Vance Harral

Your point is well taken, and yes, people should check part numbers. This can be "artificially confusing" for the G5, however, because the number of G5 variants is less than what is implied by the part numbers used for sales purposes. There are exactly two flavors of G5 instrument: experimental and certified. The "experimental" G5 (P/N 010-01485-01, see https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/514383) is not certified for anything. Garmin doesn't want this unit in any certified aircraft for any reason, though I'm sure a few people have played games with stretching the interpretation of rules in a way that jives what they want. There is only one "certified" G5 instrument, and it's certified as primary for any/all of the functions I mentioned above (see the installation manual for details). If you visit https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/570665/pn/K10-00280-01, however, it appears there are three different flavors of certified G5 with different part numbers: one for use as a certified Attitude Indicator, one for use as a certified DG/HSI, and one for use as a certified HSI "with GPS interface". This is misleading. Again, there is only one certified G5 instrument, and it can be used for any of the certified functions. The different names/part numbers just reflect additional gizmos that are bundled with the instrument when you order it. If you order a "G5 Attitude Indicator", you get only the G5 device itself and nothing else. If you order a "G5 DG/HSI", you get a the same G5, but also a GMU11 magnetometer which provides heading information to the G5. If you order a "G5 DG/HSI with GPS interface", you get the G5 plus the GMU11 plus a GAD29B bus converter that allows the G5 to talk to ARINC429 devices. But you can buy the GMU11 and/or GAD29B from one vendor, connect them to a "G5 Attitude Indicator" you bought from another vendor, and still have a legally certified DG/HSI. Garmin is very clear about this if you dig into details and/or talk to their support staff.

The G5 is certified primary for use as an attitude indicator, DG, HSI, or turn coordinator. When configured as an ADI, the G5 display also shows airspeed and altitude tapes, and a VSI indication. But those are for "entertainment purposes only", the G5 cannot replace the factory instruments. In my experience, this is not well understood, and many pilots assume the G5 altitude is "better" than the old round dial. The fact that a GFC500 autopilot gets altitude hold information from a G5 adds to the confusion. to be clear, G5 altitude and airspeed accuracy isn't inherently poor, it just needs to be calibrated to be accurate. The calibration is electronic rather than mechanical, it's set through menus in the unit. The shop that does your biannual static system check can easily perform this calibration, but it takes extra time, and they will understandably bill extra to do the work. Most shops know that (1) it's not required; and (2) many owners don't want to pay extra for this, so they commonly leave the G5 calibration at the factory default setting and only check the certified primary altimeter. In my experience, this almost always results in the G5 altimeter reading high relative to the certified altimeter, when both are set to the same Kollsman setting.

I would not fly instrument approaches in an airplane whose only certified altimeter was on the far opposite side of the panel from the attitude indicator. I don't buy the argument that "The G5 altimeter is good enough even though it's not certified primary", for approaches down to 200' AGL minimums. I've flown in too many airplanes with G5s where a combination of owner ignorance and shop confusion over what the owner wants, lead to uncorrected G5 installations with indicated altitudes which are over 100' in error in the "dangerous" direction.

I used to use and recommend WingX too, but it seems like Hilton and his one-man WingX band dropped off the face of the planet a few years ago. It's not exactly dead, but it seems like it's barely hanging on, with no active support. If you visit https://hiltonsoftware2.com/wingx, you'll see essentially nothing in the way of updates, just some notes about testing with the latest O/S updates. The promo video for v9 is 3 years old. That doesn't mean it doesn't work, and it may still be a fine backup, but I just got the point where it didn't seem supported enough to rely on, even as a backup. I haven't looked into it in a long time, anyone have more current info?

Adding an interior baggage door unlatch mechanism to older Mooneys is a recurring topic on Mooneyspace and elsewhere. Many have done so, it certainly doesn't seem to hurt anything, and I try not to criticize what others do with their "safety dollars" (and time), though not always successfully. Obviously the factory thought it had real - or at least marketing - value. But as one who hasn't bothered with this mod, I'm moved to ask if there's any evidence, anywhere, of any Mooney accident, in which someone perished because they could not open the baggage door and use it as an exit? Sure, it's theoretically possible, but this seems like a really-corner corner case. Thinking about it, to get benefit from the interior unlatch mechanism, it seems like you have to have a situation where: rapid exit is the difference between life and death the airplane has not rolled onto its right side (because then both the cabin door and the baggage door are jammed against the ground) the airframe is bent badly enough that the main door cannot be opened - even with adrenaline - but the baggage door can; and... the party/ies at risk are not able bodied enough to man-handle the main door open, but are still able-bodied enough to crawl over the back seat into the baggage compartment, and fit themselves through the baggage door, in a timely manner I'd say this is... uh.... very unlikely. But maybe I'm missing something, happy to be educated to the contrary. On edit... are people doing this in part because of the old "the interior door handle came off in my hand" thing, where they don't have a pair of vice grips or similar in the cabin?

