squeaky.stow

I don’t know how to link to other threads here, but @PMcClure posted in December that the stock Mooney fuel senders are not compatible with the G3X. Google mooneyspace fuel quantity indication g3x and you will find the post.

Similar discussions going on at Beechtalk. According to the poster over there, Garmin knows about this and the way to avoid it is to download IFR, then exit and re-enter FlyGarmin and download terrain. “Don’t tick both IFR and Terrain updates in the same batch”. I have been avoiding updating my terrain card since I read this thread, hoping to hear more info. I think I am brave enough to try the terrain card separately now. Update to follow....

I will probably get roasted by all of the Mooneyspacers that have AOA systems and love them, but here is my 2 cents anyway. I have flown several aircraft with really good AOA displays, from fighters to transport category aircraft. If you are operating close to the stall side of the performance envelope, it is a really good tool for helping you to know just how close you are to that edge regardless of your weight or the weather conditions. For a fighter, AOA is really important because it can lift almost its own weight in fuel and ordnance. That makes for a big range of potential approach speeds. My Mooney can only lift about one third of its empty weight, so the difference in stall speed between empty and gross weight is less than 10 kts. That being said, I generally fly in and out of reasonably long runways and I try to operate my Mooney well away from the edges of the envelope so I don’t feel the need for an AOA indicator. If I were routinely flying into short fields where every extra knot meant increased risk of running off the end of the runway, I might feel differently. So unlike some of the cool toys we can buy for our airplanes, AOA can be quite useful under certain circumstances. I just don’t fly in those circumstances enough to justify the cost.

Here is a great picture that illustrates why SVT is IMHO a nice shiny toy but of limited value. I hope @Ulysse doesn’t mind me sharing this picture of his beautiful Encore panel. Take a look at the terrain display on the GTN750. If you were flying in marginal VFR and decided that things were getting a little too marginal, which direction do you definitely NOT want to turn? Now look at the SVT display on the G3X and ask the same question. Now shrink that display to the area between the speed an altitude tapes, as in an Aspen, or a circle the diameter of the bank indicators, as in GI275. Even the big SVT display on the G3X gives me zero SA on what the terrain looks like off my left wing. An Aspen or GI even less. The terrain map on the 750, on the other hand, gives me instant 360 degree SA. That I would pay for; SVT, only if it is free or really cheap. I have SVT on my Aspen (it was free) and hardly ever bother to turn it on except to show someone the novelty of seeing the runway as we taxi on to it.

Bump

Another thing that makes owning more appealing than renting is hard to put into a spreadsheet but very real. Your own airplane is always available exactly when you want it, and if you decide that you want to stay at destination X for an extra week, nobody is phoning you up and telling you that they need the airplane back home for another renter, or charging you daily minimum rent for sitting idle.

Hi Appalachia, Welcome to Mooneyspace and congratulations on joining a very small elite group! Very few people in the world do activities that rely entirely on their own skills to keep them alive. You are now a trapeze artist working without a net and that is an achievement to be proud of. Of course you are. We all are. You can never really justify owning an airplane unless you are one of those rare people that own a business that actually makes money by flying airplanes. (I have heard that such enterprises exist, but I am skeptical) We do it anyway because we love it and we would otherwise be blowing our money on boats or cars or golf clubs or casinos. I was once on a cruise and the during the orientation lecture, the cruise director told us where to find the restaurants, pools, and of course to casino. Then he said “If you get there and the doors are locked, just put all your money in an envelope and slide it under the door. IT’S THE SAME THING!” At least with aviation you can have fun wasting all your extra money! You are doing it. I followed Mooneyspace for a couple of years before I bought my Mooney. I avoided a lot of expensive mistakes by learning from others here. The only decisions I really regret in my life were due to waiting until I was sure there was no financial risk. I delayed buying a sailboat when my kids were young. By the time I could afford to pay cash, they had grown up. In retrospect I should have borrowed the money and enjoyed the time with them. If you can swing it financially and it makes you happy, I say go for it.

True. I sent my monitor data to GAMI when I first bought my 252 and asked them if I could order a set of GAMI injectors. They told me my spread was .3 and I would be wasting my money trying to improve it. That convinced me of their integrity. Not to derail the thread with something totally off topic but what’s with the difference between the angle of bank on the main AI and the GI275?

