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AJ88V

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AJ88V last won the day on August 16 2024

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    N7788V
  • Model
    M20C

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  1. Nice looking plane. What's the "oil cooler mod" for an M20C? Was aware of Lasar for the E and F models with FI.
  2. Stop drilling is the standard method to minimize crack growth in your plexiglass window. Basically you drill a small hole directly in front of the crack (but not actually on the crack). Then, when the crack continues to grow, it will reach the hole which has a smooth, round surface to relieve the tension that produced the crack in the first place and the crack will not propagate beyond the hole. In @Slick Nick's case, the crack has essentially reached the stop hole by reaching the pilot's window cutout (as @A64Pilot pointed out :)). The crack likely started at one of the screws holding the window in at its bottom edge. Since the window is also bonded in place with sealant around the edges at the airframe, there is no risk of the "broken" piece of plexi coming loose. You can put a dab of clear silicone in the small stop gap hole. Have never heard of using anything to weld the crack back up. The risk is that you won't make the crack go away but instead make it into a smudgy mess. If I were to try anything, it would be cyanoacrylate (Crazy Glue) applied with the tiniest syringe needle available. Cyanoacrylate is essentially liquid acrylic that polymerizes when exposed to water in the air (or your skin, as we've all experienced).
  3. What's especially sad is there wasn't a conventional tail conversion for the original V tails. As I understand it, they never could get rid of the magnesium parts in the V tail and pass stability tests. Lot of lovely airframes going to waste.
  4. Not many SB208 issues in PHX metro!
  5. General aviation has been on a slide for a long time, and, indeed, a core mission of the AOPA has been to increase interest in GA. Witness what's happened to automobiles. Sure, the American passion for cars hasn't really diminished, but a manual transmission has become the new anti-theft device. People can't read maps anymore because they depend on their smart phones to do their navigation. My own son loves his Tesla with its auto-driving capabilities. I suspect auto-flying aircraft taxis will become a thing if/when the technology becomes practical, so that might increase people using GA, but fewer and fewer people will want to accept the challenge (and risks) of flying little airplanes like Cessnas and Mooneys when it does. But back to Cliffy's point (which I agree with), maybe we can look to something like the Navion community. Only 2634 total were ever built; less than 200 were built between 1960 and 1976 when they stopped production. And yet there's a pretty strong community keeping these birds in the air. There are a couple beautiful ones on my field with maxed out panels and show paint and interiors, probably in the $200K value range. Why? Because they offer something unique and offer a high-end flying experience at an "affordable" price. Our Mooneys will slowly tread the same path. They are wayyy more affordable than just about any new light plane. Even the last production Mooneys look pretty cost effective compared to a new Cirrus. And the old ones look very attractive. The humble M20C is a serious competitor to a Cirrus SR20 at a fraction of the cost on the used market. So I expect our fleet to dwindle as Cliffy suggests, but I also expect them to continued to be highly valued and increasingly updated as the years go on. I'm already seeing the trend, as more and more 'humble' Mooneys get new paint, new engines and new avionics. There are a couple of M20C/D/E/F/G models with killer panels in the $100K - $130K range on Trade-a-Plane. Yes, right now those are 'expensive' (and probably slow to sell), but their owners decided to update them because they wanted the performance those upgrades offered. No, they aren't the bottom-of-the-barrel bargains, but they are and will be serious competitors compared to more 'modern' airplanes as time goes on.
  6. At least DVT is nice and dry about 99% of the year!
  7. @Sabremech, maybe it's time to post an update? Thanks!
  8. @Tim VanDenHoek, are you an A&P? If not, you probably can’t afford to do this unless you have a retired A&P friend to do this with you as a hobby. Recommend you follow up by searching for the thread posted by @Sabremech. Best pics I’ve ever seen of dismantling a Mooney for truck transport. Finally, a young/new A&P who works on my field bought a Mooney that had been sitting outside for about 10 years. He paid almost nothing for it. He got lucky and got her flying over a couple months of after-hours work. He did find some minor frame tube corrosion and a cracked stub spar. Also replaced all 4 cylinders with overhauled units. So, yes, it can be worth it, but part is luck and no matter what, significant skills are needed.
  9. Been a while since I looked, but I saw clear tracks for the helo (both ATC display and commercial versions). I'd be really PO'd if that helo could switch ADS-B *OFF* during a training flight given what a royal PITA the TSA is about flying in and around DC airspace. As I wrote earlier, it makes no effing sense at all for that helo to be making a training flight in that corridor at that particular time of the evening. NO SENSE AT ALL! (yes, I am shouting)
  10. Good luck, Frank. I’m not able to move that fast. Looks like a heck of a plane.
  11. I like this airplane - and it's actually on my 'consider' list. All the planes I like fall into the "good, fast, cheap, pick two" paradigm, but for planes it's "instruments, engine, cosmetics, pick two". Avionics will easily pop this one up $30K to $70K. Nice that it's a J model (the Mooney I'd be most interested in) and your comments about Dynon are spot on with the autopilot. That would make this one hell of an airplane. But the current price alone would tap out my budget. Like I said, pick two.
  12. God bless....
  13. Putting W96 and KPTB on my near term visit list! But gonna be hard to top CJR. We got a Confederate Air Force, er, umm, Consolidated Air Force Wing here and all sorts of cool stuff (GlobeSwift comes to mind) and even some of them rare Mooneybirds.
  14. Yep, discovered this at a recent conference at Redstone! (holy cr@p has Huntsville grown since I was last there!!!)
  15. Take the yellow jackpoint and insert it into the bottom of a cup, open end towards the point. Make the "outer cup" large enough diameter and long/deep enough to completely surround the grey (concave) receiver without actually touching the receiver. Now the jackpoint could not slip out of the receiver when on the jack.
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