This question suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the experimental category. Aircraft do not receive airworthiness certificates that just say "experimental". Experimental airworthiness certificates also define a "purpose" for the experimental certificate. The list of valid purposes are defined in 21.191, and the restrictions associated with those purposes branch out from 91.319. The most common experimental purpose is "amateur built". The Mooney examples posted above are "research & development". I'm sure it's theoretically possible to get the FAA to issue an experimental airworthiness certificate for an M22, but the owner would have to decide what purpose to pursue. An M22 turbine conversion would involve such extensive work that it would probably meet the requirements for experimental/amateur-built, in which case after passing an inspection and flying 25-40 hours of solo flight test in a designated "non populated" area, you could fly the airplane in day VFR conditions. Lots of kit planes are "specifically authorized by the Administrator" to operate under night/IFR as well, but that's not automatic for a one-off like you're proposing. Building a pressurized turbine airplane that likely can only be operated day VFR seems silly to me, but... like... that's just my opinion, man. The experimental/research-and-development Mooneys referenced above are theoretically restricted to only flight activities specifically associated with a specific R&D project. I'm as curious as the next Mooniac what's being researched and developed, but you'd have to ask the owner. I'm sure people try to play games with this on occasion, like saying that a flight to visit Grandma is "testing cruise characteristics and range", and that the spouse and kids are "required flight test crew". I've never participated in the process, so I don't know how strictly it's enforced. But in general, as was said in another thread, the purpose of Experimental airworthiness certificates is not to provide an avenue for aviators who don't like the rules for certified aircraft to work around them. So while it might be fun to daydream about M22 vanity project, it's really not a serious discussion. If the goal is to have a pressurized airplane that's not subject to standard airworthiness limitations, there are a plethora of better ways to achieve that than hacking up a 60-year old, limited production, certified airframe.

Attached is the diagram from the IPC. The set screw is item 11, it's an AN565-D416-H4. You can read more about our struggles with it here.

There is a set screw at the bottom of the yoke, meant to take up any shaft-to-yoke slack that remains with the structural bolt installed. You can only see it by laying upside down on the floor of the airplane and looking up. You must loosen that set screw to remove the yoke from the shaft. You'll want to be careful turning the set screw. It is easily broken, especially if someone put thread-locker on it to keep it from vibrating loose and allowing slop in the yoke. The factory part is a hex-head screw, but sometimes it's replaced with a slotted or other-headed screw. It's easy to mangle it. If you mangle it, it's very difficult to drill out. If it can't be drilled out, the only alternative is to wrench the yoke off the shaft by brute force, which leaves a scar on the shaft. You can guess how I know all these things...

It's plenty accurate, but the O2 sensor in an apple watch requires you to keep your arm extremely still while the reading is being taken. This is difficult to achieve in any moving vehicle, particularly an airplane. I bought an apple watch in part to use the oximeter in the air, but it has proven to be impractical for that. I still use a finger sensor instead.

In low wing airplanes, I teach to prime and start on one tank, then switch to the other immediately after engine start. The idea is to prove that you can feed fuel from both tanks. as you say. But I want to do this immediately after engine start so it's several minutes between switching tanks, and takeoff, preferably with a runup inbetween. The risk factor of switching tanks right before takeoff is a scenario where the system can't deliver any fuel from the newly selected tank, but the lines downstream from the fuel selector have just enough go juice in them to get you airborne before the engine quits. I don't worry about that scenario much in a fuel-injected engine. I worry about it a lot in a carbureted engine: the float bowl can hold quite a lot of fuel. It's an interesting experiment in any airplane to turn the fuel selector to OFF on the ground, and see how long it takes the engine to die. I once flew with a guy in a Champ, who regularly turned the fuel selector to the off position shortly after clearing the runway, and taxied all the way to his hangar on just the gas in the carburetor bowl.

