PT20J

As I recall, the DC-7 had a speed brake handle that dropped the main gear.

Check this out: https://www.harbourair.com/harbour-air-and-magnix-partner-to-build-worlds-first-all-electric-airline/ Skip

I put GeeBee seals on my J when we re-engined. The aluminum baffles were in good shape. The seals are held on with hardened staples that have to be cut off with a Dremel and cutoff wheel. It took me a couple of hours to remove all the old seals and staples and clean up the baffles. My A&P installed the new seals in a couple of hours. which included drilling holes, clecoing them in place and pop riveting. Guy supplies everything you need in his kit. But... since you only have one cylinder running hot, are you sure it's not a bad probe? It's pretty easy to swap probes between adjacent cylinders and see if the problem stays with the cylinder or follows the probe. Another good check is to see if the probes all read ambient temperature before startup. Mine are all within a degree of each other (CHTs, EGTs, oil temp). Skip

All this oil discussion is really interesting. On another recent related thread, I noted that I have for 40 years run 4 cyl 320/360 Lycomings between 6 and 7 qts. (start at 7 and add a quart when it gets down to 6). This is based largely on the SOPs for various flight schools I've been associated with. I ran my '78 J this way -- it got around 4.5 hours/qt, but it had some oil seeps -- and I've been running the new IO-360-A3B6 in my '94 J this way. The new engine started out at about 7 hrs/qt and has been improving, though it's only got about 35 hours on it. and I've been keeping it close to home. I'm planning to see how it does on its first long trip when I go to MooneyMAX. It seems that many find a lot of oil on the belly when running more than 6 qts. I discussed this with my Lycoming field rep who has a lot of experience. Takeaways from this discussion: 1. Oil consumption depends on the installation as well as the engine. This makes sense. The breather is necessary to vent pressure and moisture from the crankcase. The venting process will naturally carry some oil oil out the breather. You can imagine that if the end of the breather is located in an area or relatively low pressure, then there will be more flow out the breather and more oil loss. 2. Older engines with excessive blow-by will vent more oil. 3. Higher oil level brings the oil closer to the breather that is located at the top rear of the engine and may result in increased oil consumption. Extended climbs do the same thing. 4. For many installations, the optimum oil level is between 5-6 qts. 5. Running much below 5 qts may result in higher oil temperature and lower pressure. I've noticed this on one occasion when the level got down to 4 qts. Based on this, after I'm pretty certain that the oil consumption has stabilized, I'll try running between 5-6 and see how that compares to running between 6-7 qts. As others have noted, I've also observed that oil consumption is greater for the same engine time if the legs are short versus longer. I think this is likely because the airplane spends more time with colder temps (more takeoffs) which causes greater clearances and more oil gets past the rings and also it spends more time in climb at higher power which also pumps more oil. Skip

According to the KFC 200 Pilot's Guide p 28, "Upon Autopilot disconnect, a Aural Alerter will sound a Sonalert for 2 to 2 1/2 seconds while the AP light on the Annunciator Panel flashes." You have two issues: 1. As you stated, your sonalert doesn't work. 2. If the autopilot experiences uncommanded disconnects, there is something wrong with it. I flew a '78 J for 700 hours (probably 500 on the autopilot) with a KFC 200 and never had an uncommanded disconnect. Skip

Prop data should be per TCDS if Mooney certified it, or by STC if someone else certified it. Often Mooney applies STC'd mods at the factory on new aircraft (speedbrakes for instance). The logbook should show this and the STC paperwork would have been supplied. If something is added by STC later, it should be logged and the paperwork should be in the airplane file. Skip

Question for the MS world: How much flap do you use for a normal landing (and why)? There is no right or wrong implied in the question; I'm just curious.

