johncuyle

It's not entirely inaccurate. Although there's also the part where you feel like you're sitting on a bar stool in a Bo vs the Mooney's more Corvette-like ergonomics. I'm also too cheap to buy a bar but I do own a Corvette, so there's that too...

Yeah, but they're BK now so you've also gotta ask "fall of which year?"

My experience has been about 340 at 65% power on, a standard day, around 10,000 feet, with the cowl flaps closed -- but my baffling is kinda rough. (Maybe next annual, though if I'm cruising at 340 I guess it isn't that urgent.) Someone running with cowl flaps adjusted to be slightly more open than mine and baffling in top condition, or if he's running with the cowl flaps in trail (I sort of assume people who run 75% are used to doing that) -- it's possible. Me, I consider maximum performance climbs without the CHTs ever exceeding 380 the absolute killer feature. I mean, if CHTs basically never exceed 380 I should get great life out of the engine. The intercooler only needs to save a couple jug replacements to pay for itself.

There's another concern. IIRC, Certified G5 can only handle one navigation source. If you want THREE nav sources in your plane, and you are running a G5 as your primary AI/HSI, prepare to buy two additional GI-106As so that your secondary navigators have displays. The experimental version can handle two nav inputs, and people ask for it periodically, and Garmin is aware that there's demand, so maybe it'll happen but I wouldn't bank on it being less than a year unless they announce it at Oshkosh and you'll still need one GI-106A for the third nav. The G3X can handle two inputs, and it can be set up so that failover will still get you nav 1 plumbed to the G5. If the G5 STC is expanded to handle two NAVs in certified installs, probably you'll be able to set it up so that both can handle each of two nav sources and get full redundancy in case you lose the G3X and NAV1. Independent failure seems unlikely but if you lose the G3X and you're flying off the G5 and you routinely use both navs for stuff (keep the second one tuned to VORs for cross-check, for instance) the ability to have both run into the G5 will result in less of a modification of workflow. A trio of navigators is not really well supported by Garmin's budget line. You're almost certainly going to be better off with a GTN-650/GNC-255/GTX345 combo. Spring for the 750 if you can. I got the 650 and I still kick myself for trying to save that $5k because I _need_ the six GPS outputs and the 750 would give me an in-panel way to display approach plates.

Funny, I mentioned possibly adding TKS to my plane some day while my plane was in the shop and I was told about the corrosion issues with TKS. IIRC, the mechanic I was talking to had seen in on a Bonanza but didn't believe my Mooney would be immune to it and recommended against (which, it's not really in my finances anyway and it probably makes more sense to simply sell my plane and buy another if I want it but anyway...)

Honestly, one of the larger ultra-wide aspect curved monitors, a single mid-high range PC, a top end GPU (or two, please buy two RTX 2080's) and something for head tracking like a TrackIR plus an iPad to run ForeFlight connected to the sim, plus a reasonable selection of physical controls would be more than adequate. Not really all that much money. Less than a bad annual, anyway.

No, I don't. I custom-build my PCs. Right now I'm running it in a fairly ancient system except for a GTX 1080Ti, and performance is totally acceptable. Looks like you have a laptop. If it's a new, high end one you might have the option of using an external GPU enclosure and you could get acceptable performance that way. Not a lot of laptops have the required port, though.

It's not out yet. Next year. For whatever reason PC ports of Xbox One games seem to demand a lot more GPU horsepower than is available on the Xbox to produce the same visuals. Forza 7 in particular is a major offender here. I hesitate to predict the hardware requirements. My office machine has a 1060 in. I think I'll probably be inclined to upgrade from my pair of 1080p monitors to a single ultrawide if MSFS is a real sim. Or I get serious about playing X-Plane, which is currently my preferred flight sim.

It's not actually an MVP, it's a CGR. Same probes, though. Part of the reason I suspected it is just the EGT probe is that CHT seems totally reasonable. 6 is the left front cylinder and should generally be the best cooled of them, so seeing its CHT come down more and more quickly on power reduction isn't surprising or unusual. Seeing EGT bouncing wildly around anywhere between 1100 and 1400 in cruise is definitely weird. It might be running slightly cooler overall than usual on that last trace, though, which might indicate a misfire.

