ilovecornfields

It certainly sounds like it. Unless there is a flurry of Mooney pilots running out of gas and crashing near orange groves recently. I'm not on the other site but what I'm told is that this pilot keeps talking about his "accident" like something "happened" and is completely oblivious to the fact that the only thing wrong with the plane was the knucklehead behind the yoke. I'm sure he'll collect insurance money, find another plane to crash and let us all pay for his stupidity with increased rates. Edit: I think it is that one. Followed the link in that thread and found it on Kathryn's Report: Kathryn's Report: Mooney M20C Ranger, N79396: Accident occurred January 01, 2022 in Southeast Arcadia, DeSoto County, Florida (kathrynsreport.com) Location: Southeast Arcadia, Florida Accident Number: ERA22LA099 Date and Time: January 1, 2022, 12:11 Local Registration: N79396 Aircraft: Mooney M20C Injuries: 2 None Flight Conducted Under: Part 91: General aviation - Personal On January 1, 2022, about 1211 eastern daylight time, a Mooney M20C, N79396, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Arcadia, Florida. The private pilot and passenger were not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, he performed a preflight and verified he had sufficient fuel onboard for his flight. After an uneventful flight he entered the traffic pattern for runway 24. While on final approach about 300 to 400 ft, he reported the airplane “experienced some sink.” He added power and when the engine did not respond he pumped the throttle to no avail. He verified 4 gallons of fuel was in the right tank, and the boost pump was ON. Unable to make the runway he performed a forced landing in a field adjacent the runway. During touchdown the right wing clipped a tree and was substantially damaged. The airplane and engine were recovered for further examination.

I don’t see this as a Foreflight fail or a sign of poor airmanship. I think the OP was task saturated because he was worried about his wife, he had a controller who could have been more explicit about which NOTAM he was concerned about and in the end everyone got home safely and he shared his experience so we could all benefit from it. Task saturation is real. When I took off and my baggage door pooped open I told myself “don’t stall, don’t forget the gear” about 20 times because I knew I was distracted and those were the things that could get me in trouble. With the benefit of the retrospectoscope we can see how if he’d told the controlled he was unfamiliar with the NOTAMS or called on Unicom for airport advisories (do people still do that?) he might have been informed of the closure. Sounds like he’s learned from this experience (we all have), he took care of his wife’s hypoxia (a potentially serious medical issue) and realized he didn’t have enough fuel to reach his destination so made the wise decision to divert and make a fuel stop instead of trying to stretch it and running out of gas. A friend of mine told me about some Mooney guy on Pilots of America who keeps bragging about crashing his plane into an orange grove after running out of fuel and seems to have no insight into his contribution to the “accident.”. I think I would have a lot more critical feedback for that pilot than I would for someone who overall made the right choices but was probably a little distracted because he was concerned about the safety of his passenger. Thank you for sharing so we could all learn from your experience.

I have an extra manual. It looks like gold right now is $1794/oz and it probably weighs a pound or two so if anyone wants to send me $28k I’ll pay for the shipping. I prefer PayPal friends and family or Venmo. Disclaimer: This is not an actual offer to sell the MAPA training manual.

Is this your first interaction with @chriscalandro? That’s kind of what he does. Maybe we should all pitch in to buy him a lavender bath bomb so he can take a nice warm bath, listen to Enya and align his chakras.

From your picture it looks like you took off a little heavy… I would definitely file a NASA report. This has the effect of “notifying people of an unsafe condition.” Controllers are allowed to clear you for an approach at a closed airport. It’s your responsibility to know it is safe to land there. I don’t think the controller did anything wrong but it would have been nice if he told you the airport was closed. Sounds like your wife being hypoxic really threw a curveball in your plans. If my wife was sick it would have messed with my head as well. In the end, you’re safe, your wife is safe and your plane is undamaged so things worked out. Some knucklehead even has a story to tell his friends about how he raced an airplane. When I divert for fuel or weather I try to go to a large airport. You end up paying extra for fuel but if you need additional services they are usually available.

