toto

That was the first of the three articles. https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/11/the-20-an-hour-cessna-172-experiment/ https://airfactsjournal.com/2022/10/the-20-hour-cessna-172-experiment-update/ https://airfactsjournal.com/2024/11/the-corsair-c172-v8-experiment-update-3-readers-suggestions/

There’s a nice series of articles in Air Facts Journal about a Chevy V-8 installed in a Skyhawk. I think this has been referenced on MS before … well worth an entertaining read. https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/11/the-20-an-hour-cessna-172-experiment/

They seemed pretty easy to get until shortly before the most recent factory ownership change. When Jonny took over, one of the things people were asking for was availability of the NBS, and I know this was on his short list of things to shore up. But it never really seemed to happen. Prior to 2020, iirc you could get one of these through a MSC for under 1AMU.

The way I was interpreting it was that the spring breaks when the lever goes up, and the gear remain down and locked. So no gear up landing, no report filed. I don’t pretend to be an expert in these actuators or the sequence of events, so I may be way off base.

My understanding from various (probably not comprehensive or trustworthy) anecdotes is that the spring is more likely to fail on retraction than extension. So you’re more likely to pull the handle up and have the gear stay down. If that’s true, then I would expect many of those events not to be recorded in an official report. Dunno.

That’s roughly my understanding of where the 1000 hour guidance came from. Since Mooney owners aren’t tracking cycles, they just track hours and use a “primary trainer” worst-case scenario for cycles per hour. Before the most recent factory closure, I had heard rumors that the SB was being updated to 2000 hours as a guideline, on the basis that it was a more realistic but still very conservative number. Dunno.

No. If the spring fails, it takes out the emergency extension mechanism too. There’s a ton of good discussion on MS about the NBS.

Right, that’s what I’m after - I don’t really care about the small alignment mismatch unless it’s a safety-of-flight issue.

So my plane came out of annual with some hangar rash on the left elevator. The shop owned the issue and repaired it - but the repair required removing the left elevator from the plane and replacing the end cap piece. When it was all done, the repaired elevator looks mostly like it did before. But I noticed that the left elevator is a little bit out of alignment with the horizontal stabilizer. The right elevator is perfect. The plane flies straight and trims correctly with no obvious problems. Is this something that needs to be addressed, or is it fine for the two sides to be a bit different? I’ve read the other (oldish) threads on the alignment issue, but I’m not sure how to evaluate this. I’m also not 100% sure whether this is a new issue or whether it’s been this way since long before the repair. I haven’t paid that much attention to it before this work was done. (Right side - untouched) (Left side - repaired)

She is a civilian contractor, so you do not salute her - but you’d better listen to her, because the Pentagon listens to her about your proficiency.

I went around looking for some first-hand experiences with 100R. This thread has some mildly interesting feedback, including the apparent fact that the Swift fuel uses no aromatics (which I guess is the source of most of the materials incompatibility issues with G100UL). https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1h3zdfy/100r_smells_weird/ At this point, “different from G100UL” seems like a key measure of success. Both for certification and formulation.

Nice

I haven’t yet seen a MSer who replaced a NBS for $3000. This is a “go away” price for a part that may have negative overall value for the aircraft.

My understanding from the video was that she landed on the same pavement she departed from. There is another runway at the airport, but she always departed 01 and returned to 19.

335 pounds, including the starter, turbo and exhaust SpecSheetBack-April2025.pdf