Just when my plane seems to be fine, I am seeing a new issue on my engine traces. Since you can't tell in flight, I'm guessing EGT 6 probe has failed, or a bad connection (recent install, probably within the time range a weak probe would likely die early) but the other thread has me wondering if I've actually got a misfire. I will admit that I did not do a run-up for the other couple flights because the plane was never really stopped long enough to cool off and I'm not in the habit of doing additional run ups if I just landed a few minutes ago and it was flying fine when I landed (it's how I was trained), though this definitely has me reconsidering that habit. Problem begins about 32 minutes into the first trace and starts off small (at the time of a terrible approach that resulted in a relatively early go around.) It gets worse between 32 and 25 minutes and goes completely haywire after 39:45. https://www.savvyanalysis.com/flight/3214870/d3b6b0ff-757a-4131-8308-1414f99849b4 Other two hops before I got it home and noticed something was amiss after downloading the traces: https://www.savvyanalysis.com/flight/3214871/cd747c7e-110f-48c6-9ce5-a058d4caba89 https://www.savvyanalysis.com/flight/3214872/6534ad16-2016-4738-b7a0-f184b6606c1b Again, the engine seems to run just fine.

I bought my 231 about three years ago. It came with an LB engine, original engine instruments, a Merlyn wastegate, a prepurchase/annual (at my expense of course), and a warning from the previous owner to run it extremely rich, like 13 GPH, if I didn't want to overhaul at least a few cylinders every thousand hours -- a warning which I immediately ignored. Instead, I adopted a strict policy of running either full rich (takeoff, climb, as the POH and Continental engine manual instruct) or cruising at engine settings which were guaranteed to produce 65% horsepower or less. This typically meant running at about an indicated 27" MP and 10 GPH (after the big pull.) I say indicated because, without a decent engine monitor, I decided to track fuel and oil consumption (among other things) in a spreadsheet so that any significant deviation from baseline fuel/oil consumption, which might indicate a problem, would be obvious, and after a couple fill-ups my spreadsheet indicated that my overall fuel consumption not including taxi but including climb was only about 8.5 GPH. And also, my MP gauge disagreed with the Kollsman Window at my sea level airport by about an inch. The idea was to try to run LOP and low power to keep everything as cool as possible, avoid there being a red box (26" and 10GPH isn't, 27" and 8.5 GPH could be, both should be <65% power) and try to stay outside of it if there were a couple cylinders pulling more than their weight until I could do some upgrades. Since I only had one CHT, I tried to go with a very conservative 360dF max CHT in cruise in case some undetected issue with baffling or mixture resulted in a cylinder other than the instrumented one actually being the hottest running cylinder. In climb, though, CHT could easily hit 380 or, on hot days (like the third day I owned it, climbing out of The Dalles with OAT 110dF) creep up towards 400 and necessitate stair-stepping or circling to cool things down even when attempting to cruise-climb at higher airspeed. The obvious first upgrade for most people would have been an engine monitor. In fact, I had hoped to have one installed shortly after purchasing the aircraft but a number of failed pieces of avionics impacted my training for my instrument rating, so my first batch upgrade money ended up being spent on a GTN650 (it had a IIMorrow and an inop KN 53 and KA 87) and a new audio panel (the PM 1000 squealed whenever I turned the landing light on, so I had to choose between being visible and talking to CTAF/tower when landing.) Given that I knew my CHT could get hot even full rich (and with an indicated 25GPH flowing, it shouldn't have been a fuel issue) and I had to exercise some degree of heat management in climbs I also felt that the intercooler needed to happen sooner or later. I reasoned that since I could only do one or the other at annual, I already knew the engine was running pretty hot, and heat kills these engines, it made more sense to make the engine cooler than to be able to see six too-hot CHT readings instead of just one. I opted to buy the Turboplus intercooler first. I believe it was the first one supplied to a customer after Turboplus restarted production. I had the intercooler installed at annual. This was supposed to necessitate modification of the Merlyn wastegate. I'm not sure what the history of the Merlyn installed on my plane was. Merlyn themselves didn't have record of it being installed on that plane, and it appeared to have already been modified to be fitted with the Turboplus intercooler even though my plane obviously wasn't intercooled. At any rate, it went back to them for modification and I got what looked like a completely new unit back (mine was over 20 years old; my shop was impressed at its longevity) and some updated paperwork for the unit and a fresh 337 written up for my aircraft for their modest refit fee. Solid after-sale support in my view, particularly with it being for the wrong owner of the wrong plane. (While we're on the subject, Turboplus after-sale support has been excellent. Jeff's checked up on me a couple times to make sure that a couple details with installation were done right, made sure I was pleased with performance, and he managed to get me digital copies of the installation and fuel adjustment instructions on extremely short notice while my plane was in service away from my home base and I couldn't get my hands on the originals. Getting a bit ahead of myself, John-Paul at GAMI and the Electronics International folks have been excellent as well.) The intercooler had the desired effect, allowing me to climb at Vy to the high teens without CHT exceeding 380dF indicated on my sole CHT gauge. Without an engine monitor it is somewhat difficult to provide more commentary on the efficacy of the intercooler beyond "It made my engine run a lot cooler, enough that it'll probably pay for itself in enhanced cylinder life." As part of the installation, fuel flow was recalibrated. By this point I knew my mixture balance was probably somewhere between mediocre and poor, but I appeared to be able to run very slightly LOP. Not much, though, before it got rough. According to my spreadsheet my fuel consumption increased very slightly for my second year of ownership, but I only reduced my cruise MP by about 1", down to about 26", which suggests I was generally cruising at a higher power setting. Supporting that, I got probably three to five knots more in cruise as well. Folks with a 231 with a vintage panel and no intercooler will have to make their own decision on which mod to do when, and you want them all, but I believe I made the right choice to do the intercooler first and enjoy an extra year of operation with the significantly reduced CHTs, even if I couldn't actually observe it for most cylinders. Second annual saw installation of the engine monitor (CGR-30P&C, I chose them because I liked the flexibility with respect to mounting the pair of round gauges over on the left rather than needing to mount a large format on the right or consume part of the radio stack or massively rework my panel when I already considered it possible that I would massively rework it for Dynon Certified or G500, a good call since G3X seems like it is within my future budget.) My CHTs had an extremely wide spread, my mixture was all over the place, and my GAMI spread was about 1.2 GPH. I'm not sure two of my cylinders ever really got LOP, and another two were pretty close to them. I felt pretty good about forcing myself to bumble along at 8.5-8.7 GPH in cruise for the last 130 hours, because running it a whole lot harder would have been pretty bad for the richest two cylinders. I flew it twice after getting the monitor before ordering GAMIs. GAMI got it right on the first go, my spread went down to 0.3 GPH and I finally got to fly my plane for what felt like the first time. https://www.savvyanalysis.com/flight/3210898/441b96a9-a66a-4d95-bbed-0c4c7e0da821 Short flight, low altitude (only went up to 9500) but I can finally, finally run the plane at a real 65% power. CHTs stay under 360 at 31"/10GPH with the cowl flaps closed, I should have no problem running similar power levels up to the high teens/low flight levels, and the plane managed 150+ knots TAS at 9500' in this power configuration. The 231 as it came from the factory was not Mooney and Continental's best effort, but with some time, attention, a couple truckloads of money (though still tens of thousands less than the price of a comparable 252) for some aftermarket parts, it can be made into pretty close to the plane it ought to have been. I'm really looking forward to more flying this summer -- up in the high teens where it's cool, quiet, there's no traffic to deal with, and the plane performs at its optimum.

