bob865

You are good for Jan 1. Technically a PAPR isn't required. It was only requrired for the rebate. Since you have a clean one you now know you are 100% functional and good for Jan 1. I installed mine the first of the year (skybeacon) and I still pull PAPRs periodically to monitor and make sure it's still good.

@Browncbr1 you hit the nail on the head. I was hoping to get another 1000 hrs from it. I wanted to be the fabled 2x tbo guys, but there was so much that just didn't feel right. I can't put my finger exactly on it, but I had the feeling some extensive engine work if not a full overhaul was soon. Just not this soon. I wanted 1-2 more years. @larryb and @carusoam. I was weighing my options. As with anything, when you're looking you dins all kinds of 'neat' stuff. I was struggling to seperate Wants and Needs. When I get down to it, I have never flown at turbo altitude and have no desire to. On the east coast our highest peak is only 6k ft. I can easily handle that in my E. Plus the added expense of oxygen systems doesn't fit my flight profile. Maybe a J? The extra speed would be nice, but is buying a whole airplane worth 20-30 mph? Nice or Need? In the end, my E fits my mission, it just needs avionics. For a similar cost I could get a well equipped J, but all the equipment would still be 20-ish yrs old or older. If I upgrade, it's all brand new. So the decision became devil you know with brand new electronics and 30mph slower or devil you don't with old avionics and 30mph faster.

Thanks. You all kinda mirrored my thoughts. On a big purchase, I like to have a sanity check. I guess I did leave out a good bit of info. The engine that's on the plane is around 1800hrs. It's had a tough life, a prop strike and even had a cylinder jug blow off and through the cowling at some point in the past. With it's high time and tough life, I'm thinking it's time to go ahead and retire her and buy an overhauled or new engine. Hopefully it's in good enough shape I can get money back on the core. As for the upgrades, I've been running the numbers. With the new engine and the avionics upgrades, I think I'm looking at around $70k investment (estimated with engine included). I'm hoping if I do the avionics while she is waiting on an engine I can get a resonable discount on the installs becuase it will be easier to access and I can give it to a shop with a "work it in" discount and hopefully I can manage to do a lot of the work. When all is said and done, using Jimmy garison's price guide, she would end up being about a $95-$100k plane. Looking in that price range, there are nice planes, but none have any glass (mine would have 2 garmin G5s) and most have older GPSs (430s and mine would be a 650 or 440). Plug most have the old King autopilots I read so many compaints about and the King HSIs which I seem to read about problems servicing as well. (maybe i'm wrong?). And all have mid time engines. I have to assume most have tanks that are getting long in the tooth and in general don't know what othe Gremlins might be hiding inside. So I'm thinking I end up better financially and in quality of the plane to go ahead and do the upgrades.

Well I got some really bad news today, my engine has a cracked crank case. The engine had started giving indications that something wasn't right. The last oil analysis showed high iron (5x average) and high-ish copper and on the last flight the oil temp drifted to the red line. When we pulled the cowling to investigate we found oil on the case and when checking found the crack. The pic is attached. With the bad indications, it looks like a new engine is in my future. I am on the cusp of an avionics upgrade and trying to weight the options, considering is it better to upgrade my current plane or buy a new plane that's equipped how I want it. The plane is a 75 e model that is in overall good shape. Newly resealed tanks and new shock discs. She currently is lacking in avionics, but is equipped with a g5 for the ADI. So just curious what you would do? Overhaul and upgrade? Repair and sell and buy an equipped plane?

This sounds fun...... So it's dropped and the ceramic insulator is cracked, but you don't know it and install it anyway. Now there is a weak spot running though the center of the plug, the only thing separating the explosion inside the cylinder from the outside world. The repeated explosions cause the crack to open until it finally fails during the next combustion cycle blowing ceramic and metal shrapnel into the engine compartment destroying the ignition harness and blowing holes in the cowling. But wait, there’s more. Now your engine is running with a cylinder open to the world. On each intake cycle it’s drawing what left of the ceramic into the cylinder along with fuel. The other plug is igniting the fuel and the old plug is blowing hot flame and gas into the engine compartment on every revolution. That cylinder is done for. It is no more at this point. But wait, there’s still more. All that ceramic? Now it’s being picked up by the engine oil. Now there is ceramic, a fragile but extremely hard and abrasive substance flowing through your engine oil getting into each bearing space wearing the cam shaft and every bearing and bushing in your engine. Want it to stop? Sure you do. The problem is you’re at 10,000ft. That’s going to take time and that whole time, your engine is eating itself from the inside out. Bright side is you've got partial power for now, but for how long? Time to put your head between your knees and kiss your ass good bye. Remember that saying form training, you always revert to your lowest level of training? Well you're about to see how true that is. All that power off emergency landing stuff practice you did? Let's hope it's still there, because you're about to practice for real this time and for the first time in your flying career going aroud is NOT an option. Better get it right the first time. You asked what's the worst.

