toto

Yeah that seems to be the one thing he hasn’t done - the airplane is 400smoh.

Yeah, it's just the dumping piles of money into the airplane right before selling it that I don't understand - it's like putting a new kitchen in your house and selling it a month later

There must be a story here. Hard to see the logic in dumping 150 AMUs into upgrades and then selling it immediately after. If they were actually trying to build a "better than new" J model a la @Rmag, you'd think they would go ahead and do the paint.

Oh I agree - I wouldn’t buy a GPU charger thing just for the db updates, but I do think if I had a power supply I would probably be able to use it for more hangar flying than I currently do.

Honestly, the gearhead in me really wants to make a DIY ground power unit, but I hate the idea of frying my very expensive electronics because I screwed up the GPU project (I should mention that I think this DIY video came from a MSer but I can’t remember who.)

The White Lightning is about 50% more expensive.. do you know what advantages the WL has for the extra cost?

I’ve been looking at them today. With the crazy cost of batteries these days, it’s only about half that for a pseudo-GPU. Also looking at this, a little bit cheaper - not sure whether the WL is significantly better: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/el/jumpercablesplugs_power/portPowerCharger24ces.php

That makes sense, thank you. I also liked @Rick Junkin’s suggestion in the other thread that you could wait until after a flight and then let the update run while you’re putting the plane away etc. That seems much less disruptive than doing it before the flight.

Thank you. I think the approach where you load nav data every 28 days and update the base maps only once in a while makes sense. I’ve never found much use for the raster charts. Unfortunately a Battery Minder won’t work for me, as the county prohibits keeping anything plugged into any outlet when the hangar owner is not physically present.

Is there a trick to the 5-minute update for the G3X? I started another thread about the slow update speed earlier today, but I just came across your post here and I'm curious what you're doing that takes so much less than what I'm doing Ref: https://mooneyspace.com/topic/49002-g3x-touch-slow-db-updates-from-sd-card/

I was looking around for ideas on how others have dealt with this, and it looks like some Van's pilots have also requested the background operation - https://vansairforce.net/threads/managing-database-updates-g3x-touch.160708/ It also sounds like there used to be a function on the flyGarmin website to choose a subset of the chart images. There's good thinking here about updating the full set of charts only occasionally, and updating the charts in the area you expect to be flying more frequently. The idea of choosing a much smaller set of images every 28 days and doing the full set once a year is a good workaround for the slow updates. I assume that the chart selection functionality is the same for an experimental G3X user as it is for a certified G3X user (in other words, it appears that you can't do this any more in either context). Wonder why they got rid of it?

Cool, I filled it out

I'm not sure how to read the "Forever = 10-15 minutes" comment? It's a long time for me. If I'm sitting there with a passenger on a hot day, waiting 15 minutes while I can't do a run up or see any instruments is a really long time. It's a painfully long time. If the engine is running, then I'm worried about fouling plugs, and if the engine isn't running then I'm worried about running down my battery (not to mention sweating profusely, and having to explain to a passenger why we're just sitting there doing nothing). Maybe there's some technical reference somewhere that would help me understand, but my expectation is that this is just copying a few gigs of data from flash memory on the SD card to internal flash memory on the G3X. This should be fast, and I wouldn't expect much if any processing of the data.

I guess I don’t really care how long it takes to download the updates from the SD card - what I really care about is that I can’t use the G3X while they’re happening. If there was some way to background the update process and allow you to access the PFD/EIS while it’s happening, I wouldn’t be concerned about the long wait.

Anyone with a G3X Touch have any hints for speeding up the db updates? It’s like watching paint dry. When I put the SD card in my GTN, everything is updated within about 60 seconds. But the G3X takes easily 15-20 minutes. I don’t live close to the airport, so I can’t just pop over and do a db update. I put the new SD card in when I’m ready to fly, and ….. wait … and wait … and wait. The updates work fine, they just take forever. Is there a way to make this faster?

I try to do Young Eagles flights as often as I can, and the kids are - to a one - excited about pursuing aviation, either as a career or as a hobby. Honestly, I think a significant difference with kids today is that they don’t know anyone who’s a pilot or who owns an airplane, so they’re only really exposed to aviation if they take a proactive step to get involved. My local Young Eagles chapter is always at max registration, often many days ahead of the event.

I doubt I missed it... but that doesn't mean I remember it Anyway, cool - hope that pans out. I'd love to see the Mooney factory remain a going concern, even if they can't make new airplanes for the time being.

When they made all of the investments in the factory, I was hopeful that it would make a modern outsourcing business profitable. So even if they aren’t making brand new Mooneys for the moment, they could be making major components (including composite components) on contract for other manufacturers. But I don’t know what I’m talking about. I would need A64 to weigh in on that

Cirrus is putting an IO-390 in every SR20 these days, and I assume they aren’t waiting months or years for engines.

The DA-62 is pretty amazing if you just want a second engine. The automation is impressive. It's not faster than a single, and it's not as fast as a Baron, but it runs two engines on about the same fuel burn as a larger single - and it has seven seats. Not really my thing, but if I was in the market for a twin and I had new airplane money, the DA-62 would be hard to overlook.

I picked 30/month just because that would be a successful SEP aircraft manufacturer in 2024, on par with a good year for Textron or Cirrus. My question was only about the 795k, which undercut the Cirrus pricing in 2018 by at least 100k, and I was curious whether Mooney would make money on the Ultras if they were selling Cirrus volumes - independent of any other factors.

I know they were losing money at the rate they were selling, but they weren’t selling 30/month. I just meant to ask - if the market were there, do the numbers pencil out? Do we have a Mooney success story today if they’re selling Ultras at 795k?

I believe the Mooney Safety Foundation is still alive and kicking - separate from MAPA https://www.mooneysafety.com/ppp-agenda/

Out of curiosity, at $795k or whatever Mooney was charging for an Acclaim Ultra, were they making money? I mean, if we had a steady flow of MooneySpace lottery winners and we bought, say, 30 M20V models a month, was that going to be a profitable business?

@BlueSky247 if you win the lottery, please put me on the list for a ride in your new Ultra