That fuel consumption is brutal, though. 170hp would get you, what 190 knots or so up high? That's only 500 miles range on 70 gallons. Even with JetA being a bit cheaper, you're still nearly doubling your fuel bill. You're also doubling your fuel stop frequency. This assumes there's self-serve Jet-A at your field. I don't think my field does, so Jet-A is actually more expensive and you have to wait around for the truck. Short hops of less than 150 miles become really painful due to being way out of the efficiency curve.

Except you're still stuck with the entire rest of the BK autopilot, which will still continue to break and be expensive to fix. BK lost me as a customer. I simply won't buy anything made by BK or Honeywell, ever again.

No, the answer is, "They were. Then they stopped." Then that thread ended half way down page one. Aviation Consumer/AVWeb have made a big deal out of the Diamond's safety record for years. Most other publications seem to tout safety. Safety statistics are hard to come by in piston singles because there's a lot of guesswork in determining how often planes actually fly and how many are really in service. Older airframes with lots of aircraft registered but which maybe don't fly very often are hard to compare against newer airframes which tend to fly more hours per year seems to be the general consensus. Diamond aircraft are relatively new and should be relatively easy to compare fatalities against contemporaries such as Cirrus. If you're concerned about safety and you're looking at a DA40 and an SR20, you buy the DA40.

Hmm. I've only put about 10 hours on it since annual, and half a dozen landings. I don't think it was dragging either, although it could have been very slightly. Maybe the spring isn't broken but was binding for some reason. May also have been related to parking brake use. Time to break out the maintenance manual and call my shop, I guess. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

OP was asking about the M10J, which is a totally different plane. I think the M10J would have been an interesting plane that would have slotted into the market somewhere between the DA20 and DA40, but that's a really rough market. The DA20 is pretty adequate for a trainer and cheap to run. The DA40, those planes have unbelievably good safety records. I suspect buyers are sort of like Volvo buyers thirty years ago, before everything became so safe that it didn't matter which car you bought. If you absolutely, positively, must have the safest piston single on the market, you don't even bother to consider anything else, you just buy a DA40. The M10J was cancelled, so the OP was largely irrelevant after the first couple posts and the thread evolved into the usual "what does Mooney need to do to sell planes?" Answer: Increase useful load so that they can compete with Cirrus.

