chrixxer

FWIW, when the timing is right and everything that can be known is known, I look forward to discussing everything with y'all candidly. Right now there's a lot I still don't know about what happened that night, and I can only guess at what's being looked at in depth based on FAA/NTSB requests for further logbook pages (airplane and engine), etc. There may also be litigation (my passenger hired a lawyer, claiming neck/back pain (though he confessed to me in a text message that he had a neck/back lacrosse injury he'd never been 100% from), bruising, and insomnia. So even when I do know more, I may not even then be in a position where I can discuss everything openly. :/ I can say I met with the FAA at length several weeks ago and went over all the logs - my pilot's log, the plane, the engine, a log I kept of all the flying and maintenance I'd done since I got the plane (down to every gallon of gas pumped into it). They have not required me to take remedial training or set me for a 709 ride, and in fact lauded my getting right back in the cockpit (I've logged a number of hours in an SR22, starting two days after the accident, and in a rental Mooney and a Mooney I'm looking at purchasing), my record keeping, my trip planning, my election to transition train before hopping in 4BE, etc. The operations guy even exclaimed "I don't have logs this detailed!" and said, "you're not what we expected from a 300 hour pilot - this is more like what we expect from a 3,000 hour pilot." (FWIW, the SR22 belongs to my boss, who picked me up from the accident scene and has been by my side throughout this process.) I expect the ultimate cause will end up being compound. If, and I'm saying this arguendo, but if there was "fuel mismanagement," it was not predictable / foreseeable, and the numbers don't line up. I've gone up with a CFII in a Mooney M20B and planned and flown trips exactly the way I planned every flight with 4BE and was always conservative on my fuel consumption estimates (and had more than minimum reserves on top of those estimates). I've also gone over that night with ATP/CFII/MEI/etc. holders at length - I'm heavily involved in the SMO airport community and am blessed with a lot of folks I can grab coffee with and burden with my "what-ifs." I plan every Cirrus flight the same as I did every flight with 4BE, though with the SR22 I have fuel flow information in the cockpit, a totalizer, and a really comprehensive set of owner/flight manuals, so my pre-flight calculations are more exact - but still conservative. I really, really liked that plane and was rapidly fixing it up to be exactly what I wanted. I had just picked it up from the avionics shop a week prior. She was wearing all new tires. I would never have started a flight I had any inkling I wouldn't be able to complete. I would never knowingly aviate in a manner that constituted a risk for those in my cockpit or on the ground. (I've had one other almost-an-emergency in flight; in a rented Arrow. Went to land SMO and had no brakes... An o-ring inside the brake cylinder failed sometime between taking off at RAL and landing at SMO, something I couldn't have caught in a pre-flight - I verified that with the A&P who fixed it.)

Training in a 182, "our" Upper South tiedowns ... You're an Air Spacer, ain'tcha?

DuBois' rental is (as others have mentioned) an older M20B (1961). The owner's manual is a joke and the performance tables are ... anemic, and the avionics are ... interesting. But it's a good bird and it'll help in the transition training. (And CNO is about a 45 minute drive from the westside on the weekends. I did most of my PPL and CFI-I training hours out there.) I've been up in '770 since my accident.

Wait, newly minted PPL, or just finished your first BFR? Insurance (at least QBE) counts all non-turbo Mooney time as make-and-model time. I needed 5 hours M&M to be insured (or a checkout with a CFI with 750TT, 150 retract, 25 time M&M). I did my "checkout" and some familiarity flying (rental, non-CFI-accompanied) in an M20B and that all counted for my M20E (RIP).

Grumble grumble ... No respect. Did you miss the TRO I got?

I'm in Kerrville... And a lot of GA folks are indirectly appreciating that Mooney fuselage today; if we hadn't been so protected, might not have gotten today's TRO blocking Santa Monica from shortening the SMO runway tomorrow... https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3wWtj5n3Y6QcThrNUF2N1lxTnM

Don't know what to tell you, except the NTSB guy seemed overworked. He was still dealing with the immediate aftermath of a helicopter crash at Long Beach when we met last Saturday (that crash had happened earlier in the week), and a day or so after 4BE he was en route to somewhere in Arizona - Prescott, IIRC - for another accident. Sounded like he personally would be the one tearing into the aircraft, too.

As of this morning it’s still at a salvage yard in Sunland. NTSB will be looking at it “later next month” after it’s moved to a “storage location in Phoenix.” Yeah, the A&P/IA that signed off the annual and the prop strike AD was not the seller.

