0TreeLemur

Picked li'l sister up from her annual. She has freshly bead-blasted and painted landing gear, and is sporting new shock discs!

My experience was best described as "resonant coupling" between the runway and the airplane. Scary.

Soft field landing technique does not address what I'm talking about. I know how to land an airplane slow and easy and I usually do <knock on wood>. Let me restate my question: From about 1994-2017 I didn't fly much in the U.S. I got busy with job and family and didn't fly at all from 2006-2017. In my experience before 1994, mostly in the '80's, runways were generally in pretty good shape. Fast forward to now, in this age of deferred maintenance and infrastructure budget cuts, the quality of the random runways seems to be worse. I never used to see grass and weeds growing up between cracks in the runway surface or potholes on taxiways. Now these things are not hard to find at all. The runway at PNC was, I think, unsafe to land a Mooney on no matter what the speed or landing technique. How to avoid crappy runways? Only go with ones that the A/FD lists as "good"? I have satisfied myself in one case for sure that "fair" isn't good enough. Any thoughts?

We just had the pucks replaced on our C. The nose gear shock link was worn out of spec. With the factory closed and LASAR out of stock, it had to come from the ready reserve of rusting and resting retired Mooney airframes. This is a common problem and those are going to be increasingly hard to find. The lack of that part will be a show stopper. P/N 540015-001.

Hi everyone. On a cross country last year I stopped for fuel at PNC because of the price. The A/FD lists the runway condition as "Fair". During the rollout I was afraid of a prop strike in our C. The runway surface was so uneven, but with some periodicity, and our airplane started "bucking" . I'll never land there again. This raises the question: Since our Mooney's don't have what I would consider excellent shock absorption, should we avoid everything but "Good" runways? Any other trick to find good landing surfaces other than avoiding "Fair" runways? Thanks,

On the way to Antarctica from New Zealand in a C-17 a few years ago. The view from the cockpit is amazing. From the back, not so hot.

Who among us didn't see this coming....

Going up, fuel cools and shrinks- potentially decreasing pressure inside the bladder, but not much if at all. Climbing causes air in the tank to expand, and increases pressure inside the bladder, which is a greater effect. The result would be increased pressure in the gas phase inside the bladder. But... a hypothetical rime ice plug on a vent tube would easily pop off in response to this pressure inside the bladder. That's why it seems to me that a more likely explanation is that somehow air on the outside of the bladder expanded, squeezing it, and causing fuel to leak out of the bladder. Just a WAG with 0.0 data units to support it.

Wow. Weird. I had an acquaintance with a Bo that would leak fuel out of the cap when it was full, until it got down far enough to break some kind of siphon. The fuel smell created by that action was really strong in the cabin, and you could see the fuel streaming out from under the cap. What you are describing is much weirder than that. I'm a fluids guy, and I cannot think of what would cause that. A minuscule chance that somehow the ice changed the flow of air around the wing enough to pressurize the some volume inside of your wing, which would squeeze the fuel bladder from the outside. That sounds crazy to me, because I know that the wing is open to the cabin, do the inside of the wing and the inside of the cabin should be at the same pressure. A blocked vent would not pressurize a fuel cell. With no fuel being pulled from it, there would be no vacuum created either. Hmmmm.

Thanks for the pirep. Wish it had gone smoother for you.

One human factor in the mix here is that when VIP pax says "get us there by 10:30" and your entire salary comes from VIP pax, there is tremendous pressure to get there. Sad outcome in this case, getting pinched out of VFR by rising terrain into the great unknown without a plan. Something like this happened to me a few years ago and I was a front seat pax in a Eurocopter- and I was busy trying to get the pilot to land. He got us turned around and luckily there were no towers to hit in the area. But we were only about 200 ft AGL or less and the only thing I could see were the Brahma cattle grazing in a pasture below. It was raining so hard and I could hear thunder claps over the turboshaft engine and prop noise. He flew into it thinking that if he could only get a little bit further he would be back in VFR. That didn't happen. Luckily we got out. Scary stuff.

