Hey everyone,
Long time lurker, first time poster. I have been researching the purchase of a plane for years and will hopefully be able to make it a reality in the not too distant future. I am very interested in the Mooney lineup and have read a lot on the different models. This forum has been a great resource, thanks!
My mission would be lots of local flights of 100nm or less with occasional (5-7x/year) longer cross country flights of around 5-600nm. I live in Vancouver Canada (so essentially the Pacific Northwest). I would love to make flights up and down the west coast but also have family one province over to the east. This would involve a flight over the Rockies. MEA for victor airways along that route are around 17000ft, but there are GPS routes slightly further south with MEAs of 13500ft so flights would have to be at a minimum of 14-15000ft depending on direction.
Given this profile, how badly would you think a turbo is needed? It seems like it would be pushing it for an M20J but what about an Ovation. Ceiling is advertised at 20000ft. Is it reasonable to expect to safely be able to get up to 16-17000ft near gross weight with reasonable climb rates? Or would a turbo be the way to go?
I’d appreciate any thoughts! Thanks in advance.
