don't have to install the Mooney-specific part to be legal. Simple electrical switches are "standard parts" which can be replaced with a reasonable equivalent, just like standard bolts, nuts, etc. See https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_20-154.pdf Section 5.b(7)(b), which says: The FAA notified the public in the Federal Register on March 5, 1997 (62 FR 9923) that the interpretation of an acceptable U.S. Government- or industry-accepted specification may include specifications that may be limited to detailed performance criteria, complete testing procedures, and uniform marking criteria. These parts are best exemplified by discrete electrical and electronic parts, which include resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, and nonprogrammable integrated circuits (e.g., amplifiers, bridges, switches, gates, etc.).

A fair response, straight from the top. The fact that comments here were read and addressed, and some changes made as a result, matters a lot more than whether I agree with any particular decision. Thanks Jonny, I look forward to future posts here from MooneyTechSupport.

Your "before" photo on cylinder #4 looks like an intake valve, while the "after" photo looks like an exhaust valve. I've never seen an exhaust valve look as smooth and clean as your before #4, and I've never seen any kind of deposits on an intake valve like after #4. My WAG is you're looking at the two different valves in the cylinder.

0.6 L/H for me, like N201MKTurbo. But the number is skewed by sitting in the right seat monitoring other pilots' landings while instructing. I'm probably about 1 L/H in my personal flying.

Because the service manuals for the J and subsequent models were written after the AD was issued. Those service manuals have always required the lubrication in question, hence the issue is addressed for later models without the AD. Service manuals for the F and prior models were originally composed prior to the AD, and do not require the lubrication in question. The AD effectively modifies the lubrication guide of these service manuals. Note that later revisions of the service manual for the F and prior models do require the lubrication in question. One could argue the AD was made irrelevant when these revisions were published, but that assumes everyone has obtained and is following the later revisions. I don't think obtaining revision updates to service manuals is actually legally required, but compliance with ADs is.

I appreciate the effort that went into the new website, and much of it looks great. With that said, I have two constructive criticisms: 1) If strong support of existing customers is a primary goal, then access to technical documentation is the most important component of the web site. I share Mike's opinion on this - the current implementation gets a B- from me. I didn't have a lot of trouble finding the service bulletins, but it's a couple of clicks deep from the main page, and it's not searchable. I'm also not particularly happy with the icon grid layout you get once you select a model. It's slow to come up, hard to read, and requires more scrolling than necessary. This is a common mistake on the web: prioritizing the cosmetic appearance of data sets over their actual usability. A better approach would be a simple text table, instead of grid with icons. More readable, more usable, less scrolling. 2) I think the Air Traffic forum is a mistake. It's presence suggests Mooney thinks there should be an "official" Mooney discussion forum which they control, and the header introducing the forum confirms it: their terms, their login names, restricted only to owners, etc. I'm am trying to be amicable about this rather than being a Mooneyspace bigot; but I can't help but find it off-putting. If Mooney wants to support current owners with meaningful forum interaction, they should meet us where we are (which is here), rather than asking us to come to them. More importantly, setting up, administrating, and moderating a web forum is a skill set I would prefer that Mooney not spend energy on. It's a distraction from other things that are more important for the company. Why not just partner with Mooneyspace, at least informally? Setting up a whole different web forum strikes me as a solution in search of a problem, and something that is likely to sow discord and ill-will in the existing community.

Not as bad as you describe, but we have had occasional issues. Over the course of a decade, one sample was lost entirely, and another disappeared and was rediscovered by USPS after over a month. The complete loss occurred before tracking was added to the pre-paid labels, no idea what happened to it. The lost-and-found case was the result of a tenacious USPS employee who I interacted with via e-mail, who eventually convinced an employee at a distribution facility to look multiple times in the equivalent of the dead-letter office for packages. Said employee was familiar with oil samples, and said - as Blackstone themselves does - that mail which is obviously oil samples is sometimes incorrectly routed for hazmat handling. I think putting the container in a "normal" box has less to do with the little plastic container, and more to do with avoiding some misinformed-but-well-intentioned USPS employee from saying, "this looks like it contains oil, I better pull it out of the normal processing chain". In all other cases, I wouldn't call completion of the testing "rapid", but I always assumed this had as much to do with Blackstone's backlog as it did with shipping time. Perhaps I'm mistaken about that. The only time I've bothered to look at the tracking info in detail is the aforementioned disappearance.

I've been told this many times, and I get the point that the power the engine can produce decreases with increasing altitude. That said, the first-stage of the induction system on a turbine immediately compresses the incoming air to much higher than ambient pressure. The engineer in me just can't call that "normally aspirated".

