toto

This site has some nice looking Mooney swag. I have never purchased anything from them, so ymmv. I'm sure it's all unauthorized. https://www.redbubble.com/shop?query=mooney aircraft&ref=search_box

That’s pretty impressive - must be the exception rather than the rule though. The airparks around here seem mostly to have a lot of available lots that aren’t moving at all.

Seems impossible, right? No idea.

This is all pretty interesting. What I’d heard about Craig Fuller before was basically that he wanted to build fly-in communities, and the magazines were a way to promote the airparks. You’ve summarized much more than I knew before.

I keep my AOPA membership for the same reason - I have the PPP, and I think it’s valuable. I also just generally think that we need to support general aviation advocacy organizations, though I’ve been a little uncomfortable with the kinds of salaries that AOPA executives are drawing. It’s a nonprofit, after all. I don’t read the AOPA Pilot magazine. There’s way too much fluff. I’d rather that money went toward education and advocacy efforts. I flip through the pages as I toss it into the bin.

Raising subscription prices to $30 for an ad-supported magazine is insane. The reason I really like(d) the Belvoir publications is that they were 100% content and no fluff. I felt like my subscription money was going straight to content. But if I have to read 100 pages full of ads to get 10 pages of content, I’m not going to pay top dollar for that. I canceled my Flying subscription when they changed the format because it seemed bizarre - like paying for a book of postcards.

Nice find. Weird content though - it’s an AI generated summary of a YouTube video? ETA: I’m watching the video now. It’s not a bad interview. The AI summary seems pretty good so far…

It’s a tough call. I did my instrument training in an aircraft with no autopilot and two KX-170B radios in the panel, and my reptilian brain still wants a VOR when overloaded. But if you're a new pilot today and you’re planning to fly TAA in the future or as a career, it’s probably best to build those neural pathways with buttonology and a certified GPS navigator.

It looks like he had an audio panel in the top of the center stack. He replaced that with the 396 in a dock, and moved the audio panel to the top of the right stack.

Yeah - I would expect a consumer magazine to steer clear of paid advertising.

I really only read the digital ones, and the paper copies go in the bin. Which seems incredibly wasteful, but for whatever reason it seems hard to order digital-only subscriptions without paying extra. I’ve always liked the Belvoir publications, as a long time subscriber to IFR and Aviation Consumer. When you subscribe, you get access to the full digital library, which is quite nice on an iPad. You can download PDF copies of any old issue that strikes your interest, and take it with you.

Just got my renewal letter. I’ve always thought AC was a little bit pricey at ~35/year. Sometimes I would get only digital, sometimes I would get digital+print, but I always chose the $35 option. Now it looks like they only have a $75 option, which is an awful lot of money for a magazine. I currently subscribe to IFR, Aviation Consumer, and Plane & Pilot. But they nuked one issue of each this year so they could instead send me a special issue of Flying that I didn’t want. And now the price has gone way up. I'm starting to reconsider the “bundle” at $149, which gives me more magazines I don’t want, but might actually cost less than getting the magazines I do want. How are others navigating the aviation magazine waters in 2024?

It’s been discussed quite a few times. The search feature on MS isn’t great https://www.google.com/search?q=levil bom site%3Amooneyspace.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

I had a similar thing happen after a major overhaul - but it was the lead wires that were only finger tight. Pulled the cowl and found the leads almost hanging off the plugs. That was after doing the first break-in flight. Ugh.

Ah .. okay it’s not another one

Geez another Mooney crash at 47N.

I think I do something similar to others - I always say "Mike Twenty Papa" (not "two zero"). I don't provide an equipment suffix unless asked. I selected "Mike Two Zero Papa" but I actually say "Mike Twenty Papa" ...

Is this correct year over year? The last time I looked at this was a few years back when we had a sales thread here on MS, and Textron vs Cirrus was 300ish for each. I think it was 306 vs 347, with the significant edge to Cirrus. I certainly don’t perceive Cirrus as outselling Textron 2:1. I think of them as being very close on annual SEP sales. Anyway, if Cirrus is reliably selling 2:1 year over year, then I’ll withdraw the comment. I may have seen the aberration and assumed it was the average.

I mean, the Textron vs Cirrus SEP sales numbers are awfully close, and most of the Textron numbers are Cessnas.

Funny enough, the only time I ever saw a 480 in the flesh was when I went out to Idaho to see your plane when a previous owner was selling it

If I remember correctly, the UPS-AT navigator was superior to the GNS radios back in the day, in significant part because the UPS navigator had airway support and the Garmins didn’t. Garmin bought the UPS-AT business with no real intention of developing the product - they wanted to push customers to the 430/530, so the 480 was doomed the moment the sale went through. The 480 ended up being the first Garmin navigator with WAAS support, I guess because it wasn’t Garmin tech

+1 for Juan Browne I like his videos, and I don’t think he tries to be sensationalist. He does speculate as to the cause of an accident, but it’s educated speculation, and never reckless.

An owned aircraft policy can absolutely be written with conditions covering these situations. You can write a policy that says “Pilot X, no solo flight until after completing 10 hours dual with instructor” etc. So the new pilot is a named insured on the policy, the policy covers the transition training, and the policy covers solo flight after the minimum hours requirement is met. If concerned about the cost, working with a broker like Parker can be very helpful. Once you’ve met certain experience thresholds, your broker can rewrite or rebid a policy based on current experience and you won’t need to continue paying the “newbie” rate for an extended period.

I wrote a big long thoughtful response on this thread, but I decided I wasn't adding anything really original, so I'm just going to post a video from the Ruthless Aviator Girl channel instead.

I'm not sure how you're doing it, but fwiw when I get in the plane my iPad connects automatically to my GTX, and I always have to manually connect to the G3X (which has the EIS). Once I've done that, it stays connected and everything works for the whole flight, but my iPad won't automatically connect to two devices.