Skates97

About a year ago I hadn't even heard of a Mooney. A friend was telling me about his plane and when he told me it was a Mooney I had to look it up to even know what one looked like. I immediately liked the appearance. He offered to take my son and I for a flight and I was hooked. Once I decided what my mission was, I started looking at what would fit. In the price range I was looking, both purchase and maintenance it came down to a Mooney or a Comanche, with the Mooney as my first preference. It just happened that I found the right Mooney before the Comanche, and so now here I am. If you post up where you are located I'm pretty sure there is someone here on the forums within a short hop (in a Mooney) to you that would be glad to take you up. However be ready, as RLCarter said, you'll be hooked. I know I was after the first ride in one. (I guess I should be glad my first ride was in a 1961 M20B. If it had been in a newer model, maybe a Bravo or Acclaim I might have been completely spoiled. As it is, when I found my 1965 M20D it felt like an upgrade from that first ride.)

I think the jury may still be out on that one. Just when they are ready to declare a verdict it seems a new piece of evidence "weighs in" (pun intended) and then they must go back and deliberate more...

I had to look up and see what a "DME arc" is. The track might look good, but really it is following along the foothills to enter the pattern. I like flying my entry that way because it avoids a lot of the traffic going between KAJO/KCNO and the practice area and gives me a good overall view of the airport environment. The IR is under consideration, but if I go that route it will still be a year or so away from beginning. (There really are a ton of VFR days on this side of the country so I may or may not eventually go after it. Hopefully these comments won't drag this thread down the "my rating is better than your rating" path that has happened recently in other threads. )

So, what does your flight track look like when you take your 13 yo over the practice area, hand him the controls, and tell him he can do what he wants? Well, something like this... (He really likes trying to do steep turns) It was a beautiful evening

Yep, that's the plane they have. Lou runs a great school, I enjoyed every bit of it and have referred a number of people to the school. If I had a couple hundred hours I doubt they would have tried to steer me away from a Mooney, but at the time I still had less than 40 hours and hadn't gotten my PPL yet.

This is what I use for my Android tablet. I don't have a clock in the yoke but there was one there at some point. (Sometime in the last 50 years it was removed.) The arm on the mount is enough to go under the yoke and hold the tablet. I can angle it enough that I can see all the instruments. Amazon - RAM Mounts (RAM-B-121-202U) Yoke Clamp Mount With Double Socket Arm And Round Base Adapter Amazon - Ram Mount X-Grip III Universal Clamping Cradle for 10-Inch Large Tablets

Yes, he was great. I think he has the right approach and attitude about the check ride.

My wife and I are coming.

For me it is the ease of not having to adjust it or unhook it to switch tanks, reach the door, reach the breakers if I need to, etc... If I was making an off field landing and I'm by myself I would need to adjust or unhook to open the door, then readjust or put it back on before landing and I'd rather not have to worry about that when dealing with an emergency landing. In the grand scheme of things and what it costs to own a plane, the extra $100 for the retractable harness seems like a small number for the added convenience (even in my CB mind).

The left side is a beast, the right side is a piece of cake. I guess I'm part of the problem mentioned by M016576 because I paid their price... I try to find the least expensive way to do things, but putting approved seat belts in my plane wasn't where I was going to cut corners. I did get the retractable ones and am glad I did. Yes, they were $100 more a side but in a plane I plan on keeping for a long time that is a drop in the bucket. Also I am glad for the added safety in case of an off field landing. I can't remember the specific numbers, but shoulder belts reduce major injuries by a major percentage and change fatal accidents into survivable ones in many cases. My DPE for my PPL has a son who had an off field landing. Everything was looking good right until the plane caught a small berm in the field he was putting it down in. If he had shoulder belts he would have walked away with minor injuries. Instead he ended up spending significant time in intensive care in a medically induced coma and multiple reconstructive surgeries. After that my DPE said he refuses to fly in anything without shoulder belts. I did the install and paid my IA $20 to check it all out and sign my log book. It will be awhile before I do any other upgrades to the plane, (next one will be an engine monitor) but the shoulder belts was a must do that I was not willing to wait for. Now I hope I never need them.

If you go to their paint department and just ask for a couple long paint stirrers they give them out free.

It was Dan that helped me out, even though he wasn't getting the sale out of it. (Although they will be getting some sales from me in the coming months). I had sent him a thank you email yesterday but it was apparently stuck in my outbox and hadn't sent. So, he followed up with me this morning to see if they had what I was looking for because he hadn't heard back. That is some great customer service!

Great news. I just emailed them yesterday looking for something that I hadn't been able to find. I got an email back very quickly telling me that I could get it from Aircraftspruce along with the part number.

My checklists start with what is in the POH and then have some additions to them. I have also moved a couple steps around to fit the way my mind flows through the process. The emergency ones are from the POH.

I had the same question. The search function doesn't always pull up what you are looking for, but here was the thread when I asked. There are some great responses in it. https://mooneyspace.com/topic/21452-pre-flight-drain-gascolator/

Love your pics. Very nice angles. You have a good eye for framing them.

I didn't buy one from them, but I did trade a number of emails back and forth with Jimmy. I can't say enough nice things about him and the advice/info he gave me. In the end while what he had was very nice, it was more than what I was looking for. If/when I decide to step up from this Mooney to another one I will be contacting Jimmy again.

Is the engine really run out? In the General Specs under the Engine Overhaul Time they list 2,443. Down lower in the ad it says 678 Hours Since Factory Overhaul. Seems like perhaps they just don't know how to write an ad.

Yep! And really all by accident... It was pretty cool climbing out of Camarillo after our little adventure and watching the B-29 slip under us on his base leg heading back to the airport...

When was the last time you shared the radio frequency with a B-17 and a B-29, or shared airspace with a B-29, or parked on the ramp with a B-17, B-24, B-25, and P-51? For me it was yesterday, and it was awesome! A morning breakfast run to Camarillo (KCMA) turned out to be much more. Many more pictures and the "rest of the story" on my site. Camarillo - War Birds - LA Tour

True, they also use very little bandwidth. Out here in CA there have been a couple times after decent earthquakes and also a few years back when we had some bad fires that you couldn't make a cell phone call. The networks were all overloaded. However if you could send and receive texts. Helpful to let people know that you're okay.

Yes, trouble waiting to happen....

Good to know, but if/when I go after an IR it won't be with one functional Nav, it will be be with GPS in the panel.

I'll text updates along my route and give whoever is picking me up an ETA when I'm about 30 minutes out so they can be there when I land.

Yes, needs static check, but does not have a required clock (that would be an easy fix). It has 2 Nav radios, but #2 has issues. I honestly don't know if you are required to have 2 Navs but I don't know how you would find VOR intersections without two fully functional Navs.