Skates97

I wonder what the going rate would be for a ferry pilot to bring it back to the states...

I was an Oshkosh Rookie this year and had an awesome time. The whole thing was fun, getting there, the time there, and getting back. I was running cameras on the final leg of the trip there and on the departure. I also did a write up of the journey there but you will have to wait for it to come out in the September edition of The Mooney Flyer. It will be the first of three articles with "The Show" in October and the trip home in November. If you don't get it in your email then you can sign up here.

I think it depends on where you are flying. As @Mooney Dog said, here in SoCal you use them.

Writing up the last two flights right now. One was a short hop from KFUL to KSNA with a climb through about an 800' layer and then foggles on for the rest of the flight. But, a little over a week ago we flew KFUL to KCRQ and almost the whole flight there was IMC. The way back we were on top of it for a bit but once descending we were back in the clouds. 1.7 total in the log book with 1.2 acutal and .3 simulated, it was great! I have a flight tonight, tomorrow morning, and possibly Sunday afternoon but I don't think I'll get any actual on any of them.

Flight #19 was the first actual IMC. For those of you that are on The Mooney Flyer list it was in the August edition. If you aren't subscribed to The Mooney Flyer I recommend it, Phil @mooneyflyer puts together a great publication. https://intothesky.com/2021/08/26/ifr-training-first-time-in-actual-imc/ Here is a video of the approach and departure that I didn't have done in time for the August publication. I'm a sucker for photos and videos that show the plane's shadow. In the approach video beginning at about 2:25 you can see the faint shadow of the plane on the cloud tops.

I guess I'm pretty boring, if I'm not checking on the engine monitor or the other instruments I'm just looking out the window. I never get tired of the view.

You can't justify the cost financially. However, after owning it for a time she will likely justify it to herself. Our typical long trips are to Salt Lake (500NM) and Phoenix (300NM). My wife makes more trips than I do to Salt Lake to see the grandkids because somebody (me) has to stay home and work to pay for it. Almost every time she flies commercial (much more affordable than me flying us in the Mooney) she is telling me about something annoying with TSA, the airport, the person in the seat next to or behind her, etc... and it ends with "I wish you could have flown me instead." If it is your own plane, do you have to keep your clothes on?

Right now it's three different colors but when I finally get to cutting a new panel to flush mount the G5's and EDM it will all be the same color. I can't decide between a beige type like RH side or something a few shades lighter than the current breaker panel.

I just use velcro to attach the 10" Android tablet on the right side of the panel. It has held there without moving even in bumps that have your back end leaving the seat. It sits about as flush as it can get to the panel, and if the person in the right seat wants to remove it to play around with it they can and easily just stick it back to the panel.

I used them when I bought my D back in 2016. I can echo this. When we bought our D it was a stretch. No major debt, just a mortgage and a car payment at the time, but I didn't have the cash to purchase it out right, although I had access to funds in the event that post purchase expenses came up as they often do. I did however know the trajectory of my finances/career (yes I know things change and don't always turn out the way we think). For about 4 years I made the payments on the plane and flew it all over the place making memories. We were able to see family in AZ (about 2-3 Mooney hours) and UT (about 3-4 Mooney hours) more than we ever did before. One weekend we flew up to UT on a Friday afternoon to surprise my sister for her 50th birthday. The next day we flew to AZ to see my parents and sisters. Then Sunday evening we flew back to CA and I was back at work Monday morning. That would have never happened without the Mooney. I bought the nicest plane I could afford that was flying consistently. Over the years as funds were available I upgraded it and the final piece went in May of this year, a GFC500. The plane was also paid off in January of this year. In June we bought a place in Pagosa Springs, CO about a mile from the airport and sitting on the 7th fairway. Yesterday morning I was able to attend the funeral for the father of one of my friends, then go to the airport and be touching down just under four hours after taking off, driving would have taken 13 hours. This morning as I'm typing I'm watching airplanes arrive and depart, hot air balloons in the distance, and enjoying the clean mountain air. But, I will also echo the comments about pressure to fly after a long work day, when you're tired, etc... It can and does lead to fatal mistakes. I was leaving the airport a couple years ago when I watched a Duke take off and crash. It was a surreal experience as I couldn't believe the fireball 2/3 of the way down the runway was the plane I had watched just lift off. He was a local dentist who had moved his family from SoCal to UT. He would work during the week and fly home on the weekends. Doing the math of the flight time he would have been flying into Heber, UT in the middle of the night. Everything in my mind as the days went by and facts started coming out was "Why didn't he just go to bed and get up to fly in the morning?" I venture to think that had he waited until the morning to fly he would not have made the fatal mistakes that he made. http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2019/04/beechcraft-b60-duke-n65my-fatal_20.html https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/224121 Probable Cause and Findings The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be: The pilot’s use of an unapproved elevator control lock device, and his failure to remove that device and correctly position the elevator before flight, which resulted in a loss of control during takeoff. Contributing to the accident was his failure to perform a preflight inspection and control check, likely in part because of distractions before boarding and his late departure time.

