PT20J

With modern glass cockpits and capable autopilots, I let the autopilot fly to minimums. This is the way professional pilots do it. The reason is that it relieves you of the mechanics of flying and gives you the ability to monitor what's going on increases situational awareness. I keep a hand on the yoke in case something goes awry with the automation, but I can monitor the autopilot and control airspeed while devoting more time to looking ahead for the runway environment. The autopilot will fly more precisely than I can - that's why autopilots are required for operators authorized for minimums below 200'. It's still a good idea to fly some approaches manually to avoid becoming automation dependent. But if the weather is really down to minimums, I use the autopilot. I fly my approaches at 90 KIAS and TO flaps. From 200', it's really no problem to stay on the GS/GP and add full flaps and slow to Vref. Skip

Is yours on all the time or just when the gear is down. On the M20J, the light is on whenever the gear is down and off otherwise. It doesn't matter what the state of any other lights is.

Wow. I don't think the shock disks for the 5-disk configuration have been available for over 50 years!! Check out SBM20-139A. https://www.mooney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SBM20-139A.pdf And, you need the tool: https://www.knr-inc.com/products-list.html?view=article&id=133:knr-tools-mooney-landing-gear&catid=87:tools Skip

You need an airport cat.

The GMU 11 is susceptible to electrical interference -- especially strobes. Might check that.

The emergency gear extension on the Mooney turns the gearbox the same as the motor so it is the same as lowering the gear electrically as far as the mechanics are concerned. If for some reason the gear is not fully down, you would use the emergency gear extension system to fully extend it. Whenever using the emergency system be careful to STOP when the light comes on and/or the floor indicator marks line up. If you keep actuating the system after that, you can jam it up.

So can Mooney

I bet it's in the manual because that's probably the way the factory adjusts them. They probably set the stops on the tube to some fixed location and bend the fixed stop to take up any variations in the airframe. My airplane only has 1600 hours on it and I'm pretty sure from the logs that this has never been messed with.

I did check the rudder stops and they were OK. The rudder tube is to the left of the picture. The fixed stop looks a little bent, but it has always been that way and the Service and Maintenance Manual allows bending it to adjust the rudder deflection. The fixed stop is so much heavier metal than the stops clamped on the push-pull tube that I don't think it could be bent by the push-pull tube and I would expect damage to be to the tube or stops clamped to the tube. The maximum rudder deflection measured per spec each way.

I put the MaxPulse on the recognition lights and left the taxi lights and landing lights as they were. However, since all these are now LED, I leave them all on all the time in flight. The seaplanes I flew for Kenmore Air had pulsed wing mounted landing lights (Beavers don't have taxi lights). I flew a lot of trips with company traffic coming the opposite direction. I noted that the pulsing lights were not all that visible during the day because the beam width of a landing light is so narrow that you only see them if they are pretty much at your 12 o'clock. If I were going to pulse something besides the recognition lights, I would pulse the taxi lights because they have a wider horizontal beam. However, I figured that steady landing and taxi lights and pulsed recognition lights was good enough and simple to install. Skip

It won’t fit on a J because of the proximity of the muffler. I don’t know about other models.

I owned a 78 J 30 years ago that didn't have the stops. My 94 J that I own not has always had them.

As Don Maxwell put it, the killer combination is an 8’ towbar, a 2000 lb tug, and a 19 year-old kid.

Mooney added the stops somewhere early in the M20J production. My 78 didn’t have them. LASAR has an STC to add the stops as part of its rebuild, if they ever start doing that again. Mooney puts them on any new part they make.

You should check your schematic, but on my 1994 M20J, there were separate power runs back to the breaker/switch.

I think that's correct. It's really a bad design. First, the turn angle is really limited compared to other airplanes: 11 deg left and 13 deg right. Second, the actual stops are in the tail for the rudder and there is a lot of play in the system that can cause the nose wheel to be turned easily past where the stops make contact. On later models, Mooney tried to improve this by adding secondary stops to the nose gear leg itself, but these are pretty flimsy. After talking to the manufacturing engineer, I'm actually surprised that Mooney only charges around $2500 for this part. It's hand built from a bunch of short tubes and flat pieces that have to be fitted and then held together with a lot of welds in close quarters. It must take hours make one. Then Mooney sends it out for heat treating (Mooney doesn't have an oven) and then they have to paint it. Apparently it is not uncommon to find one or more pinholes in all those welds and they only show up after painting when the oil residue leaks out and stains the paint. It happens often enough that they have developed a rework process. Skip

Atlantic Aviation in San Jose, CA oversteered my nose gear when parking my 1994 M20J and broke off one of the steering stops. They wouldn't admit to it, and I couldn't prove it (next time, I'll take photos before it gets moved), so I filed a claim with USAIG and they are taking care of it. But I still had to get it fixed. I called Dan at LASAR and learned that LASAR isn't currently rebuilding nose gears because it no longer has approval from the FAA after moving to Oregon. I next called Frank Crawford at Mooney and found out that Mooney had a gear leg in stock. Greg Lehman at Advanced Aircraft in Troutdale, OR ordered it for me and had it shipped to my address and scheduled a date to install it. The reason I had it shipped to me is that it comes primed and mine is painted red, so I needed to have it painted. I had some paint that I had matched awhile back and Mike Payne at the Port Townsend Aero Museum agreed to paint it for me in his paint booth. Alas, the landing gear leg had a pinhole defect in one of the welds and I had to RMA it back to Mooney. Mooney was currently building a lot of 10 legs which the manufacturing engineer expedited so that I could get one in time to get it painted and keep my date with Advanced. Yesterday, I flew it to Advanced and Greg and his team installed it. The folks at Mooney were really great at helping me get the part, and I can't recommend Greg and his team at Advanced Aircraft highly enough. USAIG has also been very easy to deal with, and is even picking up cost of the gas for my flight to the shop and back. Skip

That explains the difference. The instantaneous EGT is much hotter than the time-averaged EGT shown by the gauge, but it comes in pulses. Although the original gauge is installed farther downstream where the EGT should be lower it is receiving more frequent pulses by combining the exhausts of multiple cylinders which will cause the gauge to read higher.

I understand. But my point was that if Mooney (or the FAA) had a concern, it would have been listed in the AFM.

That redline is suspicious. 1650F is a common TIT limit (turbos have close tolerances, the turbine spins at very high rpm so there is a lot of centrifugal force and the metal expands when heated. At some temperature, the turbine wheel will drag on the case). Perhaps that gauge marking is a holdover from a TIT gauge. If there is no limit listed in the Limitations section of the AFM, then there is no limitation according to the FAA (the limitations section of the AFM is the only part of that document approved by the FAA and exceeding an operating limitation listed in the AFM is a violation of FAR 91.9). In the picture posted, the Mauritz EGT gauge shows an EGT of 1552 F while the engine monitor is showing EGTs over 100 F lower. I would just ignore the Mauritz EGT gauge. Skip

Where did the redline come from? I don’t see a limitation in the M20R POH. You cannot really get the EGT hot enough to damage anything on a normally aspirated engine.

The manual trim wheel needs to be there even if there is electric trim so that you can trim it manually if the trim servo fails. It sounds like someone removed that part of the airplane before you bought it. Hopefully you won't find too many other missing parts.

My Aspen RSM was mounted on top of the tailcone in my M20J. When I replaced the Aspen with a G3X, I had a G3X external GPS antenna mounted in the same location. The location was near the front of the dorsal fin, but it is plastic and doesn't block the signal.

Yep, my bad. I must have read the .20 as .02 when I originally read it.