Oh boy. He did mention a valve when I described the problem. For now it's wait and see so we can look for a cylinder to check. I can't wait to get an engine montior installed so I have historical data to review. Right now I have CHT and EGT for every cylinder, but just a readout. No recording. *sigh* the stuggles of more wants that money and time.

You mentined 'tests' in your original post. The only tests required are the airport performance test (https://adsbperformance.faa.gov/paprrequest.aspx). No special avionics installer required. All the other functional tests are done via the app on your phone.

Thanks all for the feedback. From the feedback and talking with my mechanic we stated looking at the engine too. He believed it was a mis-firing cylinder. We ground ran the engine trying to recreate the fault and could not. All looked good so took her around the patch to see if in flight conditions could recreate it. Still could not recreate it. I'm now doubting myself on if I felt anything at all. Oh well. Closely monitoring to make sure it doesn't come back.

Don't forget the suck and blow. Maybe you IA can do it, but mine can't. I have to take it to an avi shop to calibrate the airspeed/altimeter.

Reaching out to the community for an education. I flew on Sunday to do some practice and generally exercise my skills. On my approach when I throttled back, the plane had a shake. It was a vibration that to me felt like what I think an out of balance prop would feel like. I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary when in flight (RPM 2350-2650) or at idle, only when maneuvering to land (RPM below 2k). When I first noticed the shake, I was in the 'avoid continuous operation between' range to which I quickly got out of. This was during maneuvering flight to land, so I don’t know how long I was in here, but I am sure it wasn’t long. I talked to my partner on the plane and the A&P and they are going to pull the spinner to make sure nothing has nested, collected, or otherwise changed inside that could be throwing the prop out of balance. Aside from that, nothing has changed in the plane (that I'm aware of, of course). Any idea what could cause this kind of shake? I'm concerned because I don't want any undue stress on the engine from vibrations and shakes. Is there something other than the prop that could cause this kind of shake/vibration? Becuase of this shake, I've been reading up on props. One thing I discovered, that I didn't realize before, was the calendar time component on the prop overhaul time. Asking those more experienced than me: I know the world is divided on engine overhauls, what is the consensus on prop overhauls? Specifically the calendar time limit? The 5 year deadline, I’m starting to approach if I haven’t already passed. I have to grab the logs and find out the exact time frame to be sure. Thanks All!

Is there a 30-day accuracy check required for a Sextant Sexton? Do you need two Sextant Sextons to do it easily? If they dont' agree, do they argue?

A lot of good discussion, but I guess I'm asking for the tribal knowledge from those who fly a lot of actual IFR flight plans. I do not, or not yet. It seems to me, VOR/ILS are becoming a backup/secondary nav method. This is my perception from things I read. But eliminating VOR/ILS capability in the cockpit seems foolish when GPS is easily jammed. Remember they do planned GPS outages for military practice somewhat regularly and GPS jammers are home build devices. So for those of you with GPS, how often do you actually use your VOR/ILS nav reciever? My question stemmed from, do I replaced my 170B with a GNC 355 with WAAS GPS and comm only for ~$7k or do I need to spring for the GTN 650 with WAAS GPS, Nav, and Comm for ~$12k? Pros- 650 is duplicate everything, Cons-Doubling of price. Pros -355 is a major leap forward in nav technology for half the price of a 650 Cons-being no secondary nav. It seems like a worst case scenario with the 355 is I can't identify an intersection if the GPS fails.

This brings up a good point, or at least a question for me.....in today's flying world, how important is it to have a second nav radio? I currently have a KX-170B and a KX-155. I'm thinking about replacing my 170 with a 355. I know without a doubt I want two comm radios, but with GPS and a Nav radio, would you consider that a solid IFR platform? The only thing I wonder about is the VOR check. Is there a way to do a 30day VOR check if against the GPS? Or would I have to have a VOT or a visual VOR check? Am I overthinking this?

