toto

Back when I was trying to decide what to do for a panel upgrade, I spent a lot of time looking at the Dynon options, and after many years working with regular avionics shops on certified gear, it was a strange experience to talk with experimental shops about the Skyview system. The shops I have used in the past didn't know anything about Skyview, and the experimental shops didn't seem to have much experience working on certified aircraft. At this point, I have exactly one thing in the panel that doesn't have a Garmin logo on it, and that's my #2 nav/com. I also drive by Garmin HQ on my way to the airport every time, so, you know - buy local

At my home field, all hangars are owned by the county, and they explicitly allow subleases up to six months in duration. The sublease is disclosed to the county and the county must be added to the sublessee’s insurance. It’s all on the up and up. I’m not sure if it’s possible to just keep renewing six month subleases, but it would be painful enough to discourage people from doing it long term.

For whatever it’s worth, any time my a/c is at a “foreign” FBO, I send them a copy of the Mooney service letter and ask them to be familiar with it before moving the aircraft. I always point out the red limit indicators on the nose gear. I’ve had good luck with this approach so far, and often hear the desk person emphasizing the turn radius concern to the line person. Mooney-turn-radius-service-instruction.pdf

+1 to this, but I’ll say that I always email so I have the numbers in writing. Even if I talk to the FBO on the phone, I’ll follow up with an email confirming the conversation. I haven’t noticed any significant changes in overnight fees with a fuel purchase, but I always contact the FBO ahead of time (and if there’s more than one FBO, I always contact all of them). You never know when there might be an ownership change that turns your first priority FBO into your last priority FBO

Ooh, that’s a nice ride.

I believe the TruTrak / BK Aerocruze AP is certified for the M20 series. But I’m also pretty sure that they aren’t approach certified yet. Dynon’s integrated autopilot is always a year away.

I think it’s basically that radio repair stations are far rarer than A&Ps, and always busy. My experience with A&Ps is that they will defer to an avionics shop anything that touches navigation or communication. There are definitely things that you can do as an owner. Slide-in replacements are anticipated by 14 CFR Part 43, so swapping a Garmin audio panel for a PS Engineering audio panel is frequently done by owners, as is swapping out a bad KX-155 for a good one, etc. See attached for examples. Appendix A to Part 43_ Title 14 (up to date as of 5-22-2024).pdf

Interesting lists above. I carry one quart of oil, a fuel tester, a bottle of CamGuard, and a little funnel in a little plastic bin - that’s my whole hat rack. The baggage area is just the towbar, and sun shades if I’ll need them. I’m very defensive of extra stuff in the plane, and I offload anything that isn’t going to be needed for a flight. As others mentioned above, I carry an InReach Messenger 2 in my flight bag, as well as a handheld transceiver. The InReach is powered on and clipped to the handhold on the copilot side when airborne. The transceiver is always within reach.

My understanding is that there was a premature parachute opening by one of the jumpers that caused damage to the plane. So all of the jumpers went out, followed by the pilot.

I probably didn’t make this very clear in my post — MicroKit is the established LHS vendor and MS sponsor - HolyMicro is the new vendor, does not seem to be a MS sponsor. The thread I linked to above was @Microkit’s product announcement from 2020.

For what it's worth, @Microkit arranged a sponsorship with Craig for the LHS announcement:

Having had a number of vacuum pump failures in my flying career, in my opinion there is no better upgrade than replacing a vacuum AI with a solid state digital unit. Good luck with the certification today!

My own approach to this is that I never want to spend money fixing old technology when newer, better technology is available. People spend many many AMUs on repair and overhaul of analog equipment, year after year, but their capabilities never increase because they’re always running vintage avionics. The cost to fix my old Century 2000 autopilot wasn’t far off the cost of a GFC 500, and the cost to overhaul my analog HSI was more than the cost of a G5. So I made the decision to replace rather than repair. To each his own, of course, and I agree with flying the plane for a year to figure out what you want. But keeping the factory equipment running felt like death by a thousand cuts to me, and I’m happier having spent the money on the new stuff than I was spending the money keeping the old stuff breathing.

So I renewed a subscription with fly.garmin.com, and here’s how they are doing this … They require you to enroll in auto-renew when you complete payment for the subscription, and it is not possible to opt out. In order to submit your payment, you are opting in to a recurring auto-renew. It is very easy to disable the auto-renewal, but it can only be done after your subscription is activated. You just go in to the “Manage Subscriptions” tab and change the auto-renew slider to “off.” The extra hurdle of waiting for subscription activation and then going back into the fly.garmin.com website to disable will probably mean more recurring subscriptions for Garmin. It’s hard for me to say whether this workflow is what people want, but I would definitely prefer the option to choose whether or not to enroll in auto-renew at the time of payment. The two-step process is kind of a pain.

Since I'm less than six months into my G3X Touch ownership, I hope they won't be replacing it too soon The G3X Touch was just released for certified aircraft in 2019, and given Garmin's history with certified panel mount units, I would expect this to be halfway through a ten-year product cycle. (I know that the Touch was available for experimental before it became available for certified aircraft, but still - these retrofits are expensive, and even scheduling an install can take a year.)

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve heard good things about GATTS, which requires very little instrument experience before arriving for their seven day course. You have to have passed the written, but that’s about it. https://www.gatts.org/pilot-training-courses/7-day-ifr-instrument-training.html

Ah, okay - haven’t encountered that scenario

How does that work?

I have no idea whether this is relevant to Lightspeed headsets, but I learned the hard way that Bose does not support the use of lithium batteries in their headsets. My A20 had a horrible screeching sound for the first several minutes after I turned it on, very painful to the ears. After going back through the manual, I realized that the only supported batteries are alkaline --- I switched to alkaline, and the problem immediately disappeared. I've never had it happen since then. I still have no idea why a lithium battery can cause painful sound effects in a headset, but fwiw.

I got a similar thing from Amazon, battery is good to fill four car tires. https://a.co/d/472wMFI

How does that actually work? If you go visit the Garmin booth at Oshkosh, do you have to pay for the subscription right there?

Thank you!!

Does anyone have a time reference for the Mooney appearance? I’ve been bouncing all around the video and I’ve been watched about half of it now, but haven’t found the Mooney yet

Yeah, every FBO handles their own group hangars in their own way, but they are definitely available - and often available on a month to month basis for as long as you like.

I’m not sure whether this comment was about the JoCo hangars specifically, but JCAC allows someone on the wait list to “pass” only once - if they aren’t ready to accept a hangar the second time their name comes up, they go to the bottom of the list. If you want to park inside and you don’t have a private hangar, the best alternative imo is a group hangar. These are normally available, but may require a lot of phone calls or emails to various FBOs around town. There are positives and negatives to the group hangar experience, but it’s a reasonable gap filler while waiting on the list. I wouldn’t let the lack of a hangar be a reason not to buy an airplane - it’s just something to have on your radar screen while you’re looking.