In that case I guess pilots are expected to observe where the lines are when the green light illuminates under normal conditions, and crank to that spot. Again, in a perfect world, they would be exactly aligned from whatever point of view the pilot has while cranking, at the point where the over-center preload torque is at spec. I'm sure in most cases it's reasonably close. If not, it's still unlikely the gear are going to collapse on a normal landing. It's just not "locked" in accordance with the service manual spec.

There may be enough electrons in the battery to continue illuminating the light (low amps) even after it can no longer drive the motor (high amps). But that's beside the point in this particular thread, because the OP said he doesn't turn the crank to the green light even under test conditions on jacks at the annual with a good battery. The assertion that "if the green strips line up, the gear is down regardless of the light", is an oversimplification - one that assumes perfect rigging of the both the gear system and the indicators. The strict definition of "gear down and locked" is when the preload torque on the over-center locks is within the tolerances specified in the service manual. In a perfect world, the green light would illuminate and the floor indicator would exactly align, when the preload torque is precisely in the dead center of its range. In the real world there can be differences, and it sounds like that's the case in the OP's airplane (and likely all of our airplanes, to some degree). If you read the service manual for electric gear rigging, preload torque is checked on the basis of the green light, *not* the floor indicator. This is because the switch that illuminates the green light is part of a two-pole switch, with the other pole being the switch that actually turns off the motor. Assuming the OP's gear is correctly rigged, it sounds like the floor indicator is slightly "off", such that it appears aligned when the preload torque is a little shy of the recommended range. It may also be that the floor indicator is good, but the gear is mis-rigged such that it slightly overdrives past the recommended preload torque. Suggest at the next annual, the OP crank the hand-crank until the floor indicator is aligned but the green light is not on per his usual practice, and check the preload torque there; then continue cranking until the green light is on, and check the preload torque again. If both values are within the service manual tolerance range, then either indicator is "good enough", despite the fact they're associated with two slightly different preload torques. If not, then the gear needs to be re-rigged and/or the floor indicator needs to be adjusted.

Seconded. The POH (for my make and model at least) explicitly says the green light should come on with manual cranking, see below. It sounds to me like you're not actually cranking the gear into the fully locked position. The crank does get harder to turn at the end of the cycle, as the over-center locks are going over-center. But this is not a bad thing, or a reason to stop cranking - you're supposed to keep going until the green light comes on. If pushing the breaker in after you stop cranking results in the motor running a little bit and lighting the green light as you describe, it likely means you didn't crank all the way to the locked position in the first place.

If it were me, and I was evaluating a new mechanic, I might not give him the details up front, even if he hasn't performed this particular adjustment before. The learning curve is only a few minutes of leafing through a service manual he should already have and be pretty familiar with, considering he "maintains a couple of J models". It's a good test of whether he has and uses the factory manuals to maintain the airplane, vs. winging it.

From the M20J Service Manual: The landing gear warning system provides the pilot with an audible warning that the landing gear is not down and locked when the throttle is retarded to within 1/4 to 3/8 in. throttle position. [...] This warning switch is mounted on the throttle housing forward of the instrument panel, and can be adjusted for the proper setting by loosening the screw and repositioning the switch. The system isn't connected to the manifold pressure gauge in any way, and doesn't "know" the MP setting at which it actuates. With trial and error, you can get it to actuate at a particular MP value on a particular day at a particular altitude, but the actual MP it switches at on other days will vary, depending on altitude and atmospheric conditions. When deciding where to set it, one consideration is how often you land at high- vs. low-density altitude airports. The MP you get at a particular throttle position can vary quite a bit at different altitudes. The beeping noise triggered by the gear warning system is sounded by a Mallory Sonalert installed in the ceiling. It's a little black round thing, slightly bigger in diameter than a quarter. It is unrelated to the overhead speaker that broadcasts audio from the radios. Below is a picture from the M20J service manual identifying the gear and stall warning Sonalerts relative to the overhead lights and other things in the overhead panel.

If you find one, let us know. That would be the holy grail.

Good luck with your purchase, Stig. Say hi to Juliana for me, and come show off your Mooney at KLMO some time.

So one interesting thing about our bird is that when it was re-imported back to the states, it got a "scuff and shoot" paint job, not a full strip and repaint. When it's washed and waxed to maximum shiny-ness (which still doesn't make it a looker, but it's a workhorse, not a show plane), you can actually see the contours of the old "DR" registration identifier on the wing. Thanks for the translations, folks. I can figure most of it out from context, but never bothered to look line-by-line. As one might expect with a brand new airplane, there is nothing really of note in those early logs: just oil changes, air filters, and normal inspections.

The 1976 F model is the finest Mooney ever produced. Ask me how I know.