StinkBug

I wish I could believe they were even close to that efficient. I bought my plane Jan 1st and I'm still waiting for registration.

In the case of my plane I knew what's currently in the panel, but not what was previously in the panel. Knowing the weight you put in doesn't help you if you dont know what you took out.

Well it turns out Ken was the one that had it right all along. I went to the plane today all prepared to start pulling panels, and when I pulled the ring, then pulled a little harder than normal, fuel came pouring out. It didn't really feel like the ring moved any more than usual, but just a bit of extra pull and fuel flowed just the way it should. Guess I've just been doing it wrong. I like fixes that are this simple. I'm also happy to have learned a few things from this thread that may be useful in the future. Thanks everyone!

I haven't, and the log books dont show anything too recent. I've only had the plane 4 months.

Doing a bit of searching on ebay turned up a ton of little 12V aquarium/pond pumps. Not as much GPH as a bilge pump, but in this application you're not really looking to empty a boat quickly, you just need to circulate a small amount of water. The pond pumps are a lot smaller and pull a tiny amount of power in comparison as well, since they are designed to run on solar panels. Most of them were around 2.5 watts, compared to 2.5 Amps for the bilge pumps.

This is a good question. I'd think that if it looked like you were going to land someplace where the aircraft was likely to sustain major damage no matter what, being gear up would get you stopped a lot faster and shorten the amount of space required to get stopped. If you're looking at landing on a wide paved road on the other hand, you may choose to put the gear down and land normally like the dude that gave that Ford the slice and dice treatment a couple weeks ago.

Do you have part #s for the gaskets? Do you just order them from Mooney directly?

Thanks for the detailed response Dave. I think I have a pretty good picture of what you're talking about. Sounds very similar to the float bowl on some of the carbs I've worked on.

Details on the pump for moving the water around? I've seen some people do really cheap versions of this simply by flowing air across the ice in the cooler directly, but the radiator is definitely a more efficient method.

Hmm, good to know. It feels like it hits a pretty solid stop when I pull the ring, but it doesn't take a lot of effort. Guess I'll try pulling a bit harder next time and see what happens.

I have an A&P who is pretty happy to supervise me, as he knows my skillset. I build custom vehicles from scratch for a living, so wrenching is not an issue. I am not an airplane mechanic though, so when it comes to systems not found in the automotive or racing worlds I like to research. He's also not an MSC, so sometimes I've found that doing my own research can help him on the Mooney specific stuff. I'm betting this screen was not checked at the last annual, since that was right before I bought the plane just a couple months ago. For clarification though, are you guys saying that I'll need to remove the entire fuel selector valve, or is it just a fitting on the drain side that has the screen? Just trying to figure out how involved this is gonna be so I can schedule hangar time accordingly.

When I got my plane in January I noticed that it sometimes took a few seconds before the fuel selector drain would actually drain any fuel, but figured it was normal as I had no prior experience. Now it's not draining at all. I'm thinking there must be something clogging the drain as it was draining before and now if I hold the ring up long enough the drain will be wet, so something is trying to come out. Anyone know how difficult the drain is to inspect/clean, and if there's something specifically I should check? 68 C model BTW.

Went up to Mammoth this weekend to catch the last bit of snow of this season and grabbed a little video on our way out. I might be a little weird though, cause I'm far more entertained by the shadow after takeoff than the mountains.

I have a bunch of gopro sticky mounts on various spots on my plane. One of them is on the bottom of the tail a foot or so forward of the tie down. No issues with oil whatsoever, but my plane doesn't blow a lot of oil to begin with so YMMV. I also picked up a go-pro knock off a couple years ago and was fairly satisfied with the video quality for the price. After having it sit on a shelf for a while it's cheapness became apparent. The latch holding the door of the case shut broke....just while sitting there, and all the mounts started breaking just from tightening the bolts that hold them together. It became readily apparent that the plastic used was of a far inferior quality. The camera itself still works fine, but I cant actually do much with it since all the mounts fell apart. Wherever you mount yours, make sure that if it decides to break free it's not gonna bang into your plane as it departs. This is not something I worry about with GoPros, but after this experience I'm very wary of using the cheapo cameras on the outside of the plane.

Whelen also makes some non-legal lights as well. A little birdie told me that this one works very well and is much brighter than the original incandescent. Judging by all the reviews it's also being mounted on a lot of aircraft. http://smile.amazon.com/Whelen-Engineering-PAR-46-Super-LED-Replacement/dp/B009LQG64S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429317185&sr=8-1&keywords=whelen+par+46

I don't doubt that in 5 years there may be some really awesome LI batteries on the market. The technology is moving very quickly. I'm just saying that the ones they have on the market NOW are not something I'd put in my airplane. The weight savings simply isn't worth the hassles.

This is the problem I see. Often times the "current" W&B sheet isn't current at all. When I bought my plane I took one look at the W&B sheet and found a glaring oversight. It had been done when a previous owner installed a 3 blade prop that added 35lbs to the nose. The plane currently has a 2 blade prop on it. Pretty big oversight in there. Scouring through the log books I found all the entries for the prop change, but no W&B entry. I also found no entry for the panel upgrade. This left me wondering just how far off that piece of paper really was. It ended up being close on weight, but nearly a half inch different in CG. If you're really confident in all the entries and calculations in your log books from the last 40 years, then there shouldn't be a reason to weigh. I'd be surprised to find a plane that old without some omissions and oversights though. I don't think you have the wrong attitude, we should all be leaving a margin of safety. The problem comes when we're working off of data that's inaccurate. There may come a time when you think you're within limits by a good margin, but since you're working from inaccurate data your margin of safety is actually taken up by the margin of error. See Air Midwest 5481 for an example of how bad math can kill.

Dangers aside I've seen firsthand how well lithium batteries are doing in the motorcycle market. And by seen, i mean watched my friends cuss and throw things when their bike still wouldn't start even with special chargers and rubbing it just right and whispering sexy things to it. The technology just isn't matured enough yet.

I'm with this guy. Getting your plane weighed doesntbmake you lose usable load,it prevents you from overloading due to ignorance. In my case putting it on scales lost me a whopping 12 lbs, but gained me a confidence that when I'm calculating my w&b it's not based on fairy dust and dreams. I just asked my a&p. He had a guy and got it done.

That step looks a lot shorter than the one on my plane, and all the others I've seen. Did someone shorten yours?

If you contact the organizer and sign up I'm sure they will give you all the details on schedule and lodging. That's how it worked in Yuma. Pretty much all of us stayed at the same hotel, with a special group rate.

Looking at my logbook I was at about 180 hours when I went to the Yuma Clinic, about 60 of that in my C. As of right now it's only been 11 months since my first flying lesson. I was a bit nervous about doing this as well, but after riding along for a day I was more excited than anything. It was a great experience.

I have a fair bit of video I need to sort through as well, both from the right seat of 9344V and from cameras mounted on my plane for the newbie training. Definitely recommend practicing takeoff and landing with no flaps if you normally use them, and if at all possible try to get some right seat time. I came a day early as well and being able to see everything in person was a huge benefit. You can talk about things on a forum and watch videos, and see pictures but until you experience it in person you dont really get the whole picture. Really looking forward to next time!

Beat me to it, LOL.

That's the tire I was planning on ordering this evening as well.