No record of mags or generator being serviced, but both seemed fine. Did trip the generator breaker in flight once (and subsequently removed the CB cover so such an event would be more obvious in the future), but reset it and flew another ~55 hours without recurrence.

IAAL. I haven't researched this specifically, but my shoot-from-the-hip analysis is, if an A&P IA signs a logbook entry that says an AD was complied with, the owner (especially one who purchased after the fact) can justifiably rely on that representation.

FWIW prop was replaced with a low time (80 hour) prop from another E.

I'll let y'all know when I know more about what caused it. I don't think the prop strike (from what I was told, it was on a snowy runway and the snow collapsed (?), and was a pretty minor event in the life of the plane) was a direct cause, and the person you all are referring to is not the A&P IA who signed off on that work (though as y'all point out, that documentation was minimal). Anyway, I'm looking at a different plane now, that seems to be my dream plane (a manual gear 221 ES), and I'll have LASAR or similar do the PPI (it's a west coast plane). It needs a bit of avionics work (and by that I don't mean "crappy Terra radios that are going to fail almost immediately," I mean, "non-WAAS approach GPS that needs to be upgraded, and while we're in there might as well install a GTX-345 for ADS-B Out compliance") but otherwise appears to be turn-key. I really liked BE, but it was an old plane, a project plane. We'll see what comes out of the inspection. I've been working closely with the NTSB, as the whole "falling out of the sky" thing doesn't make sense. I was logging every aspect of the operation of that plane closely (because it was an unknown quantity, and my first plane, and I'm a relatively inexperienced pilot (my PPL hasn't turned 2 yet), and ...).

What's the latest on the M10? They made a big show of flying the prototype to Texas a few days ago.

I may have sent pictures, a link to the LA Times article, and a note of thanks, to the Mooney factory. I hadn't seen the aerial footage until today; it looked a lot less "bent" on the ground. But from any perspective, that fuselage was intact, and so are we.

That's on a carbureted engine, though, right? The IO-360s I've heard won't restart for several seconds (e.g.), until air clears from the injection system (?).

That was exactly my experience. I was running 19 squared descending towards Burbank (a technique that kept the plane completely out of any continuous operation in the placarded RPM range (2000-2350), and had the added advantage of slowing the plane down to near-Vle speeds quickly without dumping manifold pressure through the floor - long leisurely letdowns don't always work with terrain...), and honestly didn't know I'd lost the engine for a while.

Last engine log entry (1-21-2017, same date as the annual): "Changed oil using 8 quarts of Aeroshell 100. Changed oil filter. Compressions 72/72/74/76//80. Checked for leaks after teardown to CW AD 2004-10-14 disassembly as required. replaced gear, bolt and lockplate. checked dowel pin and associated parts. reassembled using new gaskets, reinstalled on aircraft." That was 103.94 tach hours ago, as it sat in Glendale.

You know what's ... interesting? This is taken directly from the owner's manual for the E (p. 23): “The following method is useful for monitoring remaining fuel. After take-off with both tanks full, use one tank only until one hour of fuel is depleted from it. Then switch to the second tank and record the time of switch-over on the elapsed time indicator on the clock. Use all the fuel in the second tank. Then, the time of fuel remaining in the first tank is the time it took to deplete the second tank, less one hour. However, this will be correct only if the cruise altitude and power setting remain unchanged. If a tank runs dry and the engine loses power, retard the throttle before restarting. Restarting with advanced throttle may cause engine over-speeding and can lead to mechanical malfunction.” (Emphasis added.)

Yeah, me too. And I hope there are lessons to emerge from my situation. I’ve been talking to a lot of folks with a lot of varied experience, and already have ideas no one ever discussed with/showed me on what I could have been doing better or differently. Don’t know if any of them contributed, yet, but they make sense as best practices in any case... More soon.

