EricJ

Hangar 24? Love that place, except it's seriously annoying to not be able to drink the beer on a day trip there.

The installation work was done at a (non-MSC) shop at the field where the prop strike took place, which was in a different state than the airplane was based. Motor got sent out for tear down.

Any guesses on the value of the airplane prior to your restoration effort? I'm looking for a reference point for my own purposes.

To clarify, the mounts were replaced coincident with an engine tear-down after the prop strike. The mounts themselves look fine to me, i.e., they look like new rubber, no cracking, etc., so I suspect that the shop that did it just didn't bother to shim it for cowl alignment (they did some other funky stuff, too, that is being taken care of, so not getting that right isn't actually surprising). The alignment is really the only issue, but I'd like it to be right for obvious reasons. As mentioned, I think the IA is just not a fan of shimming bad or old mounts when they should be replaced instead, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Should be able to post some pics later once the final status on the annual becomes clearer. I'm waiting for some other issues with it to get resolved but it is taking some time.

I shot a GCA in actual IFR at Ramstein AFB in a C150 as a teenage student pilot because the controller mistakenly thought I'd declared an emergency. A C-5 Galaxy was holding short for the duration of my 70mph approach. That turned out to be a very interesting day.

My current ride while searching for a Mooney is a rental 200hp Arrow. I call it the Sky Potato because it is bland, predictable, sorta sweet, reliable but generally unremarkable, a little misshapen and glides like a potato when the gear is down. Some of those attributes are genuinely good, naturally. I could definitely see owning one if you didn't mind not going overly fast or high, but I'm usually just annoyed by how much less efficient it is than it could be. They are super easy to fly, the emergency gear mechanism is dirt simple and effective, but otherwise the electro-hydraulic gear just seems way overly complicated for such an otherwise simple airplane. I'm 6' even and don't have a lot of headroom in it, but get less interference between my legs and the yoke than I do in a C172. They are nice enough airplanes that I can easily see an owner getting passionate on a forum, but it's a little apples and oranges comparing one to a Mooney despite having essentially the same engine. Potato wing vs Mooney wing is night and day.

The net effect for differences in actual navigation as would be done from an EFB are very small compared to the differences in navigation capability of a non-GPS IFR airplane and somebody with a well-disciplined EFB. And yet one is held as a higher standard than the other (i.e., approved vs not), which simply isn't the case in practice. Believe me, I fully appreciate the technical differences, but I also recognize the disparities in the practical applications. A 50-year old airplane with original aging analog radio navaids is not "better" than a modern EFB with good external inputs (or even without, IMHO), but one can be approved and the other not. This is not an easy thing to rectify from a regulatory point of view, but I think the gap should be a lot narrower than it is. I think you're pointing out potential hardware reliability issues rather than performance issues, which was not part of my point. I don't know if there is any public MTBF data on relevant panel mounted avionics vs typical tablets, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're similar.

It's been a continuing thing for a long time that since the TSO process takes a long time that the equipment is obsolete by the time it is approved. Performance-wise, there's no difference in a panel mounted WAAS GPS for information display than there is in an EFB getting WAAS GPS info from a $150 stratux sitting on the glareshield, not to mention traffic and weather. Many IFR GA airplanes don't have a panel GPS at all, and many that do don't have WAAS or a decent graphical display. From that standpoint, the EFB info will be better. Many times I've had TIS-B traffic alerts on my EFB and the ADS-B-in panel traffic never said boo about it. The panel electronics are just not a clear winner in many cases. That's my only point, that an EFB may easily be providing better info than whatever is in the panel, just like a lot of experimental airplanes have panels that are superior in many ways to TSO'd equipment, just because it is more recent and has the benefit of newer, better technology in a more agile market. With a cheapie external AHRS and a $35 waas GPS receiver, you can have a very effective and useful EFIS and GPS nav system on a portable tablet or phone display, and it may all wind up being a lot better than whatever is in the panel on many airplanes (and certainly not all). The spread in technical performance between what is available in cheap, portable electronics and what qualifies as acceptable in the regs has already closed and overlapped. The technology doesn't have to catch up, the regs do, and that usually takes a long time. This is from somebody who used to develop avionics for airliners, so I'm familiar with the development, verification, test, and regulatory standards and hurdles.

I suspect this is only going to get blurrier as time goes on until the whole "non-TSO" equipment thing for GA gets sorted out, which will probably take a while. While I suspect the statements of the gentleman in question are wrong, the truth is that it is often the case that far better information is available on an EFB than on anything in the panel in the airplane. A $150 stratux with the $35 waas GPS receiver coupled to the EFB, plus the latest downloaded charts and plates (could easily be map and/or plate data downloaded the same day or within hours on the EFB), could easily outperform many GPS equipped panels from that perspective. I know it's not exactly apples and apples, but there is a bit of a point to what the guy said, even if he wasn't technically correct.

Got mine today as well. Nice little unit. Confidence inspiring.

That's all very helpful. The IA had indicated he wasn't a fan of reshimming mounts, but sounds like it's SOP with a Mooney. Thanks everybody for the input.

I'm looking at purchasing a J model that has a saggy motor very similar to this one (but not this one, which was discussed in another thread): https://www.aso.com/listings/spec/ViewAd.aspx?id=163471 The symptom being the spinner not lining up with the cowling very well. In the previous thread there was opinion expressed that this was due to the motor mounts sagging or just needing to be replaced. On the particular aircraft that I'm looking at the motor mounts were replaced coincident with a prop-strike-related tear down about thirty hours ago, but the spinner doesn't line up with the cowl just like in the pics in the link above. Is this likely due to just a crappy installation, poor quality mounts, or is it possible that the motor mount frame itself was tweaked during the prop strike? The prop strike was the result of porpoising during a bad landing.

Definitely thanks for setting it up! Have one on the way. Appreciate the discount!

I got a ride on it last summer when they were in SoDak. Definitely fun and interesting. Their route flew over my brother's house, and, yeah, they were flying that thing over that route constantly for a couple of days. Very cool. Highly recommended.

I live in Scottsdale, currently flying rentals out of KSDL. It's an easy trip driving or flying to KFFZ.

Thanks much for that! I'll likely take you up on that before too long once I'm done with some travel.

Thanks for the info and offers. At the moment I'm looking at this airplane: http://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Single+Engine+Piston&make=MOONEY&model=M20E+SUPER+21&listing_id=2250042&s-type=aircraft Are there any known Mooney-familiar PPI/IA mechanics in the San Diego area?

I've been lurking here for a little bit but wanted to make an intro. I'm a PPL, learned to fly in the '70s before I learned to drive, flew recreationally until about 1985 and then took thirty years off for career, life, etc., etc. It's been a bit of a Rip VanWinkle experience getting back into it, but it's also been fun. Lately I'm flying a rental Arrow around AZ just to get back into the groove and get warmed up to get an instrument rating. An integral part of the whole plan is to get a quick, efficient airplane to fly back and forth from AZ to SoDak (where I'm from and where I still have some property and is a nice place to be in the summer compared to AZ). Hence, I'm here as I'm looking around for an E or J model. So far I've not found anything quite right for me, but I haven't been looking all that long. The attraction to an E or J is that they seem to be good bang for the buck especially for long-ish cross-countries like what I usually need to do. That said, I have to admit I've never actually set foot in one or flown one. If there's anybody in AZ that needs some ballast, I'd be happy to oblige. You guys have already been very helpful just via info in existing threads, so thanks already.