toto

So it's possible to realize a $250,000 per unit savings while selling only 200 aircraft per year? I'm completely ignorant of this stuff - my instinct would be that building three production facilities and dealing with bureaucracy in three different countries would have a massive increase in per-unit cost until you reached some serious volume milestone.

Does that model work for low-volume manufacturing? Obviously there's cost associated with shipping components around North America for various stages of assembly. Is there a target output number where this approach becomes significantly more cost-efficient? (I know this is done by the automakers, but they have massive volume, and I just have no idea how that translates into tens of units vs thousands of units.)

Sure thing. Given all of the anxiety around the furlough, I thought it would be fun to speculate what game-changing stuff might be happening behind closed doors. What's the headline out of Kerrville that wins Mooney the 2020 Collier trophy?

Sheesh. A fire sale at 30k definitely feels like there's more going on here than a damaged wing skin and some paint. I don't think you technically need a ferry permit to transport it on an actual ferry.

Thanks @aviatoreb. Good stuff. Cirrus obviously had to overcome some engineering challenges with the BRS In the SF50, particularly given higher speeds, higher altitudes, and a pressure vessel (not to mention the gear). But I assume that having a fully integrated system makes a lot of that easier - a complex workflow that's largely driven by (and tunable with) software. An emergency handle with a gear interlink seems solvable, and a seat redesign seems well within scope - especially if we're talking purely about new aircraft and not retrofits. Given the low SEP production numbers for everyone but Cirrus, it almost feels like there's a business opportunity for a third party manufacturing firm to produce aircraft on demand. One that's capable of carbon fiber work as well as metal and rivets. They make an airplane for any company that sells one.

It will be nice when BRS offers a Mooney retrofit. As long as there isn't a parachute option, we stay on the rhetorical merry-go-round. As soon as there *is* a parachute option, we can go back to debating the best way to spend $25k on an airplane. Kicking around the relative safety benefit of a $25k BRS retrofit vs a $25k autopilot retrofit with envelope protection might be interesting.

Is the M10 bridge fully burned? Any path forward to a restart?

I only have the green label cards, but switched from the Jeppesen writer to the Garmin writer with no problems. I'm not a fan of the Garmin software or the weird loose integration between the software and fly.garmin.com, but it works just fine.

So let's say that the furlough really is temporary, and that Mooney has something amazing up their sleeves... What is it? Restarting the M10 line? Retooling for a turbprop? Relaunching as a build-assist facility for experimental J models? Partnership with Tesla and an all-new electric powerplant?

Yeah there's a longish thread on it..

I wonder how much of Mooney's revenue depends on new aircraft sales vs parts manufacture vs licensing vs whatever. They clearly aren't selling a lot of new aircraft today, but there's a pretty significant fleet size, every one of which will need parts from time to time.

Is that the same product as the Thermawing?

It's actually a little more expensive than I remembered - $149/year for singles. https://www.savvyaviation.com/home/savvy-services/savvybreakdown/savvy-aircraft-breakdown-assistance/ Global Aero has been competitive on price (for me, anyway), and the Global quote has sometimes been lower than other providers without factoring in the Savvy thing. It's been a real consideration for me at renewal time, and honestly has made Global stickier than other companies without the benefit.

I'm well into year #2 with the breakdown assistance benefit. I've had a couple of away-from-home situations, but both minor and it seemed unnecessary to get a third party involved versus just talking with a local mechanic. If the local mechanic wanted to pull a cylinder or something, I wouldn't hesitate to call Savvy. Note that this benefit only costs about $100/year, so not worth making an insurance company selection over unless the price delta is below that amount.

For anyone interested, here's Garmin's autoland patent application from 2017. They covered a lot of ground, and considered human factors like "what should we be showing on the screen for the non-pilot passenger when the autoland thingy takes control and starts talking to ATC?" Garmin-Autoland-Patent-US20170249852A1.pdf

He's flying a PT.

Diamond was pretty far along with their autoland tech back in 2015 (planned to release it with the DA62 iirc). But they ran into some certification snags or something and backed away.

Dunno. The avionics shop said that they could not install it anywhere else, because the location was specified by the PA28 STC.

That sounds about what I would expect. My plane looks perfect from about 10 feet, but there are little tiny things like scratches near the cowl fasteners that irritate me. The only paint chips I have are on rivet heads, and from another thread I had an interesting recommendation to use an eyedropper with touch-up paint for those. That's probably the limit of my painting ability.

Out of curiosity, any idea what a paint shop would charge for a laundry list of very small touch-up items? If it was less than an AMU, I might be tempted to go that route, since I'd be likely to end up needing professional help after trying to touch up my plane with a brush anyway

Yep. Well, so much for that

One thing I discovered is that you have to put the SD card in the slot before the unit is powered on. (I'm sure this is in the handbook.) I tried a whole bunch of times to update using various SD cards, with no success, until I realized that I was doing it wrong

I'm not sure if this was about my post or if you were just responding to the topic of the poll in general. I certainly wasn't taking a position against these flights. I was just asking whether it would be possible for the organizations to stay in business if they didn't have paid flights as a funding source.

I think that the classic/antique/warbird associations are amazing, and they are absolutely essential to keeping these aircraft in flying condition. But it does seem hard for a layperson to judge the risks associated with these flights and make anything close to an informed decision. Is it possible for the associations to make enough money on static displays and flight demonstrations alone? (I.e., without the paid flights?)

In a PA28, the location was prescribed by the STC and could not be changed. It's inconvenient (near the pilot's left knee - particularly hard to see from the right seat). But the avionics shop said there were no other options. I suspect that other types have more flexibility in the installation manual. But in any event, it is type specific.