BaldEagle

Me again, So I’m having a bit of a crap week. Got my airplane back from the avionics shop after installing an Aspen MFD (Aspen Evolution 2000 upgrade) and removing the original altimeter and airspeed indicator. Took it for a test flight, tried to retract gear, gear unsafe alert illuminates, sonalert goes off. I’m guessing they forgot to plumb the pitot into the airspeed safety switch or something. Any recommendations for troubleshooting? Of course the shop is closed this week, and the airplane is currently in annual right now in any case, so I have some time to poke around.

They are awesome, they repaired an alternator for me and turned it around in 24 hours. They seem to be closed this week though.

I need a 11-10386 Ferrule seating tool. My IA has one, which he loaned to someone, who is out of town for a few months. Looks like I also need a W-111 M crimping tool. Easier to just find a shop that I can send the harness to for repair at this stage, but most places seem to be closed this week. I spoke to a couple of A&Ps and both said to just replace the harness as they are cheap, but that’s academic as no one has stock (Kelly Aerospace 10-821414-8 replaces the original harness).

Evening all, Brains here pulled too hard on an ignition lead and broke the plug. The harness is less than 2 years old so looking at repair options. This is a dual mag harness for a 1978 J. Kelly Aerospace sells individual leads as a kit but a special tool is required to install and that seems to be impossible to find. Replacing the harness isn’t an option either as no one has stock. Sooooo, it looks like my only option is to send it off somewhere that can repair / overhaul. Any suggestions….?

I have a Power Flow exhaust on my J (installed by previous owner). I can't speak to performance improvements (although I suspect any improvement is barely measurable), but a couple of notes: when installing, replacing the air filter for a K&N is recommended; the prop needs to be balanced and as part of the STC the exhaust needs to be disassembled at each annual and lubricated with a high temp paste. This is about 2 hours labor.

I got them for 165 each from Chief when I ordered them in February. That’s a pretty dramatic price increase. Aviation economics is bizarre.

Shop rate is 50% higher where I’m at… 2.75 hours to do the nose gear pucks, but there was some additional labor cleaning up rust, replacing a bolt when doing the main gear pucks, and a couple of other minor items which padded the hours and price came in pretty much where I expected. I guess we’re just used to paying way too much for everything in this corner of the country.

I just got mine done. Chief was slightly cheaper than Spruce when I was shopping a few weeks ago so I went that route, but including tax, shipping, it was still $2k for 11 of these buggers ($1955 to be precise). And about 1.4 AMU labor. They were nearly half that price 3 years ago when I was going to get this done… blaming myself for procrastinating….

That’s my dilemma, I did the Max upgrade a couple of years ago, and if a second Aspen comes in at circa 10k I may as well pull my existing Aspen and go with a 10 inch G3X Touch or similar. Which also gives me options when my legacy autopilot finally gives up.

Isn’t the install hours substantially higher with the 1000 MFD though? I don’t fly much actual these days so I’m trying to balance the additional features / utility with the price point.

Evening all, Anyone here done this? I’m happy to keep my vacuum system so leaning towards the 500 MFD Max and trying to get an idea of install hours before reaching out to the local shops for quotes.

Thanks for sharing. Avidyne have just put up a couple of videos to their YouTube channel covering all the new features and an upgrade guide. I was surprised that the owner / operator (non-A&P) can download 10.3 and self-update the box, although that’s not legal for us non-experimental owners, and if you brick the box during the upgrade you’re out at least $1,200 and grounded for a while as the box has to go back to the factory according to the small print. So I’ll be calling my avionics shop shortly…

That’s where mine was sent to a couple of weeks ago. Aero Accessories are awesome, highly recommended. They turned it around in 24 hours and for a very reasonable price.

For additional piece of mind, I took my ‘78 J for a test flight yesterday after reinstalling a repaired alternator: my JPI was showing 14 volts while the battery was being topped off and then settled back to 13.8 volts in cruise and amps dropped back to a low positive number (barely readable on the original factory gauge but probably about 2 amps).

I don’t know what your symptoms are but I have a 78 J and my fuel pressure pegged all the way to the right past red line last week on a long trip. I took it to a shop at TTD with Mooney expertise, and of course it was working again when they looked at it, but the A&P suggested either an issue with the sender or the fuel pressure transducer is bad. The good news is that they are cheap. This is the unit according to the parts manual: https://www.knots2u.net/transducer-fuel-pressure-mooney-880007-501-and-3060-00017/ Available from Spruce as well.

Less than 150 hours on a new Hartzell alternator I had replaced 3 years ago and I’ve got a diode out. It still produces a charge, but the background whine on a long trip is driving me insane — and the dozens of approach controllers up and down the left coast are having a sense of humor failure telling me that my ELT is going off while mangling my tail number. (Of course this happens right at the beginning of a long-ish trip from San Diego to Portland). Even if this is repairable, that’s some miserable reliability. I saw a thread about Plane Power — any other options?