If running a tank dry makes you uncomfortable, (me too) there is another option. Before I could have full confidence in my fuel system I had to know three things: the accuracy of my low fuel light, the accuracy of my external wing gauges, the accuracy of my FF indicator. It was a multi-step process. 1) Calibrate the low fuel light. During annual, show up with one tank fairly low, drain the rest of it manually and run the Maintenance Manual calibration procedure for your LOW FUEL annunciator light. It’s pretty simple and it gives you a benchmark that doesn’t require worrying about whether the engine will restart when you run it dry. Now you know pretty accurately when you are down to the last 2.5 to 3 useable gallons per tank. (at least for my K) 2) Calibrate your external wing gauges (or dipstick) Add fuel to the almost empty tank in increments until you reach your preferred maximum fill point, recording what the wing gauges say while you do this. Doesn’t matter what that maximum point is as long as you always use the same point every time. I use the bottom of the anti-siphon flapper. Now you know the accuracy of your wing gauge or your dipstick. 3) Calibrate your FF indicator. Fly a long cross-country with the power setting you always flight plan for. During that X/C run one tank until the LOW FUEL light illuminates, refill the tank to the same “full” reference point used in step 2 and do the math to determine the accuracy of your FF indicator. Mine was bang on. (I recorded the FF and time to TOC to allow for the climb portion.) My POH has a warning in the limitations section that “Takeoff maneuvers when the selected tank contains less than 12 gallons...have not been demonstrated”. While not technically a hard limitation, it is a “Warning” and I think it constitutes useful guidance for a minimum landing fuel as I never know for sure when a go-around might be required. Therefore if I were to plan a trip that required running one tank all the way to the LOW FUEL light, I would plan to have at least 12 gallons in the other one for landing. That may strike some as overly conservative. It’s simply my personal technique, nothing more. It means I will always land with a comfortable hour+ of extra fuel and don’t have to worry about whether the engine might sputter if I have to go around on landing. Once I had determined with some accuracy what my fuel burn was during cruise, the internal fuel gauges became nothing more than a reminder to switch tanks every now and then and/or alert me to a major fuel leak. I don’t find them useful for much more than that. That being said, I do crosscheck them against my calculated fuel on board every 30 minutes or so. If my FF guage happens to die or lose accuracy, my GPH will not change over time for a given power setting so I will always be able to calculate my fuel over destination even if all of my avionics and gauges quit. Because I am confident in the accuracy of my wing gauges, I can also fuel to lower quantities when I need the extra payload. I generally plan higher reserves for these scenarios just to be on the safe side.

That, more than any other testimonial, should tell you everything you need to know about the quality of their work. I waited 6 months and flew 680nm. No regrets 4 years later.

@gsxrpilot Hi Paul, any news to report on getting new mid gear doors fabricated by Mooney? I am hoping to complete my Encore upgrade during my annual in Jan 2022 and I am wondering how much lead time I need to plan for to get these parts made. I have pretty much given up hope of finding inner and mid doors on the used market.

Bump

https://www.jpinstruments.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/INST-103-RevE-10-09-RPM-modified-.pdf

One of the nice things about the RC Allen is that you can pair it with their ESP standby battery system which provides something like 5 hours of backup time. Oh, and did I mention that I have one for sale with a brand new battery installed?

Mooney was smart enough to use both C & F as appropriate. The OEM gauges use C for OAT (note the yellow band for the possible icing caution) and F for engine parameters to match the POH. My JPI came set up the same way. You can change it but I think Mooney got it right.

A long time ago, before the military started contracting out these roles, the F-5s that I was flying would occasionally be tasked with this type of thing, so I can take a semi-educated guess. The “aggressor” terminology is misleading because much of the flying that is done by these private contractors is to be a “target” for training exercises. I recall being tasked to simulate Close Air Support for the Army to train their FACs , be a cruise missile for the Air Force to train their NORAD interceptors, a Russian bomber to train GCI controllers, and assorted threats/targets for the Navy that would involve flying out to the fleet and just doing whatever maneuvers they asked for to train their air defence people. That once included doing supersonic passed right over the ship “as low as possible”! I had to get him to confirm that one a couple of times. Some of it also involved just flying circles around the fleet, presumably to allow their gunners and radar operators to get training. You don’t need a high-tech fighter to do that, just a jet that can do 350+ knots. Old Hunters, Alpha Jets and T-Birds are a good low-cost solution. I suspect that you may be seeing some Naval training going on. Or maybe just a test flight or air to air formation photos, but 2 hours seems rather long for that. What it definitely is not, is a dogfight. That would look very different and would never be done below 10,000 feet.

