toto

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a turbine Bonanza before, then we have this thread, and a week later one shows up at my home drone..

That sound better ish

Cross link to post from yesterday https://mooneyspace.com/topic/49856-lycoming-connecting-rod-bushing-ad-2024-21-02/

This seems like a heck of a deal. It’s essentially a free STC with 337 for the purchase of some fuel that you were going to buy anyway. I'm thrilled that we have a viable option of unleaded avgas and I’d do this in a heartbeat. Wonder when they’ll make it to the midwest. I’ll be very interested to hear pireps from everyone who burns a wingload of G100UL. My only real concern is that the stuff apparently eats paint, so be careful when fueling…

I have 40 cases of AV-1 in my hangar that are super excited about this

I think 100LL has been banned at Reid Hillview

The M700 is just a PA46. Pressurized since the first Malibu rolled off the line in 1984

My understanding has been that you’re more likely to break a spring on retraction than extension, and that it’s likely to happen early - so the gear are still locked down with a broken spring. But I have no data to back this up (there are so few incidents that I doubt there’s good data in any case) .. and I’m certainly not going to argue anecdotes with Tom Rouch.

Yes, they seem to fail more often on retraction than extension

Yeah I think the new ones have a carbon cowl, but otherwise metal

The Piper and TBM are both metal

I’d be interested to read about the engineering challenges with the P210 or other airframes where they retrofitted a pressure vessel and associated systems into a legacy airframe. It’s got to be complicated, and there must be a lot of tradeoffs. The PA46T was pressurized from day one, and there are a lot of turbine conversion STCs for piston airframes. But you don’t see that many that go from non-pressurized to pressurized.

I wonder if that is based on the Mooney SB or something else? If I remember correctly, the 1000 interval was going to be extended to 2000 hours by a later SB but that never happened - not sure why. But could have a significant impact on Aussie Mooniacs if the SB controls.

The “zip tie” comment was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it does seem like an unfortunate design for an emergency extension system. I’m mostly eating popcorn in this thread - totally agree that NBS failures aren’t the reason people land Mooneys gear-up, and gear-up landings rarely hurt more than the pilot’s pride, in any case..

Drat, okay. Thanks - I’m pretty clueless when it comes to M20Ts…

I seriously want someone who really understands this stuff to figure out where to put a zip tie so the manual extension cable still works after the spring breaks. Gear actuators aren’t infallible, but most RG planes have an emergency extension system that doesn’t have a single point of failure with the primary. If someone can noodle an STC that eliminates the single point of failure, we’ll stop stressing about the spring.

Out of curiosity, did you have to get a field approval for the second alternator? I didn’t remember this from your avionics thread. Is it a B&C or something else? I keep wanting to put a backup alternator on my accessory pad, but I’ve been hesitant to go down the field approval road.

Do you know offhand what it costs for an overhaul at Lasar? I.e., you mail them your actuator and they mail it back? I always had the sense that this was pretty inexpensive and a pretty quick turnaround, but I’ve never had my actuator out of the plane, so no idea really.

I actually wondered whether that's an angle for Lasar. You can get your actuator overhauled at Lasar for $3k (including the spring) or you can buy the spring for $3k and have it overhauled elsewhere - your choice.

With all the hemming and hawing over the NBS, I think the real business opportunity here is a manual extension that doesn’t break when the NBS breaks. I’ll buy that STC.

I meant that the springs fail more often when you put the handle up (so the gear are stuck down if the spring breaks).

Just so everyone knows what we’re talking about … the no-back clutch spring is this little tiny thing. (Photo cropped from an earlier thread showing a used NBS for sale on eBay.) Don Kaye has a bunch of other photos and info on his site: https://donkaye.com/infamous-1500-back-spring

There are many many threads on MS discussing the no-back spring. Basically, there’s a very small number of confirmed failures that resulted in gear-up landings, and the failures are mostly attributed to manufacturing defects in the springs themselves. The original bad batch was installed as original equipment from the factory, and at least one aircraft has had a failure in a replacement spring. The collective wisdom here I think is that your NBS is very unlikely to fail, and it’s probably low on the list of reasons Mooneys land gear-up. Don Maxwell has been paraphrased here a number of times saying that they can tell at annual if a spring is chattering during gear swing tests and that you’ll know well before it fails. And anecdotally, they seem to fail more often on retraction than extension (so you’re stuck with gear down, not with gear up).

I thought that they were just buying a minimum quantity of the same old part through Mooney Intl? They aren't actually manufacturing these.

I honestly think they've overshot on this one. There are many out there, myself included, who were very much on the fence about whether the infant mortality unknowns of a replacement spring were better than the unknowns of an otherwise healthy spring with a lot of hours on it. And that was when the spring was selling for an eye-watering $1000 per unit. But at $3000 per unit, those of us who were already on the fence probably have our decision made easier.