I got my plane back from service (not on the brakes) and I noticed something odd. My left rudder pedal felt like it was tipped forward as if the brakes were fully compressed. It seemed that I could get some braking force out when I did my usual brake check but it required a bit of a reach. I crawled under the panel to take a look at it and sure enough it seemed to be tipped forward. I reached under and grabbed the top of the pedal to gently pull it towards me to check the range of motion and it came up to the usual position and I heard a click, and now everything is back to normal. Is there a quick disconnect for service to help move them out of the way when someone is working under the panel and the mechanic just didn't get it popped back into position, or is there something odd going on here? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

New plane shoppers aren't shopping for old planes. If they were, nobody would ever sell a new plane.

But then you'd have to leave your golf clubs and bowling ball at home. Priorities, man. If you're willing to slow down to 170 knots and fly in the teens, you don't need a TSIO-550. A TSIO-360 will do fine, and it's 150 pounds lighter. Maybe Mooney should be building long body Encores...

From the respective manufacturer websites: Mooney: Typical Useful Load 975 lbs Cirrus: Useful Load 1331 lbs "Honey, I'm spending a million dollars on a new plane but you and Jr can't ride in it because I need the load for fuel" isn't a conversation that's going to go well.

Useful load is the problem. BRS is heavy. Making the problem worse by adding BRS is counterproductive. I suppose FIKI TKS is a lifesaver, but I don't really think of it that way. There are about six months a year where somewhere between the ground and the flight levels there's a layer of clouds a couple thousand feet thick with temperatures conducive to icing, often starting at about 1500ft AGL. No TKS means you're not flying much at all those months, and if you are it's only a day trip because you can't be sure you'll be able to get back safely tomorrow. TKS means you can climb through it and VFR on top to wherever and almost certainly fly home the day after tomorrow. BRS isn't good for much of anything when your plane is stuck in the hangar due to weather. Meanwhile, my girlfriend (a non-pilot who is enthusiastic about flying) sat in a Cirrus at a tradeshow a few months ago. She's aware it has a parachute but that wasn't enough to overcome her dislike of how high she had to climb to get in or the general layout of the thing. I was surprised she didn't strongly prefer the side stick being out of the way to having the yoke in front of her. I figured that'd be a big deal for her since she sits way back in the Mooney. The sidestick is a dealkiller for me, though. Bad design. I can't turn left in a Cirrus because an old injury limits my range of motion in such a way that I can't twist it left. Not a problem with a real stick or yoke.

It probably doesn't on most of those planes because most of them are carbureted. They tend to get rough while still ROP. I have a buddy with a TR182 (carbureted) who does have an engine monitor (930) and that technique puts him somewhere around 75 ROP with CHTs up around 425. He flies it that way because it's by the book and what he was taught. Lycomings seem to absorb that sort of punishment better than Continentals, at least.

It does not need a BRS. It needs enough useful load (with TKS) to be able to carry two passengers (maybe three if they're FAA-compliant or an FAA-compliant couple and a pair of kids) a weekend's worth of luggage, and full fuel. The Cirrus can do that. The Mooney can't. As a result, Cirrus sells lots of airplanes and Mooney does not.

One expects that if it is possible to shove a 300hp TSIO-520 into a mid-body (particularly the already nose-heavy K model) and end up with something that flies, shoving a lighter 250hp turboprop in would not result in something that overpowers the rudder. If one were inclined to try a long body (like, a Bravo), the weight difference of the big bore engine and the turboprop offers an opportunity. I looked up the weight for the TIO-540 and the first Lycoming doc that came up indicated that it's a ~600 pound engine. That little turboprop is listed as 140 pounds. You could reduce max gross by 400 pounds, still gain some UL, probably break even on FF payload, and probably not lose much takeoff performance. If a 300hp version becomes available, you could boost gross back up and have a Mooney with an actually useful useful load.

I'd expect there's a parts business for them that does alright. New plane production, others have said it. The labor required to produce a new Mooney is too high to sell them at a competitive enough price to make prospective Cirrus buyers take another look, and even if they did the useful load is likely to be a showstopper. Useful load sells planes. It's why sellers of older airframes which have put on some weight over the years and are down in the 800's don't advertise UL and sellers who have been keen to remove dead wiring, old layers of paint, and keep an eye on the weight of new avionics and gadgets that have pushed their UL up over 1000 put it in the ad twice, so that people don't miss it. A 280hp Acclaim really ought to be able to move more people and things from place to place than a 220hp Encore. Adding a parachute and ending up with a full fuel load that's only adequate for a single child is not an improvement.