My Aspen is not a MAX. The GI275 can be used to replace all backup steam instruments but as stated by @Rmagit is supposed to be used only as an ADI if paired with an Aspen as there is no automatic reversion.

Doh! Of course. I was reading it upside down and wondering what WE stood for.

Care to share pictures / descriptions of how you mounted your Sensorcon? Velcro seems like the easiest solution but I would be interested in what the great minds of Mooneyspace have dreamed up. @Marauder you recently posted this, but I can’t tell what it is. Removable Velcro?

You have your work cut out for you, if you will excuse the lousy joke. There are three parts to that valve. The aluminum Wemac valve itself, and the parts that Mooney calls the Seat (the part made of the same plastic as the headliner) and the Duct Assembly (the part made of black ABS) Mooney had the Duct Assembly in stock when I called them last summer. I would be very surprised if they still stock the Seat. That might require some MacGyver skills. Here is a recent thread that discussed this. The part number are from the K IPC but yours look identical.

I agree. I had replace some of the harness in my JPI and working behind the panel of a Mooney is not fun. Kind of misleading marketing I think. The information about the converter box and only two wires features prominently in their website advertising. It seems to be there to imply that installation is easier than with other manufacturer’s monitors. If you have to bury the box behind the panel, it makes the installation even more complex.

I didn’t. I have a JPI EDM830, so I may be completely wrong. I was referring to the claims on the EI website. https://www.iflyei.com/product/cgr-30p-premium/ Engine Data Converter (EDC) accepts all inputs. Only 2 wires run to the back of the instrument. If this means you can run everything to a box on the firewall and only fish two wires for the instrument, then it would be a significant reduction of work behind the instrument panel. If the box itself has to be behind the panel, I am not sure I understand what the advantage is over a JPI monitor. Somebody here who has done the installation can probably comment on where the box has to go. Maybe @bob865 or @Stan?

If I was starting from scratch, I think the thing that would tip the scales towards EI is the fact that all the sensors run to a data converter on the firewall and then just two wires go to the instrument. That hugely simplifies the panel work. On the JPI, all of the sensor leads have to go into the back of the monitor which is a lot of work behind your panel. That and the ability to put the CG30 in existing holes makes for a slick installation. I think the GI275 has a similar data converter so it might be worth a look.

I agree. I have both XM and ADSB in for weather radar. They are good, but not the real thing. The two big disadvantages of those are the delay (up to 15 minutes) and the fact that the picture is from a ground radar so you really are just guessing about the vertical development. My budget after initial purchase was also limited so I went with the “if it ain’t broke” philosophy. As much as I would like a primary monitor, all of my analog gauges still work perfectly, so my EDM830 serves me well. I also have the Monroy tanks. Your fuel senders don’t change with that installation so your analog fuel gauges are not very accurate. If you fill the mains, the fuel will gradually migrate to the long range tanks, so your gauges will under-read until about half tanks. Folks here that have primary monitors with digital fuel senders may be able to comment on this, but I believe they can be recalibrated to account for the larger tank capacity. I just keep a careful accounting of fuel uplift vs fuel burned and allow for lots of reserve.

Wow! A Sperry weather radar. Hard to tell from the photos but it appears to work? If it does, I would keep it. Nothing better than a combination of lightning detector and on-board radar. You have the same problem I had when I bought my K. No room to add anything unless you remove something first. Personally I would ditch the ADF and the old B/K RNAV. That should free up enough panel space for an engine monitor. You will see lots of opinions on where it should go. I prefer to have it on the pilot side but that restricts you to a monitor that will fit in a standard instrument hole. The larger monitors are easy to see from cross-cockpit and should fit on the right side if you moved the #2 NavCom to the center stack. Or if you moved the Stormscope over to the right (and ditched the ADF) you would have room to install an EDM830 or 900 on the pilot side. (Or a GI275 EIS or CG30 combo) Lots of options. And congrats on the Rocket!