toto

Wait, aren’t you walking beside it the whole time? I don’t think I’d want my aircraft 1000 feet away from me while under remote control.

Saw this video on YT the other day - thank you for posting! When watching the video, I thought it seemed really easy to exceed the turn radius limits with this tug - is that something you have to be careful of, or is there a safety limiter somewhere?

I’ve heard the following argument against testing flaps during preflight: If you can land the plane without flaps, but you can’t take off with full flaps, then testing them during preflight runs some risk that they’ll be stuck full down and you can’t depart. If you don’t test during preflight and they won’t come down for landing, you just land without flaps and get them fixed at your destination.

M20P and T are the official type designators. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/2019-10-10_Order_JO_7360.1E_Aircraft_Type_Designators_FINAL.pdf

Sounds like a question for Parker. I would presume that MM is the more specific designator (J vs K or whatever), but that seems pretty silly. If you have 1000 hours in an F and you buy a J, I can’t imagine an insurance company pushing minimum solo hours on you. @Parker_Woodruff

It’s interesting to me that there are so many different techniques for a hot start with the IO-360, when the Don Maxwell procedure is so dead simple and agrees with the flight manual.

I’ve never heard the term “light rattle” before - is this a standard phraseology? Do you know what he was describing?

Sounds like the flooded start procedure?

No, but I have relatively frequent cross country trips that are 4 hours. If the tanks are topped with ~6 hours of fuel, that’s plenty of reserve for a four-hour trip. If I had stored the plane with less than full tanks, I’d be much more concerned about headwinds or unexpected routing changes.

I’m almost always full (64gal) when the aircraft is parked. Three reasons, any of which might be nonsense: * The only time you can have too much fuel in an airplane is when you’re on fire * Leaving tanks less than full can allow water to condense in the tanks * Tank seals can dry out when tanks aren’t kept full

He's @Christian here on MS. Might remember the tail number from that call.

I switched to fine wires last year, and they have been awesome. But if I had to do it again at these prices, I'd try the BY plugs first...

I always just leave the back half of a wheel chock where the wheel should go. Push the plane in, aiming for the chock, and it stops when it gets there. Slide the front half in place with the tow bar, and done.

If speed is the priority and fuel, insurance, and cost are no object, I’d go TBM. It’s the only *Mooney that makes any sense. Get a new one - the warranty will help with minor nits.

Understood. When OP said he could trade the E "and some cash," I kind of assumed that he meant a relatively small amount of cash. But if you're trading an E plus $150k for a Rocket, then yeah... Big premium jump

Double or triple the premium based on an increase in hull value? Or is there something inherent in the 305 Rocket that would warrant 3x insurance premiums over an E model? If they're the same hull value, I would think these two aircraft would be equivalent from an insurance standpoint.

Kinda strange. They put a picture of a Mooney on a page about the new engine, but it looks like a standard cowl and probably has nothing to do with the certification effort. I’m all for anything that improves the brand, especially if it translates into sales and longevity for the company. But it does feel like getting a turbine Mooney in the foreseeable future will mean buying a TBM.

That may be true. But we’re just talking about the marketing benefits of one versus the other. In the scheme of things, none of this stuff is likely to kill us. What will kill us is CFIT and continued VFR into IMC.

Yep. At least at this point, Safe Glide is the killer app for the Xi.

It’s an interesting question, and I don’t know the answer. I guess I’m happy to have the plane scraping to a stop on a runway with all occupants walking away. Autoland is ostensibly about pilot incapacitation, and Safe Glide is more about reducing workload in an engine-out scenario. When the engine dies with passengers aboard, getting to the ground at a survivable speed and attitude without impacting terrain is really the only concern. But anyway, the software for controlling the plane to the nearest airport is free and already in the Xi.

I always thought that the NBS failure was much more likely in retraction than extension simply because it’s much more stress on the actuator. So in many cases, the spring snaps when the switch is flipped and the gear remain down. I guess the worst-case scenario is that the spring fails when the gear are halfway up, and you’re just stuck. All that being said, I suspect that NBS failures are a trivially small portion of the gear-up incidents. Humans forgetting to flip the switch causes the vast majority of these. I don’t know anything about insurance, but it seems unlikely that they would even pursue the investigation of an OPP spring. Parker would have an interesting take on the OPP question.

I think this has already been asked (more or less) in this thread, but if a person just wants to get in line for a spring and is willing to wait, where’s the best place to send the order? Go to a friendly neighborhood MSC, or directly to Mooney, or .. ? If you pull your actuator and ship it off to LASAR, I assume you’ve got the same wait time for a spring as if you submit the order yourself to Mooney?

The most significant piece of autoland, the Garmin Safe Glide functionality, costs zero dollars and is available to anyone with a GTN Xi. Granted, this doesn't do the auto-throttle/auto-braking, but will get the plane to a runway if it's within gliding distance.

Since Kelly makes all of the components and even now the casing under PMA, I would think that a lot of the smaller shops could do the dual mag IRANs again. Assuming they can buy all of the parts from Kelly.

Hagerstown