Skates97

Looks like you guys had a great time. Sundays are out for me.

I know I have recommended them to a few people, they were the only angled metal valves stem tubes that Aircraft Spruce had at the time. I haven't had any issues with them.

I'll have to join you the next time, the only opening I have would be the 24th in the morning.

It is a super easy do it and forget it way to help out the Bill Gilliland foundation. A lot of companies purchase through Amazon as well, if your company does consider talking to whoever is in charge of purchasing and ask them to designate The Mooney Summit and use smile.amazon.com as the entry point. It does not cost anything and if you aren't doing it you are leaving money on the table which could be going to an excellent cause. I'm fortunate to be able to make sure our work purchases run through it.

Yes it is, and he does amazing work. @Steve0715, if you send John a PM he still stops by here.

With the Mooney you turn it into a 150 mile hamburger run. But yes, if that is all you are going to do there are other choices. The Mooney gives you that option to easily make the 3-500 mile trip. It also just comes down to what you like to fly. One of my hangar neighbors has a beautiful A36. There is rarely anyone besides him and his wife in it and they rarely fly more than about 75 miles to get lunch somewhere. I think in the three years we have been neighbors he's taken 2-3 trips that were longer than an hour, but he loves the plane and can afford it, so why not?

Three: That is flying regularly, and 20-30 hours a year doesn't count.

I had one I sent to another member, he still has it. I'll send you a PM to put you together.

It depends on what the OP is considering "travelling." For mostly local flying, a short body C/D/E I would argue is as good or better than anything else. They are simple and maintenance isn't what all the myths say it is. Even a mid-body G/F/J works for local flights. A K or a long body would be overkill if most flights are local. But, the short body or even a mid body gives you the flexibility to make the longer flights. Our plane is perfect for just punching holes in the sky, making a run for lunch, and still fast enough for the 3-500nm trips we regularly do. I would add that flying a short/mid body means that you can draw a much larger circle for destinations for that hamburger run than flying something much slower.

I have an LED beacon now, but when my original coffee grinder died it had a flash type beacon that produced feedback as it charged/discharged. This was installed and eliminated the noise. It was installed back in the avionics bay near the beacon. https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/lsStrobeNoiseEl.php?clickkey=35795

This method works very well, and is simple. You don't even have to drain overnight, although you do get less mess that way. Spin it off fast and let it fall into your hand facing up. I keep meaning to do a video of it, maybe I'll remember this weekend when I change the oil.

My ferry ride from dropping the plane off and going to pick it up at KSMX was in my friend's Harmon Rocket, I had to remind him to slooooowwwww down.

I was in and out of KSMX a couple times in the past few months to drop my plane off for paint and pick it up. The controllers were great. Maybe they are different than the ones there a few years ago. Or... if it is like KFUL where one of them is grumpy and the others are great maybe I just got a couple of the good ones. I'll echo what @ZuluZulu said about the transitions. I use the Special Flight Rules over LAX all the time. It is easy but keep your eyes out for other traffic. I haven't used any of the other transitions through the LAX Bravo, but the SoCal controllers are great. My experience in San Diego is the same as he mentioned, most of the time I get a Bravo clearance. Even without there is a section where you can go 3,500 or 4,500 and stay out of the Bravo. Catalina is fun, one of the favorite destinations when I ask if people want to go fly. For us it is just 20 minutes from KFUL. Read all the info on it and be aware of the illusions. Fly a standard pattern and know that the normal visual cues go away on downwind when you go from 1,000 AGL to 2,600 AGL as you leave the island and are over the ocean. If you are looking for visual cues you will think you are high, but just fly your standard pattern and you will be fine. There is a hump in the middle of the runway so it looks shorter than it is, but there is plenty of runway there. They recently redid the runway, but it is still very bumpy, they didn't grind the transitions between the concrete slabs smooth. I treat it as a soft field landing and takeoff.

We like going to Santa Inez, catch an uber into Solvang, wander around and find some good food. Lot's of options for eating.

Here's some pics, there will be a full review write up in the December edition of The Mooney Flyer.

