EricJ

The motor and exhaust are still in front of the cabin, so there's still plenty of opportunity to get CO in the cabin. Being in AZ, I don't use the heater that much, and the CO level never changes when I do. It DOES change a lot sometimes though, and has alarmed on me on several occasions, all completely unrelated to the use of the cabin heat. It goes off on the ground sometimes depending on which way the wind is blowing relative to the airplane, and if I'm going to be sitting there for a while it's a nice notice to change something (open a vent, the storm window, open or close the door, etc.), to change the circulation. Usually that fixes it. It's alarmed on me sevearal times in landing configuration, usually temporarily. I still have no idea what's going on there. Basically, in my experience it's a really nice thing to have for awareness and doesn't have that much to do with the heater.

I'm usually in the camp where it's full throttle at take-off and don't touch the throttle again until you need to in descent or approach. I do usually pull the rpms back a little bit while climbing out after about 700 feet AGL or so, but mostly for noise/comfort.

I see what you did there. They're fabric-covered.

The two things in the panel that are the least likely to fail are the compass and the spirit inclinometer (ball). You'll probably never be without at least those, unless you have an all-glass panel where even the ball is on a glass display (which I think is dumb). In the suggested configuration, with no control input at all (as suggested in the video), it is unlikely that an airplane would be trimmed so perfectly that it wouldn't turn one way or the other, hence the "benign spiral" being a likely stable state. It's interesting that DAs do a falling leaf. That's pretty cool. If somebody in such a situation bothered to at least try to keep the ball reasonably centered with the pedals it might not be a spiral or might be an even more benign one. I can understand the idea that a panicked student might be better off not touching anything rather than even trying that, but somebody with at least some of their wits about them should be able to keep the ball centered. I think you'd get an idea of how well or bad things were going by how much rudder you needed to keep it centered. It is an interesting idea for the airplanes in which it works. It sounds like it may not be well suited to Mooneys...I haven't tried it.

And a Tri-Pacer?

It was about six months for me. Compare that to the decades-long wait lists at Chandler or Scottsdale.

Awesome! That's cleaning up nicely! Best of luck with the rest of it, but it looks like you're off to a fine start.

I've had three events that I'd consider engine failure; two were complete power losses and one was a partial due to a clogged injector. The clogged injector happened early in climb-out just as the end of the runway was disappearing under the nose. I told the tower I had power loss, struggled around the pattern (it was climbing, but slowly), and was met at my hangar by a very polite guy from the city who wanted my name, etc. A couple of weeks later I got a call from the FSDO which was just a short conversation about what happened, etc., that resulted in no action. Both of the complete power loss failures also resulted in on-airport landings (thankfully), but never got reported anywhere afaik, even though one was at a towered field (but I just landed without making any kind of declarations, I was kinda busy). I think the lack of declaration made it somehow less "reportable", as the city guy did not meet me at the hangar that time. So, yeah, I don't think there is any way to get statistics that are accurate to better than an order of magnitude or so, which isn't very useful, unfortunately.

Looks like somebody tried to duplicate a King KX99 antenna adapter.

Another option: http://tkmavionics.com/our-products/mx155-navcomm/

Yes, btw, let us know when you get your hangar assignment. Brice (ragedracer1977) is on the South side, I'm on the North side, there are a TON of Mooneys on the field, several of whom have pilots that appear here from time to time. Welcome to the busiest GA airport in the country. Never a dull moment, and get used to lots of heavily-accented students on the radio. GYR is also an interesting airport, so wherever you ultimately wind up you'll have a good home field. DVT has a really good restaurant, though.

With race tires the general philosophy is that if the inside air isn't showing it's good to go. I'm more careful with airplane tires, but I don't think they care which way they go. My last set of tires that came off the race car. A set of four plus two that get rotated in and out as needed. All six are showing cord. D'oh.

Chandler Avionics is one of the big local places. My airplane is currently exploded across the hangar at EAM in Scottsdale, but whether or not I'd recommend them may depend on what happens in the next few weeks. They're certainly a capable and professional shop, but there's always that one guy... I think Cutter at DVT and Sky Harbor also do a lot of avionics work, and I've seen the guys with the mobile come-to-your-hangar avionics vans around DVT before, too. Depending on what you need there are multiple places in the area to pick from.

I think they used to do that with motorcycle race tires, i.e., the edge compound was softer for more cornering grip, while the center of the tire was a little harder compound. I don't know whether that was successful enough that they still do it or not. General Aviation airplane tires are about as basic as they come, though, so I don't think flipping them hurts anything. I seem to remember doing this frequently on the Cessnas when I was a lineboy in the Dark Ages.

Most asymmetric automotive tires can be flipped on the rims and run backwards, even if the sides are marked "inside" and "outside". We do this with track tires all the time, as usually the outside edge wears faster than the inside, so you can get a bit more life out of them if you flip them after a while. At our last event I ran the second day with two flipped tires on one side and two non-flipped tires on the other and it was still fine.