0TreeLemur

January 2nd I flew one holiday visitor to catch a commercial flight in HSV. Flew up there under the ceiling which was at 3,000 ft. Returned IFR into worsening conditions. Uneventful and fun. Love winter IFR in Alabama. Seldom is icing a concern.

xkcd nailed it.

Damn. People younger than me are NOT ALLOWED TO DIE. RIP Erik.

I'll bet it's fast. J speed mods on a short body. @Echo what does it cruise at say best power mixture between 8,000 and 10,000?

This post is aimed at those of you new to Mooneyspace who are still flying birds with a little passive dot CO detector. You can have a gazillion dollar panel that looks like a sports bar because of all the screens- but if you don't have an active CO detector, you might as well be flying a covered wagon. CO is a silent killer that short circuits the brain's error detection capability while making people feel satisfied, sleepy, or both. I have no interest in the company. Hell, I don't even know anyone who works at the company. All I know is that when CO builds up in the cabin of my J model the Sensorcon CO detector flashes/beeps and gets my attention. They are offering: 15% Off Inspector Portable Carbon Monoxide Detectors and Kits at sensorcon.com when you use promo code: 12DAYS For those of you haven't read the tale- here's a link of a very lucky pilot (and MS member @DanM20C) who survived a dance with CO and woke up in a frozen pasture in Minnesota- living to tell the tale: This perhaps the best threads EVER on MS. Read it if you haven't. If after reading it if you don't own one and if you don't immediately order a CO detector, I hope you haven't had kids yet so you can be a Darwin award nominee. Fred

Just watched this. Here's one of the comments on Reddit: My first thought was the car driver might have died. Pilot should have avoided car better, even at risk to themselves. I am concerned that was their point, though. BMW of the skies. “I’ll just land on one of the peasants.” I for one believe that it is our duty to not aim for other people when we are in trouble, even if it costs us our lives. Some smiling face on a Florida billboard is going to make a $hit ton of money off this one. Luckily, the driver of the car escaped decapitation by inches. This makes me sick.

^^^ this. In testing it, I put 50 lb sacks of gravel on the tail. At about 2-1/2 the tail connector went from tension to compression, leading me to believe that the tension is less than 150 lbs on my J model. It ain't a hug load.

@unicom - nice. A question- in the photo your glare shield looks really to be in very good condition, like NEW. Did you have work done to it? The only thing I would change about your set-up is to eliminate the passive "dot" CO detector and get an active detector that beeps and flashes like a Sensorcon unit. After that your upgrade will be more complete.

Earlier this evening, after crossing the Mississipi River on a flight from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Average g.s. at 11,500.... 194 knots! Hit 214 knots g.s. at top of descent. A new personal best.

If you can get it out without the nuclear option, great! Didn't work for me. Mine are still great. No fear. Those receptacles are pretty tough.

Aurora over Alabama (33.3 degrees north), Veterans Day, 2025! Lightly edited to eliminate motion streaks on point lights. The strobe photobombed the shot (shoulda turned it off). That green light on the horizon is not city skyglow- there's no city north of where this photo was taken. According to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center- this was an "X-Class" solar flare, about as big as they come.

Ditto. Installing screws by hand so you can feel what is happening is the ONLY way on an airplane. When it starts to feel "odd" you can back it out and investigate further. That's how I spotted the problem in the first place.

There are three Mooney's based at TCL. I haven't yet met the owner of the plane that flew this mission, N7132V.

To answer my own question it is not a floating nut plate so alignment was not the issue. Running a tap in did clear the way. It seems odd to me that suddenly it developed a problem. I can't imagine what caused it to change. I suspect that nut plate is going to need replacing sooner rather than later by an A&P with the experience and tools, which I am not.

This is what I do too. And it allmost always works. There is a video by Don Maxwell about hot-starting a Mooney that I really enjoyed and thought was educational. It's linked here on this site multiple places I'm sure. In that video he said "Lycoming engines always start flooded." I took that to heart and it relieved my stress about starting a hot or warm engine.

Does not answer my questions at all.

An A&P did some work on my Mooney today. He and I put the lower cowl on and he left for the day. While installing the upper cowl I encountered a problem. The upper cowl on my '83 J has a bunch of quarter-turn fasteners and three machine screws on each side. Two machine screws go into the stanchion around the propeller flange, and one on the forward corners. The screw on the right forward corner started normally but after a few turns started to get real tight... Those are stainless steel screws and it felt like it might be starting to spall. So I backed it out. It was tough to turn and definitely felt like it was spalling. The threads were definitely messed up. Looking in there, the threads on the inside nut plate are not perfectly aligned with the hole in the nut plate. The threads on the left front nutplate are centered. On the right hand side it seems that the nut is too high. Looking in there I could see a many threads in the bottom of the hole and none in the top. Question: are those nut plates with captured floating nuts? Why is it suddenly out of alignment, and how can I center it? Any ideas on how to fix this? One Idea I have is to run a tap in there and see if that centers it. Thought I would ask the collective about this idea before trying it. Thanks, Fred

According to the log books for my '83J the NBS was replaced in Oct. 2002: "C/W Mooney SB M20-279 installed ModKit-1 P/N M20-279-000" The sticker on the actuator labeled "Maintenance record clutch spring replacement A 10-85" has a "1" punched in the the first square. It seem that in 2002 Mooney sold a kit.

Nice thread here-

If eBay didn't charge so much commission, I'd buy this thing and list it there. This is a great price for a great engine monitor. IIRC when I bought this same system for my J a couple of years ago it cost closer to 6 AMU's. Somebody buy this! It's primary for everything. You can take out all your old analog fuel gauges, tach, and MP.

Follow up: I bought a 10-32 Helicoil insertion tool off eBay. I put in some oil, and ran that tap in/out a couple of times. Degreased with some brake cleaner. Loaded a short (5 thread) Helicoil insert into the machine- zipped it right into place. Those insertion tools are the sizzle. Problem solved.

That's not terrible. That still makes this system a good deal IMO.

I sold an EI engine monitor when I upgraded our J to a JPI ED900. EI gave me an estimate of a couple hundred $$ to do the reprogramming. Curious- is JPI much higher than that?

When I was troubleshooting the A/P in our J, I replaced that switch to negative effect. When I was studying it I read that the high failure rate is caused by the fact that under trim servo load, the switch is operating near its rated current. A good way to extend the life of that switch is to never use it (except in case of emergency). If you never use it, it never disconnects under load, and doesn't damage the contacts. Not my informed opinion, just something I read that kind of makes sense. It is a minor pain to replace but not a major pain like it seems replacing the trim switch would be.

Mouser part number MB2061SS1W01-BC If you have trouble finding it in stock elsewhere.