Yeah, that text doesn't do much for me either. But I really like the simplicity of the paint scheme and the graceful curves. We might do something like that when the time+$ comes to paint our bird. I put that photo in my "nice paintjobs" folder.

MAN THAT IS A NICE CLEAN PAINT JOB!!!

ditto.

I've done a lot of riding in helicopters in the tropics, in low ceilings and mountainous terrain. I have seen helicopter pilots become disoriented when they can only see the ground directly below them with 0 forward visibility. Their head is swiveling, and it becomes too much. Not mentioning special VFR, when we lose forward visibility, we know we are high enough to not hit anything. Helo pilots trying to get around down low don't have that luxury so they can get nervous (I do too as a pax). The ground scar and debris path indicate to me a sudden appearance of terrain and failure to turn in time for the forward speed of the machine. The pressure to complete the flight after a 15 minute hold and VIP pax must have been intense. It was only about 10 more miles to their destination as I understand it. Such a tragedy. Failure on so many levels. p.s. I HATE helicopters. Almost been killed by them twice (that I know of).

That's funny. What ATC really meant was "If you have them, put on your anti-laser goggles or close your eyes the next 5 miles". Kind of goes against the grain of "see and avoid". I guess putting on a hood or foggles would be the best defense in that case if you were IFR? If VFR then what? If some fool is illuminating aircraft with one of these ridiculously powerful green lasers that are for sale online, looking for the beam is not a good thing . Ask for vectors around it? Maybe we should all carry around these: http://www.certified-laser-eyewear.com/lg-005l-green-laser-safety-goggles-532nm-lb4-od-7/

Since every flight has a pilot (hopefully), but not every flight has a passenger up front, swap the seats every annual or two to help even out the wear on the rollers.

-a- 50-year old? How about 75+ year-old? Those resistance type senders were first made by the Dayton Electric Company (DELCO) for pre-1946 GMC and Chevrolet pickup trucks. They are exactly the same as the ones installed in our Mooneys from the factory. I've still got them, and calibrated, they agree with the sight gauges that a prior owner installed in the tanks in my C within less than 1 gal. The sight gauges run out of gas (hehe) with about 3 gallons left. The floats on the senders bottom out with about 0.5 gal useable left on each side. Given the choice of CIES or eyeball gauges, I'd go with eyeball gauges and keep the resistors. My 2-cents worth, PPSEL only. Not an expert.

I beg to differ. Balls fly. Flying can be "falling with style". Flies fly. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. However, to aviate is to purposefully go someplace through the atmosphere, in a heavier than-air-machine.

Sometimes laser-pointer idiots do get caught! Here is a fantastic video of some dOOd with a laser pointer getting arrested. Glad they caught this one. Note that it was "A Florida Man". http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/01/he-pointed-laser-at-airplanes-landing.html I have never been lased that I know of, and hope I never am.

The sender the factory selected was produced originally for Chevy and GM pickup trucks, pre-1946 (Delco) 0-30 Ohm resistive type. I bought one from a classic auto parts store just to verify my suspicion, and it was exactly the same in every way. The float lever is not the same, however.

After watching that video- there is no way I would want to fly an aircraft with an engine that sounds like a GM automobile engine. Just my opinion. Growing up around irrigated agriculture where natural gas powered big-block GM engines without mufflers pumped groundwater for days on end, that sound just doesn't mean anything like "flight" to me.

Any time I smell exhaust, my Sensorcon shows CO. Worst is taxiing downwind in the summer on a hot day with the door open. The Sensorcon starts to beep at some concentration (50 ppm?). I've had it do that a time or two. After takeoff it takes a few minutes for the sensor to unload its CO and show 0. That happens maybe 10 minutes after I stop smelling exhaust.

weird- it's spinning the wrong direction. Left rudder on takeoff anyone?

Blessed brevity, it still exists!