toto

Flying to the Bahamas is a near-term wishlist item for me too - this place seems to be a popular outfitter for the short journey, and they have some helpful YouTube videos too. Fwiw. https://www.banyanpilotshop.com/fly-your-airplane-to-the-bahamas/ I haven’t had much concern about rescue from ditching. As long as you get out of the plane, the water should be warm and there’s a ton of boat traffic in the area. I think there’s even a ferry that runs from Miami a couple times a day. I carry an InReach which might help, but I suspect that if you’ve got a raft and you’re on the water you wouldn’t have to wait long for rescue.

Wow, at first I thought we posted exactly the same video at exactly the same time Close enough anyway..

Paul Bertorelli had a nice short video on this a little while back.

This is an odd thing with Invision. The entire thread goes away as if it never existed. I kind of wish Invision would say “this thread has been deleted” at least so we know we aren’t crazy

Lots of questions about a turbonormalized F or J, but you’ve already decided against a K?

The loan-a-tool program is a great idea. I don’t think I’ve seen this before on MS - maybe we could make this topic sticky? ETA: Sheesh, sounds like people have had some negative experiences with tool lending

Taking a fuel sample is important not just to look for the presence of water, but also to verify that the fuel is of the correct type and free of other contaminants. It’s pretty cheap insurance.

Yeah, I would still say that $299 is your minimum annual fee to be legal, no matter how many boxes are in your panel. Navigate with your #1 GNS, which has the current navdata card, rotate the previous cycle to your #2 box. If you have an emergency, a 28-day old navdata card is not technically legal, but it’s the least of your concerns, and if you lose #1 in a low-stress scenario just swap the cards. A bundle is realistically $599, which does cover the Garmin Pilot upgrade too, so you may save a buck or two. But $299 is your minimum. I spent untold years of my life filing those obscene paper Jepp updates into leather binders, and I haven’t looked back since the moment I unboxed my first e-reader and loaded the government plates on it. I have a time capsule in a closet somewhere with the giant Jepp binders frozen to their last update

I have no personal experience with this system, but I’ve been watching their SmartPlane product develop because I think it’s interesting. It’s basically CarPlay for a plane. https://www.guardianavionics.com/smartplane-flight-data-mfd-system

I don’t know if this helps, but the only required subscription is navdata for your GPS. For the Garmin panel mount boxes, this is $299/year. Really not too bad in the scheme of things.

You can see the floor gear position indicator without a light. My bulb was burned out when I bought the plane, and I had no idea there even was a bulb for the first two years I owned it. If you’re flying at night you’ll need a flashlight, but you’ll need a flashlight for other stuff too.

Others will have more specific engine recommendations, but my advice would be to get a good prebuy, budget for an overhaul, and fly the heck out of it. I ran an O-360 to 2500 hours before overhauling purely because I was getting superstitious about borrowed time. The engine never ran better after the overhaul than it did at 2500 hours, and I sort of regretted not waiting until it was making metal. Unless you’ve got a flight to Honolulu planned, I can’t think of any reason not to buy it and fly it if the price is right.

I’m only vaguely familiar with each of these products, but this seems like it could be a nice shot in the arm for Cloud Ahoy development resources, at the cost of … well, probably higher cost?

TIL https://www.flyingmag.com/the-path-to-ap-changes-to-far-part-147/

Fwiw, Kelly is the shop that billed me $3k for an IRAN.

No doubt that’s true. Magnetos have been around for 100 years and are bulletproof. The Bendix dual mag was too clever by half, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad design, and its operational history aiui has been largely without any major issues.

I was kind of sitting on the sidelines as my days to the 500 hour inspection interval wound down. Ultimately I decided that I didn’t want to be a guinea pig, and I ended up paying $3k for an IRAN on my Bendix dual mag. I’m not overly paranoid about the D3000, as they seem to be very reliable when installed correctly, but I’m absolutely in the pro-electric camp and I think I’ll do the Electroair at my next 500 hour. Very interested to hear a pirep if you go this route.

A little bit OT, but if anyone is a fan of the aviation news talk podcast .. the second-to-last episode covered engine out procedures, and discussed prop pitch selection in some detail. https://aviationnewstalk.com/podcast/268-how-to-troubleshoot-a-failing-engine-in-flight-with-tom-turner-ga-news/

The Garmin marketing stuff suggests that it selects a route based on terrain, fwiw: https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/#sg

People much more knowledgeable than me can comment, but the break-in procedure is normally dependent on the types of cylinders you're installing. OEM cylinders take a lot more work than nickel, etc. You're basically looking for all of the temperatures to stabilize. Aiui this happens much faster for nickel than OEM -- but I've only done a couple of these and I'm far from an expert. ETA: Went looking for this article from Mike Busch. Thought was a pretty nice, quick overview: https://resources.savvyaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/articles_aopa/AOPA_2019-01_breaking-good.pdf

Thanks 80 - I was reading through some older posts on MS, and this one struck me as a particularly interesting reflection on what the factory could do at a healthy run rate (44 units / mo). Whether these numbers are even in the wildest ballpark of what’s possible today, I don’t know - but the discussion (esp the reverse engineering of staff in place to produce the real output) is worth a quick read. https://mooneyspace.com/topic/3028-man-hours-to-build-a-mooney-just-wondering/

I've withdrawn my "hours" comment above, because I don't think it was productive, but this seemed really unnecessary.

I’m not sure why everyone is bad mouthing Mooney on MooneySpace today, but this just is not an experience I’ve had with any young aviator talking about Mooneys. The brand is just exclusive enough that many new to flying haven’t been in one before, and because they’re almost all retractables, there’s a general fear of complexity and insurability. But I have never heard a young aviator say they aren’t interested in a Mooney because it looks like a dated design or that it looks like an “old person’s airplane.” Is this really a comment that you’ve heard 20-something aviators say when looking at a Mooney on the ramp? The comment I get more than any other from young aviators is “I heard those things are really fast. How fast does it go?”

As discussed yesterday, I don’t think you need a fully automated production line or a massive reduction in build time. Bring a book of orders and turn some capable engineers loose on the M20 airframe. If the business is there, the engineers will find opportunities for ongoing incremental improvement in build efficiency. But this won’t happen if they build one airplane a year. ETA: I removed this section from my post because it doesn't seem productive, and the paragraph above is the point I was trying to reiterate. Do you have a reference that puts a Cirrus factory build time under 1500 hours? That seems impossibly low. The estimates I have seen here on MS for a Mooney factory build are normally in the 4-5k range.

But that’s the current situation with Mooney International.