Maybe we can help @Papa K out without all insulting each other. I think everyone means well, but sometimes the caring comes off a bit harsh. We’ve all heard about experienced pilots having life ending events in Mooneys and not having had instruction from an experienced CFI, so I think all of the criticism comes from a good place and we certainly don’t want to see this gentleman suffer the same fate. It kind of reminds me of the guy recently that bought a new Mooney and wanted to fly it across Canada and asked some questions suggesting he wasn’t well prepared (I may have suggested that as well). I haven’t read about him crashing (or seen the multi-camera YouTube videos of his successfully flight) so I’m hoping he did ok. I’m still waiting for @carusoam to chime in and say “Mooneyspace is on the internet…but it’s not THE internet.” Maybe he’s on vacation. I do have to say, that “biologically improbable love child” line did have me cracking up this morning. How about we all start over and play nice. If we haven’t scared @Papa K away yet.

It makes me happy to see the Mooneys congregating outside and socially distanced.

Ovation with G500, GTN 750/650, KFC 225. I hand fly the missed. Too much going on for me to babysit the autopilot.

Have you seen the speedbrakes on that thing? The rudder would split open and act like an adjustable speedbrake (kind of like the adjustable spoilers on gliders). I guess if the rudder split open on a Mooney that would probably slow you down as well. I had a classmate in elementary school who’s father was a shuttle pilot. I remember he brought some tiles in once and let us heat them up with a blowtorch and then feel how the other side was still cool.

Mooneys don’t like to “go down and slow down” so you have to actually plan your descents. They also don’t like it when you come in too fast on final and force then to land. The best way to learn is with someone who has a lot of time in Mooneys. MAPA has a PPP clinic which would be ideal for a first-time Mooney owner (looks like they’ll be in Wisconsin in September - https://mooneypilots.org/assets/pdf/ppp-mapa-sf-2022-schedule-compressed.pdf). Until then, maybe some Midwest Mooney pilots can give you a recommendation for a local CFI who has time in Mooneys. They’re not “special” but they’re also pretty unforgiving of some techniques that other planes let you get away with. I can’t help you with cowl flaps since I don’t have then but the first thing I did after getting my checkout was to start working on the commercial. The commercial maneuvers will help you get used to the plane. Don’t forget to preheat!

All I need to know about light guns I learned from the Opposing Bases podcast. If you land without a clearance (which you would be doing with no radio) and the tower asks you if you saw the light gun, just say “yes.”

Let me know if you find one. I might head up there Saturday if I can talk my family into it.

Now I don’t know light gun signals either?! I’m losing knowledge at an amazing rate (although I do remember a couple of light gun questions on the AGI written so I must have guessed well). Please do tell - what else don’t I know that every student pilot does and how did you manage to figure it out?

Did you happen to read the whole post? Perhaps it should have been in a green font to make it clear to everyone quick to criticize that it was intended to be sarcastic. I know how magnetos work. Yesterday I had a zoom meeting with FSDO and got my AGI certificate. Between the FOI and AGI written tests I missed one question (which the inspector pointed out). It might be wise in the future to not assume that everyone you’re interacting with is an idiot.

What exactly should have been covered during my private pilot training 30 years ago? The quote you provided was blank. I’m dying to know.

I miss those days. I think back to some of the stupid things I did in airplanes as a teenager and I’m surprised I survived. I guess sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

You remind me about a wreck I responded to 20 years ago on the interstate where a truck rolled over, there was a fatality in the vehicle and the passenger was trapped inside. There was quite a bit of damage on the passenger’s side and the door wouldn’t open. The fire department got really excited and started getting all of their power tools and cutting devices ready. My partner opened the drivers side door and pulled the guy out across the seat. Yes, if the fire department wants to get into your plane they will do it. I assume it would take them about 10 seconds to break the windows.

A hypothetical question for those with encyclopedic knowledge of the FARs. Say a ground instructor had a colleague who wanted a ground school lesson. If refreshments were served during that lesson would it be against the FARs for the student to log it? Is there any possible consequence for the instructor?

If it’s been that way since you bought the plane I would ask the person who did that annual if they noticed anything. If I recall correctly, it was from a shop that claims to be pretty good with Mooneys.

That Dunning-Kruger effect rears its ugly head again. Looks like he wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was. “The Dunning–Kruger effect is the cognitive biaswhereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.” “They tend to overrate themselves because they do not see the qualitative difference between their performances and the performances of others. This has also been termed the "dual-burden account" since the lack of skill is paired with the ignorance of this lack” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

But if it sparks won’t the plane explode?

