Fly Boomer

Made me laugh out loud. Thanks!

@A64Pilot Sorry to hear about the knee. Keep after the bast@&ds until they find a solution.

We had some issues with “too much stuff stored” recently. We got more storage, but it may now require an annual donation. Go to the home page, scroll down about 2/3 of the page, and click the PayPal button. Twenty bucks will get you started. Also gets rid of the adverts.

If it was my money, I would want to know that it was repaired by a shop with the facility, people, and reputation for such things. But if it passed that test, and the engine and prop passed similar tests, I would get the most expensive pre-buy I could, and buy it. It’s possible to screw this up, but no reason to expect that. I would get that comprehensive pre-buy regardless of damage history.

Not sure about other brands, but a Mooney typically doesn’t suffer much. I think the “fly straight” admonition is BS from someone who has no personal experience. Biggest expense is the prop and engine tear-down.

Not a Bravo engine guy, but GAMI said it can be used without consequences in any aircraft engine, and the FAA agreed. Only time will tell.

Ah. That makes sense.

That’s funny. I went in on a EE track (Thermodynamics required) and came out with an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

The seller on Amazon helpfully told me it is odorless and non-toxic, but didn’t explain what does. Maybe it glues your screwdriver to the screw so they become one — turning the screwdriver turns the screw?

We are all different. I took Qualitative Analysis as a freshman, but could never wrap my head around Thermo. Ended up changing my major.

Hmmm. Now I need to do more research. Not sure which one I ended up with.

I have some spots similar to what you describe. I bought that "pen" that you reference, but I can't yet provide a PIREP. From what I read, it sounds like the best solution.

The spin guy (Rich Stowell) has something like 30,000 spins in 170 airplanes, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that he has more experience than anyone reading this. Rich has been branded a boring alarmist by at least one person on this forum but, if you want to know what he said about Mooney in particular, I present about one page from a nearly 500-page book: Naval test pilot school was one of those rare and wonderful happenings in life that you wouldn’t trade for anything but wouldn’t immediately jump to do again. After test pilot school it was back to certifying new and modified aircraft as an FAA flight test pilot. I encountered my first flat, unrecoverable spin in 1960. In testing the new, metal-wing Mooney M20B, I intentionally exceeded the one-turn Normal Category spin test requirement because something peculiar was happening. The spin, which happened to be to the right in this case, was unusually oscillatory in pitch. And the oscillations were increasing, alternatively burying the nose and pitching up about a half a turn later. So the boy test pilot pressed on. At the three-turn point, which was to be my last look, the spin suddenly went flat as the nose pitched up. Very flat! And slow. I'd heard old CAA test pilots talk about flat spins that happened back in the 1930s, and I knew right away that’s where I was. The controls flopped uselessly; there were no control pressures or airplane responses, and the engine stopped. There was side force from a left skid, as if pushing right Rutter in normal flight. It seemed that the spin axis was out in front of the airplane. Obviously I was just along for the ride, which at least was smooth. And strangely quiet. Handles for the spin chute deployment and jettison cables were mounted on the side of the cabin slightly behind the pilot seat. It was an awkward placement and difficult to reach. After some fumbling around, I got the chute deployed. This pitched the airplane into a dive. Then after some rather desperate pulling and tugging, I finally jerked the jettison handle hard enough to make it work, followed by a relieved pullout and return to base. I am a fairly normal human specimen, and that flat spin encounter was a big surprise. The adrenaline certainly flowed freely, but at least I didn’t have to deal with making a lot of choices. "Just get the damn chute out, and then get rid of it," I thought. Burned into memory--and still clear in my mind today--was the view through the windshield after the spin chute opened: looking vertically down at the unique terrain of Texas hill country with the limestone strata making contour lines around the hills. It was surprising that this unrecoverable spin occurred at maximum forward CG and maximum gross weight, normally a benign loading for spins. Not surprising, though, was that my extracurricular activities were ruled excessive by FAA management. The airplane was certified after subsequent tests by me showed that it met the letter of the one-turn spin requirement at both forward and aft CG loadings. But during FAA flight tests the following year, the next Mooney model to be manufactured went flat at the one-turn point at aft CG. The FAA test pilot, Ramon Gibson, had to bail out after the spin chute failed to deploy. And a few months later, a new Mooney was lost to a flat spin during a sales demonstration flight. Amazingly, the sales demo pilot and three passengers survived with injuries--a testament to the fact that flat spins have much slower descent rates than steeper spins. That and the fact that the airplane luckily skinnied down the trunk of a pine tree, knocking off branches and lessening the force of ground impact. (The harrowing story of this demonstration flight later appeared in the March 1981 issue of popular mechanics.) My spin test results in 1960 had shown that the airplane was close to the ragged edge of bad spins, but the manufacture was not required to investigate further.

Do you mean it's likely coming from people who are operating too far LOP, and that is causing detonation?

I keep hearing that, so I ordered a filter from Aircraft Spruce. The web said expected ship date was a couple of weeks out -- confirmation that our supply chain issues are about over. When I didn't hear anything from Spruce, I called to inquire when I could expect my order to arrive. Woman I talked to said they get very few filters, and those go to people who have had orders in the system for more than a year. She also said not to expect anything this year.

I'm more impressed by their demonstrated ability to get the STC approved, than I am by their hydrocarbon mixing skills.

Rich Stowell (the spin guy) also says many airplanes have multiple spin "modes". Might do a few turns looking fairly conventional, then go flat or point the nose straight down, then flip over on it's back. I think if it flips over on its back he deploys the tail drogue, or uses the hydrogen peroxide wingtip jets, or just blows the door and gets out.

He also spoke at (I think) the first MooneyMAX in Longview. I haven't looked for my notes, but what I took away from his talk was simple: "Don't go there."

I’m suggesting that anyone who flys a Mooney (or probably any higher-performance airplane) should read the book.

To help dispel a cavalier attitude regarding spins, reference “Stall/Spin Awareness” by Rich Stowell.

Not too many years ago, the pipes were lead.

Nobody who joined MooneySpace this month is allowed to talk about themselves like that! Welcome.

I don’t have an M20J but I suspect 200 is going to be unusual for an unmodified example. Under most circumstances, you will probably need a turbo or a bigger engine. On the other hand, the average M20J will run away and hide from your average single-engine Cessna, Piper Cherokee variant, or unmodified Bonanza of similar vintage.

Sorry to hear that.

Good life lesson. I once hired a sheet rock guy to do some work for me on a house in the “poor” county, and discovered that he lived in one of the ritziest cities in the “rich” county.