If it is someone that I have not flown with before I always ask for their "real weight, not driver's license weight." I tell them I need to know what they weigh today with what they are wearing and if they don't know I offer that there is a scale in the hangar they can step on. I've never had anyone balk at the question.

I have the bellow out of mine from when I put in the electric step. It's sitting in the hangar. If you are interested send me a PM. That is Rob's @takair mod. It is an easy install and works great, I highly recommend it if the bellows fails or you are looking to get rid of your vacuum system.

Flight 21- Some more round-robin approaches. I pulled and included the ATC audio in the post. https://intothesky.com/2021/08/12/ifr-training-aviate-navigate-whats-next/

Flight 20, the IFR Cross Country. https://intothesky.com/2021/08/08/ifr-training-cross-country-completed/

Looks like my response to you got lost in the website transition. It was a stabilized descent on approach.

Possibly even some new words invented...

Looks like the nose gear collapsed when she landed. We have done a number of pilots n paws flights and the dogs all did well. I have only taken our smaller dog flying once, it was from UT back to CA. She was fine and happy, until we started flying. The first picture is before I started up. The second is how she spent the entire 3+ hour flight, sitting there with her back to me. Talking to her, offering her treats, didn't make a difference, she was not happy and wouldn't look at me. We landed, I put her in the back seat of the truck and she was back to herself like nothing ever happened.

Not necessarily. The metar may report clear skies, but smoke is a different animal. In September 2020 we flew SoCal up to Sun River OR for the West Coast Mooney Retreat. Michael wasn't able to get through the day before because of smoke. We made it there and then on the way back we went out to the coast to be west of the fires and smoke. I was planning a fuel stop in Tracy KTCY and keeping an eye on the metar in flight. It was reporting clear below 12k and 10 mi visibility. I passed up some other airports along the way because my planned stop looked good. As we descended through a smoke layer it was nothing near clear skies and 10 mi visibility. If it was 3 mi that is extremely generous, it was probably more like 1 1/2 and the layer began at about 1,800' and went up to about 5,000'. I don't know what it is about smoke but it doesn't register right on an AWOS for ceiling and visibility.

I'm going to do it myself so just a bunch of time and probably a cut here and there on my hands. I have the aluminum sheet for the panel and the brackets to flush mount them already. I have a friend with a CNC machine that will cut the panel for me when I'm ready. I did the avionics install with oversight from my AP/IA so compared to that I think the panel will be easier. As Tom said the 900 is not so much about clearing up panel space, although it does that nicely, it removes future maintenance issues with the old gages. If you are going to overhaul I would spend the extra for a certified monitor that will allow you to pull out the old gages.

Keep the step, get Rob @takair's electric step. It is an easy install and it is great. For the audio panel get the PMA450B and never look back. It has so many features to it. On the way back from Oshkosh we were flying along at 10,500 over New Mexico and there on the display pops up my friends phone number, so I pushed the soft button on the audio panel to answer the call and had a nice chat in crystal clear audio as we were flying along. This was my panel when I got my plane. This is my panel now which also has the GFC500 controller above the audio panel. It was done somewhat in stages. I still need to have right and left sides cut to flush mount the G5's and the EDM900 as well as get the whole panel the same color. But right now it is functional.

https://www.eaa.org/airventure/plan-your-eaa-airventure-trip/aircraft-parking Parking Updates

A 1968 will qualify for Vintage, it's 1971 and older. But it will be dependent on people leaving, we got here Sunday morning and Vintage was full. They put us at the end of a taxi way on a row out in the South 40. There should be quite a few leaving Thursday morning having stayed for the Wednesday night air show so I would think spots would open up. We're leaving Thursday morning. It's the South 40 but quite nice, and mostly quiet at night.

My sister in law had a commercial flight from LAX to Reno cancelled last night because of smoke.

We flew Palm Springs to Des Moines on Saturday. We got an early start and stopped in Grants NM ahead of the morning build ups. A few hours later and we wouldn't have gotten through AZ. There were thunderstorms that we went south of passing Albuquerque which was easy with ADS-B weather on board and stopped in Garden City KS for fuel and food. Where the on board weather really came in handy was the next leg. I had planned to go east towards Topeka before turning north because of storms I saw to the north while briefing the flight. ATC asked me if I was planning Topeka to get past the storms which I confirmed. As we turned to the north I was asked "Are you aware of the line of storms to the north east?" I told him I was. There was a line about 160 miles long that had developed after we took off. There was about a 60 mile gap that we were headed for and the storms were stationary. With the haze and knowing there were storms ahead I would not have continued had I not been able to watch them develop and see their movement for the previous two hours while we were flying. We went from 5,500' down to 3,500' to keep clear of some lingering clouds. Knowing the weather along our path I knew we would be clear. We were rewarded with very smooth air and some amazing views as the sun was going down.

Nope, the plane was down for 3 1/2 weeks for a GFC500 and then a handful of weekend trips have kept me from the hours needed. Sitting at about 23 hours right now, getting in 1-2 flights a week. Flew my cross country a couple Saturday's ago so all that is left is more studying for the oral and knocking out the rest of the hours. Heading to Oshkosh tomorrow so that will add another week to the delay.