I really don't understand people's obsession with filling the tanks for every flight scenario, especially in a Mooney. 54 gallons is nearly 6 hours of endurance in an E model. Almost nobody wants to fly in any kind of piston single for anywhere near that length of time. Put 30 gallons of gas in the airplane instead of 54, now you've got over 3 hours' endurance and about 700 lbs of payload. Completely reasonable for a 3-person trip. Show me an airplane where you can fill the tanks and fill the seats and still depart legally, and I'll show you an airplane whose designers made the fuel tanks too small.

There are plenty of good partnerships, and the legalities, financial arrangements, and risk management can always be worked out among reasonable people. But I don't think those things should be your first concern. Your first concern should be whether you're genuinely capable of treating an incoming partner as an equal - up to and including the belief that you're as likely to damage the airplane as they are. Not every sole owner considering a partnership is able to do this. That doesn't make the prospective seller a bad person, but they should be honest with themselves about it. I see your situation a lot on aviation forums: a sole owner gets a little beaten down by costs and availability, and thinks about selling a share of an airplane they have owned outright for a while, to an incoming partner. I like to ask the seller if they're OK with bringing in a partner who expects to develop a new set of operating rules, as equals, different in some ways from how the original owner operated. How would you react to the new partner asking to change how the airplane is fueled, when/if the avionics databases are updated, what position the seat is left in, whether the tow bar is left attached to the nose gear in the hangar, leaning procedures, and so forth? In short, are you capable of changing your mindset from it being "your" airplane to it being a shared airplane, and negotiating new operating procedures in good faith? This often doesn't work out as hoped. Nobody thinks they are unreasonable or overbearing, but sellers understandably feel they have worked out the "right" way to operate the airplane, and tend to want the incoming partner to follow suit. And they grouse when they new guy accidentally (or purposely) doesn't follow their lead, which damages the relationship. As a CFI, I get asked the other side of the question a lot: "Should I buy into this partnership"? I generally advise the potential buyer to ask about changing some trivial aspect of operation, like not topping off the tanks after every flight, or changing the panel moving map to North Up instead of Track Up. The outcome of such discussions doesn't matter, but the act of having the discussion and observing the attitude of the participants says a lot about how the partnership will go. The ideal partnership is one which is formed amongst a group of like-minded people, none of which has an airplane. If they can get through the process of deciding on an airplane to buy together, odds are they're like-minded enough for success. This isn't always practical, of course. But I think both buyers and sellers should compare whatever deal they're considering against this ideal model.

This is of great interest to me as a Mooney owner, with regard to OPP and VARMA. There is this reasonable-on-its-face idea that if the manufacturer is still in business and producing parts, the FAA isn't going to bless alternative sources. But there can be a big difference between theoretical and practical ability to produce parts. A manufacturer who still answers the phone, but only to tell you that they won't produce your part until they get a sufficiently large back order log that could take months/years, arguably isn't a manufacturer at all.

This is my primary concern. Moving maps are for situational awareness, not guidance. I'm not a Luddite about moving maps. I don't actually have an issue with pilots who have a geo-referenced approach plate or other moving map up during an approach, and do so myself on my EFB. But when I'm teaching IR students to fly approaches, I turn off the maps in the early stages of training, to emphasize that only a CDI/HSI provides appropriate course guidance. The map is for big-picture stuff, like helping you sanity check the course you've set, and remembering to turn the right way on the PT/HILPT/missed. One thing I very much like about moving maps, is using them as a rough reference during a time when GPS/CDI reprogramming is required at vulnerable times. A benign example would be getting cleared direct to a fix you can see on your approach plate, but that you don't have loaded in your navigator (maybe you loaded a different transition, or you loaded VTF). If you get "cleared direct to ODDFIX", and you can see it right on a geo-referenced approach plate, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making a turn in the general direction of the fix and getting your wings back level, before you go heads-down to play with your navigator. I feel similarly about an immediate climbing turn on a missed approach. I've seen too many cases of pilots losing track of their bank angle and getting into a steep turn down low, because they're trying to click buttons or dial knobs while in a turn at low altitude. With one student in particular, I finally made it a rule that he could either turn the airplane or play with the nav stack, but not both at the same time. Moving maps help with this.

