toto

Not using a checklist is one thing - not *owning* a checklist is a whole different thing

Yep. There are few cases of a dual mag failing catastrophically, and to my knowledge most of those cases had to do with maintenance errors (e.g., no one torqued the bolts). It's one of those things that could potentially fail, but it's probably not the thing that's going to kill us.

You picked a good year to let Garmin fly your plane in circles for six months

Interesting. I completely misread their materials then. So they are PMA approved for the case and for components, but technically the new Kelly case with the new Kelly components is still an overhauled Bendix mag? (Are there any components of the original Bendix mag that Kelly can't produce under PMA?)

Kelly does - link above.

If it comes to forced Mooney retirement, I think I'd follow the Richard Bach example.. buy a SeaRey, fly the snot out of it, write a book about it.

For what it's worth, Kelly actually makes brand-new D3000 mags today if you want one. http://kellyaerospace.com/airplane-engine-products/aircraft-magneto/ HT to PT20J for correcting me on this point. I've misunderstood the difference between an overhaul with new parts and a new unit. Here's what Kelly's product page says..

I have never landed a Mooney on grass (I'm paranoid about my fragile little gear doors hovering a few cm above the ground), but I'm a huge fan of turf runways in general. K34 is actually a fantastic little GA airport. The runways are in good condition and well-maintained, fuel is cheap, hangars are relatively plentiful (and cheap), and the local pilot community is awesome. They even have a very active VAA chapter with YE flights.

Last I heard, there were hangars available at Lee's Summit. No idea whether that's still true. Otherwise, you might try K34. Not a great runway most days for a Mooney (the main runway is grass, and the paved crosswind runway is pretty short). But it's certainly workable. They have a waiting list, but it's shorter than the big airports. Sent you a PM about Joco.

Some people go their entire flying career without quite getting consistent landings dialed in. I've seen people really commit to one technique after another, and just never get it. I don't know whether this would solve that problem or not, but I've never liked using radar altimeters to improve landing technique because it gets the student focused inside the cockpit when they really should be focused outside the cockpit.. Having a voice in your ears that helps confirm the landing sight picture might be a good compromise.

Yuck. So the gear collapsed when you rolled through the ditch?

What's a 36K overhaul? [ETA: Aaah, he may be saying he spent $36k on the overhaul...]

Good on the NTSB. I get almost numb to reading one accident report after another where the pilot made some series of mistakes that led to a preventable accident. Here's an honest-to-goodness maintenance issue that resulted in an off-field landing, and four people walked away. But the NTSB clearly took it very seriously and put a lot of effort into a root cause determination.

By the way, did you say you were at New Century, or did CAV deduce that from the Garmin comment? I think I missed something

Radar altimeters have been around since Kitty Hawk, but the audio callouts are definitely a nice new feature, and the Lidar approach is a bit more modern.

I took a checkride in an Arrow 100 years ago, and the FBO had taught me always to disable the system. The examiner got in the plane and saw me flip the disconnect, and he was like: "doesn't it work?" And I said something like "it works, but it's always disconnected." And he said "why would you want to do that?" And then I muttered something about slow flight or high DA or whatever, and he kept challenging me on it. We departed with the system enabled, and any time it squawked during the ride it became a good talking point. Anyway, it was an interesting experience. The instructors at the FBO just always disconnected the system. It may have even been an item on their checklist. It made me think a lot, on the day and in days since, about safety equipment and pilot proficiency. I've never owned a plane with the auto-extend feature, so I don't pretend to be an expert. But it seemed awfully easy to use, and awfully easy to disable if you needed to. When you're planning your slow flight practice or high-DA takeoff, you could simply flip the disconnect switch. But then leave it enabled for the unplanned high-workload arrival where you've gotten overloaded and forgotten something.

Crap, okay I missed that. We should change the title

Are we still talking about the no back spring kits? (If so, maybe the OP can change the thread title?)

It certainly wasn't perfect, but I can't help but wonder - if they'd kept the system - how it might have been improved over the last 45 years.

These threads always make think that Piper was on to something with auto-extend. I know that there are people who really despise the system, and of course it does add an extra step for some training maneuvers like slow-flight, but sheesh, planes have had foldy gear for a long long time and it seems crazy that each of us is still one small distraction away from a $60k bill and 10 months down.

Ugh. That's a lot of down time.

Anyone have a photo of where exactly you stick this thing during preflight to ensure the vents are clear?

Welcome!

Didn't mean to open a can of worms here. I just haven't seen these LED replacements for post lights before and was curious whether there is a standard paperwork approach. I've read all of the previous threads on landing lights, and I find Bertorelli's logic sound. I'll back quietly away from the "regulatory" comment

I've had really good luck with the Aircraft Heaters products. I use the Twin Hornet as an engine heater - but it should work fine as a cabin heater too. The nicest thing about these heaters is they don't really need a switch. They have an internal thermostat that turns on at 50F and turns off at 70F so they never really get too hot. The unit is cool to the touch, and I wouldn't have any serious concerns about overheating and catching carpet or upholstery on fire. I bought mine directly from the mfr: https://www.aircraftheaters.com/