0TreeLemur

Read a paper the other day wherein a research group in Australia describe development and testing of a Lithium-Sulphur battery that has a charge storage capacity of over 2.7 kWh per kg of battery mass, which about half what is needed to fly a Mooney as far on 1 kg of battery as you can on 1 kg of 100LL. This technology gets us close. Article here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757 Assumptions: 100LL = 33.4 kWh/gal = 12.25 kWh/kg Otto cycle efficiency: 40%. Effective energy density of 100LL: 4.9 kWh/kg of flight power. Having read literature that is skeptical of electric aviation, I'm pleasantly surprised.

at an airport?

Yeah, 32 minutes of stock footage so "she can tell you 'bout the plane crash, with a gleam in her eye..." is plenty. The helo time to capture that footage cost over $1000.

Avacado green seems to be coming back "in".

I've got Windows XP running in VirtualBox. Growl.

Not true in my case. In late 2017 we bought a tired '67M20C that had a shotgun panel and a KLN89b GPS. While serviceable, it was not approved for approaches. I sold my Hewlett-Packard RPN calculator collection just to upgrade to a 430W, and haven't looked back. In fact, I bought it two years ago from @Avionics Source. When I asked an avionics installer for a quote, they suggested I upgrade the transponder at the same time to meet the ADS-B requirement. So, we branded both calves with one iron.

Maybe this guy needs... Dare I say it.... Bladders?

The skill of the current generation of weather models decays over time. From one to three days they are generally decent at forecasting winds and clouds, and so-so with precip. The current generation of models have some skill at predicting the location of precipitation only out to about 5 or 6 hours. After that there is a large spread from one run to the next. Weather forecasts from 4 to 7 days they are fair-to-middlin', with weaker events like popcorn convection being harder to predict than weather associated with strong cold fronts. Current models can sometimes portray strong frontal systems like the one now affecting ArkLaTex up to Michigan up to about 10 days in advance with maybe a few hundred miles uncertainty in their location that far out. Same thing with some deep lows that can get spun up, like hurricanes. Beyond that, as @Immelman wrote, you gotta go with the climatology/probabilities.

I've been keeping track of reported TAS values for C models since I've been lurking here on MS. It seems that the average is about 143 kt, with a std. dev. of 2 kts, for various degrees of airspeed mods. Having 3 blades is inescapably known to knock a couple of kts off cruise speed. Power setting and those habits are really important, and I think that accounts for a fair bit of the variance. This small variance caused by the various speed mods pales in comparison to the average headwind that I fly against... So, I'm happy with what I get. Remember, power=drag*airspeed. Planes having similar power, will fly at the speed that similar airframes get. When considering drag, there is no magic, like there is in the case of lift.

The wingwalk on Lil' Sister was painted on but faded/dirty and with missing bits here and there. I re-did it after we finished the interior redo. I used this product https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cspages/randolphwingwalk.php?clickkey=6290 which is a real hard thing to stir. Enamel paint with grit. Looks real nice. Taped off with blue painters tape and applied with a 4" roller.

Thanks for the link. I agree with your assessment- small warheads, high accuracy. Scary. The videos I've seen online look like some kind of interceptors in the boost phase. I just assumed they were Patriots. Wouldn't the US position Patriots near potential targets? Were the 5 that broke up in flight failed propulsion systems or intercepts?

There was nothing in the NOTAMs on that day for the ILS. The more I think about what happened, I think it was an attempted slam dunk that went missed because of a new IR pilot.

Yes, the loc was steady, but the gs was really erratic. The MSA in our area is 3700. They held me at 4k until established, and max fwd. speed until 5 mile final. More I think about it with me being a relatively new IR pilot, this was a setup for me to have missed the real GS and then momentarily caught the false GS, which I quickly went above.

Paul, that sounds like a good New Year's resolution: "This year I vow to fly more." I'll second that. I want to do three long cross countries. I've talked with my co-pilot about trying to touch both shores in one trip. Florida to the Pacific Northwest and back via Arizona would be one. I think I'll have a trip to Wisconsin. We do plan to visit Gettysburg and Yorktown sometime soon (weekend trips).

Cool stuff @201er! That $100 is not too bad. Now that I know that it is possible, I might do that myself some weekend. Did you have to do anything super-secret to not get shot down by missiles, or is that just DCA?

yes I used the tank sealant remover from knot2u that has a citrus smell. Worked well.

My door is flush. I've asked the shop doing the annual to try and adjust the top hook to close the gap that remains based on some hissing that is happening at the ~10 o'clock position looking outward.

Thanks @Marauder. I always thought that a new audio panel is for music-listnin' wusses. Now I want one.

In the summer of 2018 we landed in Cedar City, rented a car, and toured all around southern Utah and northern Arizona. We did a lot of driving but we saw a bunch of national monuments: Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon, Escalante Staircase, Capitol Reef, Moki-Dugway, Monument Valley, and Glen Canyon. That took 4 days. Overflew the Grand Canyon on the way out.

Your poll is incomplete. I would almost never make a large avionics purchase from a random person on eBay. When I bought a 430W in 2018, I searched the classifieds of aviation www sites, found one that seemed to be a worthwhile purchase, called the seller to discuss, and made a deal. That option is not on the poll, so I didn't answer.

When you switch it on, it goes through an internal calibration using 1g orientation to know where it is relative to the vertical before you move. That takes less than about 1 minute. This way it compensates for the panel angle.

Good point. This is an approximately 1 amu reason to get your tanks resealed there. That plus palm trees.

Deep South Aerospace in Okolona, MS, has done some fine work on my a/c. They installed a 430W, Appareo ADS-B transponder, and a Brittain Accutrak II, and it all works! Very nice folks to work with.

The AV-20S AOA indictor is not even close to accurate in my instance either. I contacted the manufacturer (Aerovonix) before they were bought by uAvionics, to inquire about why I couldn't calibrate the AOA sensor in our M20C. I received the following email in italics from Bill Shuert, who was their CEO before the buyout: Sorry to hear about your issues with the AV-20-S. The AOA has been challenging to set up in the Mooney. You can disable the AOA page in the set up menu by cycling down to the AOA line (highlighted) then pushing the right button will disable the page. You will need to go into the AOA Limits and move the lower limit to its lowest number then do the same with the upper limit--this will ensure you won't get any pop up notices. Thanks again for the feedback. The AI agrees perfectly with my vacuum AI. That is really nice. The TAS indication is not accurate. Recently I contacted uAvionics about that, and was told that they are looking into it. I use it for its timer functions primarily. Knowing that it has a backup AI with a 30-minute battery is just comforting.

I have thought about doing a trip like that. I've done a lot of work in the Caribbean and have friends I could visit. But- when I trained in Australia we flew to Tasmania from Melbourne in a Cherokee, and we had a life raft on board. Looking back on that experience, flying over the open ocean was a lot like instrument flight. You must agree that getting anything out of a Mooney in a hurry is problematic. We've learned from MS that when our airframes go in water, they leak like sieves. Floating time is negligible. There was a recent thread here on a water landing in a wetland and the plane filled with water immediately. I'm curious - are you taking a raft? How do you plan to get it and you out of the aircraft in the unlikely event of a water landing? Please don't think that I'm throwin' cold water on your plans, the decision is yours. But that thought keeps me from making a long leg over water. Not sure what the odds are of an engine failure during that particular multi-hour round trip, but they aren't zero.