Thanks all for the feedback and assistance. I was poking around and gently pulled on the shielding of one of the P-leads to find that the shielding had separated from the nut. It looks like a common fix is to pull the shielding up about an inch and to then ground it to a nut on the magneto case assembly, which is what the previous owner's A&P had done to the other P-Lead at some time in the past. For those of you that do owner-assisted annuals, a line to add to the checklist might be "gently pull on p-lead shielding" as it might save you serious misery later... While I was poking around I pulled the cap off the dual mag to check the two capacitors. The service manual says to replace the capacitor(s) if it has a date code older than 9921. One capacitor should have been replaced years ago but wasn't. I don't have the equipment to test capacitance, etc., and I'm not an A&P in any case, so I'm just going to replace both of them as they are only about $100 each. Though I'd report back here because there a Service Bulletin (SB651) regarding this on the dual D2000/3000 magnetos: it seems that A&Ps are pulling the dual mag and sending them off for the 500 hour inspection but are leaving the two capacitors attached to the ignition harness cap. The SB reports of rough running engines because of neglected capacitor inspections and subsequent arcing, etc., which "will result in the destruction of the contact assembly, loss of ignition and loss of engine power". Seems like $200 well spent to me. Thought I'd mention it here because if you have the dual magneto, this might be something you want to check at some point.

I have an annoying issue with background noise with incoming transmissions. I narrowed it down to the left Mag (noise goes away when selecting R mag in flight) and when I pulled the cowling I noticed that the the shielding on the left P-Lead had separated from the nut with about an inch of the wire unshielded and with an ignition lead rubbing up against the unshielded part of the P-Lead. There's about 220 hours on the dual mag since last overhaul so I'm assuming the mags are likely good and it's a P-Lead shielding issue that is causing the radio noise. Both mags are grounded. Alternator is a couple of years old; noise filter / capacitor is attached to alternator. The shielding on the right P-Lead is starting to fray as well, so that needs replacing also. Anyway, before I call my A&P for a hot date to replace the P-Leads, does anyone know the length for Left and Right P-Leads? I believe this is the product I need: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/d2-d3-pleads.php For bonus points... does anyone know what ignition harness / end cap is needed for D3000 dual Bendix for A3B6D Lycoming? I was planning on replacing this the next time the mags are due for overhaul, but I may have this done at the same time.

I have a Powerflow on my J (installed by previous owner). I’ve not flown a J without one, so I can’t speak to any performance gains, although my understanding is that the gain on a J is likely barely measurable, if at all. Something else to consider: the STC requires that your prop is balanced and at every annual you have to disassemble it and apply high temp lubricant and reassemble, which is maybe an additional couple of hours labor each year.

Evening all, I know this has been asked before, but thought I’d ask again seeing as the factory status has probably changed since this came up last time. Wife has just gone solo (she’s learning in a PA28), so this is suddenly more urgent as she will be wanting to transition over to our own flying machine when she’s finished up her private in a few months. Any leads on 3 inch extension pedals pilot side? I haven’t reached out to any MSCs yet; thought I’d ask here first. It looks like there are two options: extension kit and extension kit with pedals, presumably the kit without pedals is all that’s needed?

For the RNAV GPS 17 approach circling 27R at night is already NA. It looks like what happened is that they cancelled IFR and then functionally performed the prohibited circle for 27R at night (but “VFR”). That might not get you a violation, but if circling at night is NA it’s for a good reason — now throw some weather into the mix…. Caveat emptor: I’m a long lapsed CFII without much background on this particular accident (even though it is on my doorstep), and I generally don’t like to speculate because I’m usually wrong. Looks like a case study in ADM to me. I wonder if air ambulance ops will come under scrutiny as a result of this — there must be tremendous pressure to get the job done, and there might be some aspects that are unique to these kind of operations that negatively affect ADM.

There are a couple of shops at KSEE, but I guess there’s a reason they’re not being recommended (I have limited experience with one of them). I did talk to a couple of local independent A&Ps and it seems that insurance is the issue. It’s not worth the risk exposure without the coverage, and the cost of the coverage renders it unprofitable. It’s a bizarre situation, and the good shops are crazy busy as a consequence.

Advanced Aircraft at MYF is a busy shop with lots of Mooney experience. I had them replace the windshield on mine fairly recently. I’m also searching for a local A&P that will work on my airplane in my hangar at SEE — please share contact info if you find one!

The only reason I don’t have weather on the IFD is that the previous owner installed a GTX335 so I have ADSB-out only. The Avidyne TAS600 works great for traffic and I’ve been using a home built Stratux with an iPad for weather so I’ve not been in any rush to replace the GTX335 for a 345.

I have a similar setup after swapping out my GNS: PFD Max / IFD440 / KFC200. As I’m also in San Diego drop me a message if you want to swing by my hangar and play with the features. I don’t have weather yet but I have traffic from TAS which displays on the IFD and Aspen. Check the circuit breaker for your GNS: mine was 5amps and the IFD needs at least 7.5amps and it was several hours labor to replace that CB. The coax needs to be of a certain length and if you don’t need to replace the antenna it’s just a slide-in replacement. The box even comes with a logbook entry that the owner / operator can sign. I got mine mine from Chase / Avionics Source — very highly recommend.