Minneapolis and Orlando were involved.

There have been a number of conversations between people from this side and the FAA, mostly just the MIDO making accusations and demands.

That reminds me of an aerobatics guy talking about the glide ratio of a Pitts, he said drop a brick and follow it down.

On my 1965 D they are pretty easy. Remove the pins, slide all the way forward and lift the front off the rails, and then slide all the way back and lift off.

I haven't checked on my G5's, but on the RCA 2610-3 that I have reducing the brightness has a huge impact on the battery life. It is supposed to have a one hour backup battery and at 100% brightness I get about 50 minutes after pulling the breaker of life out of it. I'm trying to remember, but I backed it down to 60 or 70% brightness which was still readable in daylight and after a 2 1/2 hour flight still had more than 50% battery left. I would imagine reducing brightness on the G5 would have similar benefits.

Will do.

I think I still have the one that came out of my plane. It worked, but had a lot of static and some of the lights didn't work so you had to guess at frequency until flipping it over. The flip flop buttons worked fine. I can check when I am at the hangar next, possibly this weekend.

I agree, everyone should see what it is like, but they shouldn't go from idle to full throttle quickly. It doesn't take full throttle to arrest the descent and get positive rate of climb. When I have to go around I advance enough throttle to stop the descent and get positive rate, start adjusting trim and then advance the throttle the rest of the way. It's a quick process, and reduces the amount of pressure required to keep from going nose high and stalling.

I have not had mine do this. Like @Greg Ellis said, I haven't had it do anything that I haven't told it to do. Whenever it has started doing something I didn't want I disconnect it and eventually figure out what I had done or not done. Good point, I forgot to mention this, I do the same thing. It helps to have those little bars as reference. Another thing to add for those getting it installed, they disconnect the universal joint on the trim tube just inside the avionics bay to put the gear on the tube for the auto-trim. When mine was done someone inadvertently turned the tube so when it was reconnected it was wrong. I found out when I was going through pre-flight and didn't have full travel of the trim. It was an easy fix, but could have been bad if I hadn't caught it before taking off. @PT20J suggested in another thread to have the installer run it all the way to one of the stops prior to disconnecting the joint.

It's a great auto-pilot, and there are others with much more experience than I have, but here's a few things. Part of it depends on what kind of NAV you have in the plane. Most of these are not groundbreaking. I use IAS climbs and VS descents to make sure I don't get too slow in a climb. Some pilots have had issues with oscillations in IAS mode and have documented it here on MS. When you push the IAS button it sets the climb to your current IAS. Instead of making a quick change to the target IAS, (say I'm level with an IAS of 140 but want to climb at 120) I wait a couple seconds and then use the dial to change it slowly and I haven't had the oscillation issue. Before TO I will set it to either my cruising altitude or first assigned altitude. Before TO if I have been assigned a heading after departure I will set it to that, or if nothing assigned I set it to runway heading. Biggest "gotcha" occurred when in GPS mode following a flight plan and ATC either gives you a heading to fly or a xx° turn. Before pressing the HDG button to switch to heading mode, push on the heading knob to set it to your current heading, then switch to HDG mode. If not the second you press HDG it is going to start a turn to whatever you had the bug set to last. This is dependent on your NAV. If you have an approach loaded and you activate the approach it is going to turn you to the first point in the loaded approach. Typically here in SoCal it is always vectors to intercept, so I won't activate the approach in my NAV until I make sure the leg I am intercepting is the active on in my NAV. It may never happen to you, but I have had a couple times I reached for something and my arm bumped the TO/GA button which caused the plane to start a pitch up. The first time I thought "What the heck is it doing?" Which brings me to my last one. This goes for all auto pilots, but if it ever starts doing something unexpected just press the disconnect button, then figure out what it is doing. If you are set up so that it will fly a coupled approach from your NAV, you need to be below glideslope when you engage APR mode for it to intercept and follow it down. If you are above it is just going to keep flying you right along your merry way without descending. The auto-trim is great, if I am hand flying an approach it makes it simple to make very small corrections to pitch without taking my right hand off the throttle.