EricJ

Weird. Mine went down a little bit this year. Not much, but it did go down.

A buddy was having one of our local prop balancing guys do his airplane, so while he was here I had him do mine, even though I didn't really have any complaints. He said mine was pretty good to start with, but he did manage to get it better. On his instruments it wasn't a huge change (I don't remember the numbers), but it was a difference. Interestingly, even that small change was noticeable in the airplane. It really did make a noticeable difference, which I thought was pretty cool.

That was apparently a $600k payout for the insurance company. My understanding was that the insurance company was going to pursue GAMI for recovery. That certainly seems like enough to motivate them to do that. It won't take many of those to do some serious damage to GAMI. If they're insured it may make insurability more difficult going forward.

I've used it, I've known a lot of people who've used it in aircraft in both fuel and oil. Supposedly many 55 gallon drums were used during WWII in standard procedures to keep aircraft engines working. An acquaintence who was a rep for an aviation oil company said using Aeroshell W100+ will prevent stuck valves, too, and probably unstick stuck ones. I don't think MMO would be an essentially legendary aviation supply for about a hundred years without being effective at something. I've used it for ring flushes as well as in fuel. One of the nice things with using it for a ring flush is it's not tragic if some of it gets left behind in the cylinder or in the sump.

There are lots of ways to accomplish beamforming, but in general I agree with you. A "phased array" is a subset of beamforming antenna types, but I think starlink does more than that since phased arrays are kind of old-school these days. FWIW, even WiFi has been doing electronic beamforming (usually 2-D) for more than a decade.

The antenna uses an electronically-steered beam, which has to be tightly integrated with the modulator/transmitter, and the receiver/demod. There's not much else there other than the network interface and power supply, so there's not much that can be separated out from the antenna. The entire thing might get smaller, or at least thinner, but it probably doesn't make sense to separate the electronics from the antenna.

Plug fouling can happen during taxi after a flight, when the power is very low and the engine is cooling down. Leaning on the ground and keeping the rpm at or above 1000 rpm helps, but it can still happen. I don't know if that's what your issue is/was, but there are things like that that can come up suddenly.

Beat me to it.

That used to be true in a lot of cars with submerged electric pumps. They used the fuel for cooling, so the pump could potentially overheat if there wasn't sufficient fuel in the tank. I think there may be other failure modes associated with repeatedly sucking air and having to reprime repeatedly, or that might have aggravated the overheating. In any case, many race tanks have baffled sumps with check-valve type gates that keep the sump fuller than it would be otherwise, so the pump is less likely to pump air or overheat. I don't think any Mooneys have pumps like that, though, or most GA airplanes.

The 100-hour/Annual inspection checklist from Mooney (Form 100B, the Aug 2018 edition) covers all models and in the Post Inspection Operational Check section it says: 1. Check propeller governor operation with engine running at 2000 RPM & pitch control at low pitch (High RPM): When propeller control is pulled out to high pitch (low RPM), engine speed should decrease at least 500 RPM. I've seen other general inspection guidance that 500 rpm is a minimum drop to look for, not a limit. I'd think if there was an important limit it would placarded.

Can't tell much from the vid, but the rough running appears to be due to the #2 cyl dropping out for a bit. It came back hotter, so it's possible you had two fouled plugs for a bit and at least one of them cleared when you adjusted power.

Good to hear. Another occasional failure mode for those is that the terminals of the sonalert short against the sheet metal of the roof. It could be that taking it down and putting it back gave it some clearance, but if it does it again it's another possibility to check.

I don't think I've ever seen somebody suggest replacing a pinned connector with handshake terminals before.

My airplane is hangared and I've coated it twice in eight years, so that's about right. On my vehicles it seems to last 3-4 years. They're usually garaged but spend more time outside than the airplane does.

Youtuber Matt Guthmiller was an XM shill for years until he used a starlink and now says XM is crap (I'm paraphrasing). So there's a comparison.

Turkey vultures, raptors, geese, etc., etc...I don't want to hit any of them but they go up way higher than one might expect. Freaking geese fly at night. And around here the hang gliders fly cross-country up to 14k feet. I don't want to hit one of them, either. Or the halo guys that jump here day or night, or the gliders that occassionally fly up into the flight levels. Or balloons, or drones, or... There's a lot of crap in the air as it turns out.

The crankshafts in the J models have dynamic counterweights, and the RPM restriction is actually deleted with the two-blade Scimitar. I suspect that's because it has more mass, so moves the torsional resonance to a different frequency that's no longer an issue. The C and E model engines have solid cranks, so the bad frequencies apparently are still within operating RPM range.

The tricky part is getting the cowl off when the pin keeps it from disconnecting. Once the cowl is off it's still pretty easy to get the camloc out of the cowl with the plier tool.

In mine the stall is continuous and the gear is intermittent/pulsed.

I have had that happen with the Camlocs, too, and once in a while go through them and remove any that have loose pins. I've had pins come partially out and prevent disconnecting before, which is very much a PITA. So any loose ones go in the trash and get replaced.

Mine has never done that and I know a number of people with Scimitar props that haven't had that problem, so I suspect it was an isolated issue. Bummer that it was recurring, though.

FWIW, one of the few things an A&P can do to a prop is paint it. You don't need to take it off and send it to the shop if there's an A&P that will paint it in-place for you.

When I bought my airplane it had a brand-new (well, 40 hours) two-blade Hartzell Scimitar. Since I've not had any other prop on it I can't comment on differences in experience, but my cruise speed numbers compare to what most other J model owners post here, so I don't know what difference it would make. It is supposedly quieter than some other props, and weighs a little more than the two-blade McCauley that originally came with the airplane from the factory. What I can say is that it's been very reliable and trouble-free for the about 1000 hours that I've put on it, and it's not really showing any signs of impending issues. Seems pretty solid to me. The spinner it came with has the thick backing plate, so that's nice as well.

That was the case with mine as well. Something that helped me a lot for this task was a kevlar mechanic's sleeve and taping up the edges of the inspection hole. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009A5BPVE

They're actually not. The straight part on the end is just to straighten the flow and can be cut off completely. Plus there are many similar units with varying degrees of "flushness". I bought some of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q4S8L41 Which shows this, but the entire bottom shown as 1" can be lopped off without any mechanical interference to the vent: