211º

I thought of @0TreeLemur and his posts from a while back where he flew one leg by hand and one leg with a working-well autopilot. Yesterday, I did the same thing, but on a single flight - encouraged by a failed vacuum pump. It is good to see how much better a pilot I am with a working Brittain system.

I’m consistently and constantly pleased with the usefulness of IFR - before my ticket this flight would have been legal, but I would have been stressed the whole way about what was really waiting for me at the other end. I’m sure others have noted this… but I’m pretty sure that I smelled something similar to smoke from wood fires as I descended into the haze.

Following the transitioning moon westbound in an early morning flight to KC. Butter smooth, very quiet on the radio - no meows on 121.5, weird to get Chicago Center on initial call up instead of Grissom Approach. And nice to discern the ground for my just-in-case needs about 30 minutes before sunrise.

I alternate 10 from each tank twice for a total of 40 used. I have a hard rule that I will land - regardless of how much father - before switching “just one last time.” So my 5 hour flights are always LOP at 7.5 gph even though I could probably do it a little quicker ROP and use just a little over 40 gallon.

Building on this thread… While flying westbound with a good 15 kt or so headwind, I was flying LOP. So far so good. Then (because I was a little bored) I increased to ROP. I probably need to do the spreadsheet, but it seemed like the relative difference (or extrapolated) increase in IAS was not linear with the increase in GS. My GS increased about 15% greater than IAS. That made me wonder… could the Airspeed indicator be less precise at lower IAS. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

Have you ever felt like an aerial-Moses? I was pretty darn sure that I was going to need to land short and wait for the storm line to pass over the airport. (Well. I did have to slow down and wait for the storm to pass over the airport (but without landing), but the parting path was nice.)

A little bit after I landed at Downtown KC Airport, this Mooney did a touch and go - I had my camera out as the storm behind the airport was pretty cool and lit well... So I grabbed the Mooney too.

I usually put the route in Weather Spork app and then (in profile view) use the slider to watch the weather progress through the 3 or 4 day view. My written down IFR minimums (includes icing forecast) are high enough that I can see if it a possibility or not fairly well. I also find that it is possible to fly around many lines of thunderstorms or to land and wait two hours for them to pass over (and grab a nap).

Call Jason at Sporty’s (513) 735-9500 extension 2 - east of Cincinnati at Clermont Co. airport (I69) I heard that my old hangar at KLUK is still open. And it fits an E… kind of. DM me if you want details on the Lunken one.

A little hard to see in this photo, but passing 6.5 years. Having trouble starting now. Going to get a new battery. But also going to test the old battery then put it on a just-also-probably-prematurely-ordered battery minder with declassification. I hope to (for science) do a test after it decalcifies.

December has been quite busy and I've not been here for a while. My guess is that anyone who initially posts their plane for sale (without purchasing another one) will have seller's remorse. In short, I'm keeping her - there really isn't a better model of plane out there. Some planes get the grade of A in many categories, but then D's in several others. The M20E is a solid "above average" B (at a minimum) in all categories. Sorry in advance for the quasi bait-and-pull-back.

Coming out of an annual... During the annual, I didn't fly for about a month. In the past when the plane was down for a month, I felt like the plane was in some type of lockdown and it was excruciatingly long. This time it was an owner-assisted and the meaty part of the annual was done efficiently and quickly. This time, it was I (and my travel schedule) who took a long time to get everything back in place. The difference between being able to be around the Mooney and to look at things in my own hangar versus her being put away in jail in the mechanic's hangar is so very different. Owner-assisted for the win.

And not for any real reason… except if you could define something like this, why not make it seemingly reasonable.”

Oh. I was not clear. The engineer in me was hoping and thinking that there would be something like 180 teeth in 360°. (Or at least 150, not 149). Of course, last night as I was falling asleep I was thinking… maybe if this was a straight line and the tops and troughs were averaged over the straight line, it’d be a simpler number. (Not a mechanical engineer)

Information that will probably push something useful out of your brain... 149 teeth in 360 deg (M20E IO-360-A1A) 360°/149 teeth or 2.42 deg per tooth I counted 10.5 teeth from TDC to 25º BTDC mark 10.5 x 2.42 = 25.4º