Tx_Aggie

I believe New Mexico to be much like west Texas, you have to travel a long ways to ‘get out’ of the area. I took my M20J to get annual at Don Maxwell’s in Longview (GGG) this year. Even with the southwest airline flight back home you will be getting the best attention for your plane and you’ll end up saving money over dropping your bird off anywhere else local/regional.

I’d start somewhere north of 150k… M20J’s are highly desirable in today’s market. Yours being one of the newer versions would command a nice premium in my opinion.

Ended up being able to drop it by Don Maxwell today. The left cowl flap wall was catching on the cowling due to a worn bracket hinge. Don’s guys replaced the bracket on both sides and filed an edge down - now I’m off to the races. Glad to have their expertise available!

Mine are mechanical. Why would they function when the engine is not running but once the engine starts and is idling, they lock up? I will try what you suggest regardless

Took my J for a 3 hour flight to Houston last week and everything worked as it should. Once I took off from DWH headed to Alabama for a week, I couldn’t get the cowl flaps to close. About 10 hours previous I had the cowl flaps adjusted to be open an inch when closed. Now they’ll only close when I wiggle each cowl flap on the ground. However when I turn the engine on, they return to stuck open. Has this happened to anyone else before? Once I get back home I plan to have my mechanic look at it. I appreciate it.

What’s a ham radio?

When I got my license in college, there was an old king radio in the pilot lounge that had power and a speaker connected to it for an ‘on the ground’ radio for listening to and practicing atc communications. This was before liveatc.net. I swapped a mac1700 radio last year with a new garmin 355 and would like to rig up something similar at my house. Has anyone done this before? Thanks!

A little too quick on the trigger. Read the rest of the thread and found your explanation. Love the opportunity of compound interest over time that Real estate provides!!

Fellow engineer here, are you talking in terms of investment risk tolerance or overall life perspective? I’ll take free wisdom (while considering trading up to an M or R)!

You Might consider cutting bait and trying elecroair. While I don’t know what life was like before the install, as it was already installed on mine before I purchased, it fires right up and runs really smooth. 1980 M20J

It’s interesting how we look back and think, why did I say those things? 4 years after starting this thread I’ve learned a few more points I’d like to share for anyone else looking at the different models. I would later go on to figure out that the “J” I was referring to was not a J but rather an “F” model with a few 201 mods but they are entirely different airplanes from a performance standpoint. The fella I flew with was confident his F was a J equivalent because they had the same engine and he had a 201 from windshield. I would later learn the J models are very much higher performance machines - no disrespect meant to the F model flyers. I continued to fly the F until the owner sold it not too long ago. During COVID, we had all but had it being cooped up waiting for an opportunity to go somewhere during the summer when my wife agreed on purchasing a plane of our own. While we looked and researched several models from the other brands, I kept coming back to the famous 155 knots on 10-11 gph, best bang for the buck mantras I kept seeing on this forum. As others have mentioned, and the ovation is no doubt nice and fast, but more than twice the acquisition cost of a J to go 16% faster. I wound up finding a great 1980 J for a very reasonable price and have been a proud owner for almost a year now. While I may opt for an R or and M later in life, I’ve been quite pleased with the performance, affordability (relative to airplanes) and IFR stability of the M20J! It’s a great airplane and gets every bit of 155-160 ktas at the altitudes I initially discussed.

Fortunately my control only needed to be greased a little bit, all was fine firewall forward. Thanks for the comments though, I’ll keep all of this in mind for future reference!

Mission changed as in going to another model? Or hanging it up? Thanks for the help and comments throughout the last few years!

Thanks I appreciate it.

Did you ever find the resolution? Mines doing the same after an oil change recently.

Not trying to hijack the post, but in high(er) density altitude scenarios and hot OAT (35-40*) in my J, if I lean for takeoff I notice very high CHTs until I’m able to climb out and get some better airflow across the cylinders. Am I missing something? This particular instance was at Lubbock, TX in August - not the highest elevation airport but hot temperatures simulated much higher altitudes. Thanks

Resurrecting this post for a further observation: my IO-360 also favors 6 quarts also. how long after a flight would it be reasonable to wait for the oil to drain to the sump and measure the oil level? I’ve noticed after long cross country flights the oil will show ‘lower’ when that last quart might actually just be spread around the engine taking time to reach the sump, maybe a viscosity thing?

Thanks Greg, I’ll have a look. But I file IFR every time I travel. It makes things much easier in my opinion. Having said this, it appears ATC routes most traffic from the west through the corridor you mention, and it appears to be part of the approach path for the GPS 14 which is what I’m planning on requesting.

Outbound I’m planning ODO-AEX fuel up at AEX, AEX-DTS with an overnight in Destin. Next morning DTS CORKY V198 SZW V7 NITTS V579 SRQ. I’m not out to reinvent the wheel, if there’s an airway already out there along the preferred route I’ll use it every time. Thanks also for the insight, Ross!

Good evening folks, Circling up on this topic again, will be breaking the trip up into two days outbound to SRQ and really excited for the journey. Thanks to all for the advice on routing. Any pireps on FBOs between Retrix and Dolphin? Really appreciate it!

I have QC15 + UFMs and they worked really well for about 3 years then the ANR started clicking on and off particularly when I transitioned the prop control from cruise to full in. Louder constant vibration in my opinion tends to wear down the effectiveness of the ANR, although I can’t definitively say that, I suspect that’s why A20s are a bit more robust. I’ve recently switched to the CQ in ear headset and it works really well. Ordered a set after someone commented how the Mike boom was a bit longer than the halos. It’s early for me but so far so good!

Man good things to think about. Mine was hangered fortunately - that's a loose term - when I opened the doors, there was above 3-4 feet of snow between the door rails and my nose wheel - ugh. I'll have to check the rear static drain next time. The flight was turbulent, so the second occurrence would've happened following both gusts and turbulent flying, but the first occurrence was on the ground prior to taking off. I should've taken a photo, i believe there were two red X's over both the AI and the HSI.

Good morning folks, Yesterday was the first day after Texas' Arctic blast I was able to pull my M20J out for some approaches. Upon run up, and before takeoff my Aspen showed the Red X screen against a black background for about 5-10 seconds, then restarted and all worked normally. After the second approach and landing, while still on the runway, the red X showed up again in the same sequence. I had the local avionics shop install the software update last August (Ver 2.9.0.1) to supposedly remedy this occurrence for which an AD was issued last year. This is the first time I've actually seen it on my bird. Has anyone else had this happen after the software update that was supposed to fix it? I appreciate it.

Highly recommend the Muncy tug! Don - the one you made me in November continues to work very well! Thanks for building it for me and it was nice meeting you!

+1 for SGR, easy in and out. Very hospitable FBO too. While HOU is closer to downtown/medical center it caters more to the larger jets. Also cost of 100LL is several $/gal higher. If you do choose HOU, Wilson air has the cheapest fuel and most reasonable to deal with in my experience.