I think you hit the nail right on the head. I am not a professional pilot. I never will be. I fly on average 2-3 trips a week, 95% IFR (most of that in VMC) but frequently have either a marine layer or fog/haze on at least one end of my trip. Despite this, I still don't have near the proficiency of a professional pilot and never will. What bothers me is that "professional pilots" seem to still get disoriented and crash in these situations. I don't know why. Automation is clearly a double-edged sword. On one hand, when it works well it vastly decreases the cognitive load and makes flying safer and more reliable. Flying an instrument approach into HHR (Hawthorne, near LAX) is really challenging for me without an autopilot because it seems every few seconds you're either getting a new frequency, heading or altitude. With the AP, it's not that bad. But then I've read many accident reports where automation probably caused the accident and the phrase "what's it doing?" frequently appears in these transcripts. These are often accidents in which professional pilots are involved. Because of this, if I ever find myself in a "what's it doing" situation the first thing I do is disconnect the AP and hand fly. I agree with you that proficiency is the best answer but as an amateur pilot (for over 30 years) there is an upper limit to how good I will get. I also know properly working automation decreases cognitive load and "supervising" an AP takes less effort for me than doing all the flying myself. Maybe based on this discussion I will wait longer to engage the AP. I already don't take off into conditions I can't land in so I'm less worried about zero-zero takeoffs but maybe I should re-examine my personal takeoff minimums knowing that I will never be as proficient as the professionals. I appreciate the thoughtful insights.

Hi Skip, Thank you for caring enough to call me out on that and for looking up the altitude restriction (I actually thought it was 400’). I think you’re certainly justified in criticizing me for it. To be honest, it’s a situation that challenges me a little bit because I don’t really know what the safest thing to do is when taking off in low IFR conditions. I get frustrated sometimes with the overlap of safe vs. legal and feel that we often focus more on what is legal than what is safe. The Learjet at SEE could legally cancel IFR and enter the pattern for 27 R but it clearly wasn’t safe. I’ve listened to the recording a few times and it’s kind of eerie the moment you realize their fate was sealed when they made the very legal decision to cancel IFR and proceed VFR (ironically it would have been much safer to proceed straight-in and land on the shorter runway, but perhaps not legal). I’ve read a lot of accidents where pilots take off in low IFR, get disoriented and crash - often never reaching 800’. Would they be alive today if they had “illegally” engaged the autopilot sooner? How do you balance those experiences with those of people like @Danb who almost died by engaging the autopilot down low. Which one is more likely to kill me? I honestly don’t know. When I engage the autopilot I’ve already had it in FD mode so unless I do something really dumb it should be pretty predictable. I’ve always tested the AP disconnect during preflight and keep my hand on the yoke and the finger over the button so hopefully I would be able to intervene quickly if it went on a suicide mission. The FAA tells me the antidote is “follow the rules, they are usually right” but I don’t love that answer because sometimes they’re not. The toxicologists love to say “the dose makes the poison” and I kind of agree with them with respect to those attitudes. I think sometimes when you have an issue with safe vs. legal the smart move is to go with safe but I feel too often people focus on “legal.” Most of the time there’s a huge overlap, but sometimes you have to pick one over the other. There are lots of ways to legally get killed in an airplane. I probably should have phrased what I said in a better way. Maybe I’m just tired. I just worked 3 days in challenging conditions dealing with the virus that shall not be named and people trying to legislate behavior and I’m kind of frustrated with the emphasis on what is legal instead of what is safe and prudent. Sorry if I’m taking it out on you guys. I appreciate you caring enough to challenge me on it.

Now you’re just being ridiculous. You don’t learn surgical procedures at the Holiday Inn, you learn those on YouTube!

Agreed. But if there's a mountain in the way you may need that ROC... I think it depends on where you are and what you're worried about. If you forget one of those items are you likely to notice the low airspeed or low ROC first? Again, I don't have FLC so not even an option for me but I keep a pretty close eye on that airspeed and if it started creeping down (or I heard the stall horn) it would probably get my attention quickly. I agree if there's no terrain around FLC may be a better choice. I have a friend who was sitting right-seat in a Pilatus that was climbing in FLC mode and forgot to raise the flaps. He commented to the pilot "that's funny, the other pilot doesn't usually leave the flaps down the whole time we're climbing." One of my instructors liked me to say "gear up, flaps up, engine instruments green" before engaging the AP. I don't think that's a bad idea either.