I like the Flight Plan page, which shows the waypoint sequence, including distances, and altitudes. The Default Nav page isn't bad, but I'm more inclined to use the Flight Plan page these days. As a CFII, I discourage use of the Map page on a navigator during instrument approaches. I feel like it's an inappropriate distraction.

Mooney went through a couple of different handles on the throttle lever during the brief quadrant run. There are indeed "tall" and "short" variants, mine is the former. One of the variants has a button on top that originally controlled the landing light, but that at least one Mooney driver placarded "Machine Guns".

Is this because the GTN interfaces to the G3X via HDSB rather than discrete signals? If so, I presume there is still some sort of integrity check associated with that connection. Maybe that integrity check is continuous, rather than performed once at startup?

The wires aren't soldered into the connector, they use pins which are (somewhat) removable. And I don't think Garmin ships pre-built harnesses for navigator/CDI connections. They are generally built at the avionics shop, since the distance between the navigator box and the CDI varies from airplane to airplane. The connection from the navigator to the CDI (or to a GAD29 in the case of a G5 HSI) is just a bunch of individual small-gauge wires, terminated with pins that "click" into the connectors you get from Garmin. It is definitely possible to get an individual pair of wires associated with a single differential signal backwards. You can probably guess how I know this.

The service manual for the 1976 M20F says battery voltage in a normally operating system at 80F should be 13.8 to 14.8, see below. This assumes you have the original alternator and voltage regulator, which you may not. Another catch is that you're probably not going to wire your voltmeter directly to the battery or alternator output terminals, but somewhere else in the electrical system. Depending on where and how it's tapped, there may be losses in the system that make the "normal" voltage seen on the meter slightly different than the spec'd voltage in the service manual. If you want an in-the-field data point, we've had an AV-17 voice annunciator in our 1976 M20Ffor about a decade. It has non-adjustable voltage warnings that the manual says trigger at 13.0 and 15.1V for low/high points, which is exactly what @A64Pilot suggests above. We've never had an overvoltage warning, even during an ill-advised operation once when the battery was nearly dead and we accepted the risk of a very high charge rate once we got the engine started. Low voltage warnings trigger as expected, basically any time we turn on the voice annunciator before engine start. I don't think there is any perfect answer to your question, again because behavior varies depending on where you mount the meter. But 13/15 for low/high seems very reasonable to me.

Roughly 80% of all the pilots I've flown with who have GTN/GNS navigators. Most of them have never had the startup test sequence explained to them, and they don't understand what it's intended to verify. They also don't understand why they should care about it, because they don't understand that the connectivity between the navigator and the CDI is just a pedestrian set of relatively vulnerable, small wires, that bounce around and fatigue with every bump of turbulence. Some installations are more robust than others, of course, and I've never actually seen a GTN/GNS-connected CDI go belly up in the middle of a flight. I'm probably extra sensitive to it because I wired my own. It just seems more sketchy when you're crimping the pins and routing the wires yourself; and thinking, "Really? That's it?"

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking about. The thing right below the landing gear switch is just a cheap, 3-up kitchen timer velcro'd to the panel. The thing that says "0" with the green buttons is a Sensorcon carbon monoxide detector, also velcro'd to the panel. Lots of us here on Mooneyspace have them, thanks to bold work by @DanM20C. If you're asking what my hand is on, that's the throttle in my airplane. I do understand it may look quite foreign to most Mooney drivers, who are crippled with pedestrian push/pull engine controls, being not fortunate enough to enjoy the superior throttle quadrant that was installed in select, 1970s era Mooneys.

That's appreciated, but mostly I'm glad it turned out to be something simple. To give credit where it's due, Pete Mc was the first to suggest it.

Would you be in favor of the FAA mandating $500 worth of training with a CFI on maneuvering flight instead? That would buy a lot more safety than requiring any kind of additional equipment. It's right there in the Nall (now Richard McSpadden) report. This is my beef with the topic being discussed. I don't know that I'd use the phrase "freaking out". I'm not anti-TIS-B or anti-radio. But the interest, emphasis, and money spent on midair avoidance is grossly disproportionate to the threat of what's actually killing pilots. If you have X dollars to spend on "safety", there is no rational argument for spending it on anything other than additional practice and training. That's not to say you shouldn't buy equipment for comfort, convenience, or fun, of course. Just don't lie to yourself that you're buying safety.

Maybe it'll amuse you to explain that I teach students it's a mock dogfight, at least as close as you'll get as a civilian. I was never a fighter jock like you, but "Lose sight, lose the fight" and all that - there's a lot to be said for turning toward a target rather than away from it. Not only are you more likely to see them, but in most cases, if you point your airplane at where a threat is right now, it actually increases separation by the time you get to where they were. More controversially, I can often get effective results by rocking my wings without actually changing my flight path at all. Usually this goads the other guy into doing something, and I can watch the threat actively fly away from me. The point is not to be a bully, but a little "showing off" in the name of increased visibility isn't a necessarily a bad thing. Both of these strategies are counter-intuitive. You need to think about it a lot to understand why they're effective collision avoidance. Things like this are taught to ATC controllers, radar intercept officers, and fighter jocks; but it hasn't yet made it into the Private Pilot curriculum.

If the conversation is going to turn back to training instead of who's an idiot, I'll play. Here are some observations I have from watching "self taught" pilots interact with their traffic systems, that bother me. Feedback is welcome, I'm happy to hear other opinions. First is understanding the difference between what is, and is not actually a threat. Pilots say things to me like, "You just don't realize how much traffic is out there, Vance. There's way more than you think!". So I ask them to show me, and they'll bring up some picture like this: It's an impressive image at first glance. Obviously hundreds of airplanes. But then I point out this picture encompasses over 2,500 cubic nautical miles of airspace (you can see both KOSH and KMSN in the picture, they're a little over 60nm apart, and there is no altitude filtering). Each individual blue arrow representing an airplane is about 4 square miles of area at this scale, as if every piston single was the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer. It paints a completely unrealistic picture of "all that traffic out there". Conclusion: scale matters. Set your traffic display to some single-digit number of miles, in accordance with your speed, such that you don't see anything at all until it's within a minute or two of closing on you (nothing under 10,000' is moving faster than 250 knots, and even a 500-knot closure rate is only 8 nm/min). Employ altitude filtering, too: if you really believe that device is giving you accurate, useful information, you certainly don't need to worry about targets depicted more than 2000' above/below you. If one does these things, there's often nothing on the display, which frees up a lot of cognitive energy for, you know, flying the airplane. Trouble is, lots of pilots I fly with have gotten to the point of developing such inherent anxiety about traffic, that if they can't see any threats to avoid on the display, they'll keep zooming out until they do. Second point: for something that's a real threat, what should you do about it? Most of the pilots I ask this say something like, "Well, I'll maneuver to avoid the threat based on what the display is showing me". What I want to hear is "I'll attempt to find the threat visually, then maneuver to avoid it if necessary". That's usually not what people say. But you know what? I can let that go. Reasonable people can disagree on this. What drives me nuts is that when I ask how they're going to maneuver, a lot of people tell me they're going to perform a maneuver that absolutely maximizes the chance of a midair. They say they'll turn "away" from the threat, by which they mean they'll make a turn that puts their belly to the target, guarantees they can't see the threat, and maximizes the time the two aircraft are in close proximity. Literally any other answer would be better: Climb. Descend. Turn toward the target so you can put your nose on their tail and pass behind. Speed up. Slow down. Just anything other than turning your belly to the target and carving a parabolic path right toward their track. My third gripe is the growing preponderance of pilots who use their traffic displays around uncontrolled airports to effectively declare themselves an ad-hoc controller, and make "suggestions" about what other airplanes should do. To be clear, I've got no problem with a radio call like, "N12345 is on the 45 to downwind for XX, planning to enter the pattern behind N54321". That's a nice feature of TIS-B. But in the metro area where I fly, I run into situations a few times a month where some yahoo is asking other airplanes (by call sign), "What are you doing?"; or making position calls on behalf of other airplanes they think have failed to made some "standard" announcement; or initiating a ten-sentence exchange of coordination with the aircraft nearest them, completely oblivious to the bandwidth they're taking up that prevents others from making critical position reports. CTAF procedures have always been challenging, but ADS-B is making those challenges worse, and I'm inclined to believe the net safety change is a wash at best. Once again, these are not theoretical problems I'm concerned "could" happen. They are actual behavior I'm observing on a regular basis. The people engaging in these behaviors aren't idiots, and the insidious thing is that they really believe they're making things safer. In some cases they lack critical thinking skills, but mostly what they lack is experience and/or instruction. It would be nice for the industry to address that. I can do my part as an instructor, but I'm just one guy, and unlikely to exert much influence on anyone who already has a pilot certificate.