It’s more that I had things setup nicely and it was nicely (ish) equipped when I got it. Stereo intercom (now with Bluetooth, great for ForeFlight traffic alerts) that most planes don’t have and rewiring for which will be an expensive PITA. Nice autopilot that doesn’t add much to the resale but is a ~$18K investment in a plane without one. Fresh(ish) six-pack. Pristine transponder (was about to install a new encoder). Nice SL30 with a pristine CDI/GS with back course annunciator. (Even had the date input for my last VOR check.) Working en route GPS with autopilot integration, and I’d even spun in the key local VPxxx waypoints. Etc. A previous owner had installed an extra two 12V outlets below the cowl flaps control - super convenient. Landing gear pucks and exhaust were 2014. Generator was running through a Zeftronics voltage controller. Post lights worked and she was easy to fly at night. Push to talk, A/P disconnect buttons on the yoke; altitude hold button on the other handle. RAM clamp held my iPad perfectly in front of me on the yoke. Flew several dog rescue (and other) flights with her, IFR multistate X/C. Only flew her ~6 weeks and ~65 hours, but they were good flights. She wasn’t perfect, though; lots of old-plane squawks. The paint was beyond threadbare and after a few months in Santa Monica air, some small bubbles screamed it needed paint, now. Some light surface corrosion on empennage control rods needed attention too. (My Mooney expert flight school owning mentor says those are every 5 year projects out here.) The engine was I think (!!) great - purred - but I was going to have an A&P start it on oil analysis the next change (which I’ve been waiting for him to be healthy to schedule; was going to move from W100+ to W100 and CamGuard). Windshield and windows needed replacing sooner than later. Interior was dated, tired, and ... impacted ... by one of my dogs at 11,000’. Ignition switch ($600?) was showing signs of needing replacement (original key would slip easily out in L/R/Both positions; newly made keys didn’t). Overhead spot lights and some light didn’t work (though I confirmed at least the wiring was hot); $hundreds for a PMA dimmer. The environmental hoses in the cockpit were old and crusty. The door required a very specific technique (pull handle back, almost-slam, then push handle forward). The baggage door hinge was very partially broken (one of the ~1cm tabs comprising the hinge was missing at the forward end), and the “arm” was rusty AF ($40). The tachometer was from an earlier engine/prop combo. The Klixon breaker-switch for the landing light was coming close to failing (always turned on initially, but if you turned it off it was 50/50 if you’d get it back on again) ($hundreds). I wanted an LED landing light ($300). The fuel gauges tended to bounce around when the plane was in motion. I was in the process of getting an engine computer with fuel flow (about $8K installed), along with a move to a modernized panel. The knurled handle for the landing gear had some rust I couldn’t remove, and the lower part of that handle was similarly fugly. Needed to install shoulder harnesses. (Yeah, we walked away from that “parallel parking” job wearing nothing but lap belts.) All adds up.

What happened?

Insured for $45K hull. Paid about $28K once you factor in getting it IFR current and fixing the flaps valve. Put another $5K into getting the avionics further along the path (SL30, IND-351 then MD-200-306, autopilot and other repairs). The $45K Es I’m seeing will need a chunk of that redone (old radios, no autopilot, etc). 4BE was rough around the edges but she was setup nicely for X/C, including that GX55 database (en route only and primitive, but I could load a flight plan and, as long as no turn was >10 degrees, leave it hands-off for the flight; kinda nice when you’re chewing up hundreds of miles). And yes, there was a prop strike, I’d have to check the logs (before I bought it), but ~100 hours ago is probably about right.

The LED dome light I ordered just came in...

Not easily seen in that picture are the three brand new Goodyear Flight Special IIs, pristine newly installed MD-200-306 and SL30, $2300 in avionics labor ... Looks like I should be in the market for an E or F soon. (Went up in a friend's SR22, with him right seat, Sunday. Not as spooky as I would have feared.) Torn between wanting an autopilot installed (34BE had an S-Tec 30 that was GPS and NAV coupled, nice on long distances), or waiting for something like the Trio or Garmin to be STC'd. (Altitude and heading/course hold are nice, but intercept and at least VSI climb, if not glideslope coupled approaches, would be so much nicer.) An already installed WAAS GPS would be amazing. Starting to casually watch the usual places (TaP, Controller, BS, Lasar)... And no one wants to know what happened more than I do. Whatever I get, something like a JPI 900 will be an absolute priority (I was already working with my avionics shop on getting one put into 34BE). The one thing that made me nervous about that plane was the lack of information I had in the cockpit, in what was a relatively unknown-quantity aircraft. As for the "emergency off-field landing" (borrowing the phrase from a fellow Mooney pilot/lawyer) ... Not a lot of great options there if you lose an engine at 1800' AGL, on the descent into KBUR. I did what I could with what I had. Mooney engineering contributed a lot (that fuselage...). Luck helped out a lot, too.

Re pulling the mixture in flight: I would do it, with a CFI, in the pattern, with tower advised as to our intention. My DPE pulled the engine to idle during my checkride (in the pattern at CNO) and I've drilled similar situations in other planes (including an M20B during my transition training), but I've never experienced the engine being off before. Re the engine monitor: Yes, absolutely. IMHO, your personal checklist should reflect the configuration of your aircraft and all the information / resources available to you in it.