I had my tanks resealed back in January. Right before the resea we had a drain that kept leaking despite replacing it a few times. When Edison opened up the tanks, he saw the plates were pretty severly corroded and so replaced them while he was resealing the tanks. Between the pop rivets and the mounting plates, that could be your issue. Shared these same pics just the other day to a similar post.

Had ours done when we resealed the tanks. Right before the reseal we had one that started leaking. The valve got replaced, but the leak persisted. Changed the valve twice in total, but when Edison was doing the reseal he called and said the seats were corroded. Changed them and no leaks since. Pics of the old corroded parts are attached for reference.

It's mandatory per the service bulletin.

I've found in my plane that pointing the nose at the ground at 20 in and 500 fpm will give me a 160mph keeping me out of the yellow in my plane. I plan a 500 fpm decent and when that time dictacts I point the nosea at the ground and trim. If I'm high enough, no throttle movement is needed, but as I decend I keep the MP at 20. To OP, if you're worried about shock cooling, I think there is an article from the mighty Mike Busch that shock cooling is a hold over from big radials and not much of a concern in our little flat fours. Don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't recommend chopping the throttle to idle and diving right after a high power climb, but cruise to decent isn't that much of a worry. Plus, it's a mooney. It goes fast. Why decend without power? It's just slower.

I have a wingtip wheelen strobe power supply. I'll have to see what the part number is on it tonight if slowflyin doesn't beat me to it.

That was true of KGMU. The wait list is currently 5-7 years, but before it was 30+. They did a complete restructure of the the rules about 4 years ago. They went thought and confiscated all of the empty hangars. If there wasn't a plane in the hangar, they had 30 days to get one in there. The tennants weren't allowed to sublet. The plane in the hangar must belong to the hangar owner. They then changed the list policy. If you were at the top of the list and didn't have a plane when the hangar came available, you could no longer skip. You had to go to the end of the list. The last big change was you had to pay a deposit just to be on the list. This made significant movement in the waiting list and got rid of all of the 'casual' wailist members. So my plane only gets to tan on the ramp for 5 more years instead of 25.

Greenville, SC (KGMU) is $55/mo for a tiedown. A t-hangar, if you can get one, is $260-310/mo depending on size and ramp. A group hangar is $350/mo.

I only have one fear of night flying....inadvertant flight into IMC. Night VFR is different, but I personally I don't think it's any harder than day VFR; just different. My fear of night VFR is not seeing the cloud up ahead until I'm inside of it and have no ground reference any more. Maybe I'm just more conforatable becuase I did most of my private in the dark for the same reasons OP is asking about flying at night, it was the only way I could find the time. Beyond that, it does have it's challenges. For example instruments, no matter how well illuminated, are harder to see at night. Same with paper charts or anything else in the plane. Identifying waypoints is more difficult at night. And depending on the location, even the airport can be hard to find. My home airport is notoriously hard to find at night. Fun story on one of my first flights after getting my license I was coming back home from Athens, GA. My home drome has 3 and sometime 4 airports you can identify the beacons on from a distance, so it's a matter of making sure you pick the right one to fly toward. Flying in I found all the blinking lights and picked the one I was sure was GMU. After flying toward it a while the light starting to look funny. Strange. I start looking at my GPS and there isn't an airport in the direction I'm headed. Even stranger. What is happening? The hospital just west of town (less than 5 miles away) has a helipad, (white green amber). At a distance and without fixating on it, the amber wasn't easy to distinguish between white, but off enought that it didn't feel right. I would see the amber swing around and think it was something else on the the ground like a car or street light behind a tree and then see the white and think, "now I have the airport." I was flying right to it going to try to put my little cherokee on the top of the hospital. Once I figured that out, I lined up on the right airport and all was good.

I'm not cool with it. That's why I asked if there was a tail number. I would love to have some more info. I'd like to know what it was, where it was going, and on who's authority. See an avoid really needs both people looking. Not just the one with a pilot. Sorry for all the questions @Browncbr1 but did you file a nasa report? I don't know that it is the right avenue, but seems like this for sure needs to be documented, somewhere.

I wonder if this was ADS-B rebroadcast from a radar return or if the drone was broadcasting ads-b. I'm thinking it had to be broadcasting since you saw altitude. uAvionix makes ADS-B for drones: https://uavionix.com/uas-2/#separate @Browncbr1 Do you remember if the traffic displayed a tail number? Any way to backtrack and identify this thing?

12,000-ish is right. (12,550 is more correct per the US Government) https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/space/

Hey @PearceBK! Any updates on getting the recording posted? I missed it last night.