Well, that's certainly worth a try. While you have the unit out, look at the connector in the tray with a flashlight. The individual pins are crimped to the wires and then inserted in the connector shell. A little tang holds them in place and I'm told by my really good avionics tech that sometimes the tang doesn't set right and the pin gets pushed back in the shell where it doesn't make good contact with the computer. Let us know what you find. Skip

Well, I personally think it's a great idea to practice on a crosswind runway when traffic permits. You never know when you might need that skill for real! Richard Collins used to say something to the effect that personal minimums may be useful for planning purposes, but once aloft, what you see is what you get, and you might just have to shoot an approach to minimums even if that's lower than your "personal" minimum, so you better stay sharp. Short fields, soft fields, crosswinds, slow flight, steep turns -- all that stuff we were good at one upon a time gets lost if we don't practice. Skip

It's not quite that bad. The geometry of the nose gear provides a significant amount of positive caster. Caster is what keeps your car - or shopping cart - going straight. So, if you hold the rudder when the nose wheel touches, you will get an initial swerve, but - unless you continue to hold the rudder - it will self correct and the swerve will end. All you have to do is steer it back to the centerline.

Chris, this has been a long and interesting thread. From your description in your posts, here's what likely happened: Your airspeed was too high on short final and, perhaps due to the obstructions, you were maybe a bit high also. At some point, as you started using up runway, you forced the plane down to the ground before it was ready. That's the only way to get it to land on the nose wheel, and that's why it bounced. It's also very common, so don't feel bad. This didn't happen with your instructor because an instructor would have seen this coming and had you correct or go around. You only need to satisfy two conditions for a good landing: 1) The airplane needs to be aligned with the centerline, flying level and decelerating a few inches above the runway, and 2) the airplane needs to be in a nose high attitude. If you do that, it will land itself. There are numerous techniques to get the airplane to a point that satisfies those two conditions, and pilots will argue endlessly about which technique is best. Fly safe, Skip

It's just physics: Moment = Force X Distance. Yaw (controlled by the rudder) is a rotation about the vertical axis that passes through the CG. Rotation is caused by an applied moment.

According to my old PA28 service manual, you are correct regarding early Cherokees. Beginning in 1974, bungees were added to the steering system. The nose wheel fairing aerodynamically centers the nose wheel in flight. There's a service bulletin #291 that details the addition of springs if the fairing is removed. I'm not sure how the retractable Cherokees work w.r.t. nose wheel centering. Usually, some sort of mechanism is required on a retractable to keep the nose wheel from getting cocked during retraction.

OK, I’ll bite: why would rudder authority make for better landings? The only thing you need the rudder for is to keep it straight. Which reminds me: one of the not so great aspects of the Mooney design is that the nose wheel doesn’t disconnect from the rudder when fully extended as in many airplanes. And, since the steering is rigid (no bungees) you have to relax rudder pressure when the nose wheel comes down during a crosswind landing or you head for the grass. Bet that’s why the nose wheel deflection - and hence the turning radius - is limited. And, since the nose wheel pivots less than other airplanes, it’s more easily damaged by towing. Skip

That’s backwards. There is less rudder authority with aft CG due to shorter moment arm. That’s why highest Vmc speed for a twin is at aft CG.

Longer moment arm from rudder to CG allows same size rudder to produce greater yawing moment.

I believe it depends on the dash number.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. $2k is what it cost to fix it.

A Decathlon is "bouncy" -- especially wheel landings. Three things work against you: 1) The landing gear is ahead of the CG, so any vertical velocity at touchdown pitches the nose up increasing the AOA, 2) The tail down force is acting with a moment arm from the stabilizer to the CG until the instant of touch down at which point it acts about the main gear which is a longer arm and this causes a pitch up moment, 3) the spring steel gear is much springier than the original Aeronca bungees. The trick is to fly it down very close to the runway, level off somewhat nose high (the old timers call it "landing on the back side of the mains") so it is slow, and then either roll it onto the runway with a slight forward movement of the stick, or be primed to move the stick forward immediately when it touches on it's own. The forward movement of the stick holds it on the runway so it can't fly and also overcomes the natural instinct to flinch and pull back slightly when it touches down. Skip

Well, I guess we have to define how high it has to be to be called a bounce. When people talk about bouncing an airplane it's usually several feet -- not a little bounce like you get in a drop test.

It cost me about $2K. IIRC they charge about $3.5K for an overhaul/exchange. If the repair price gets up to that level I think they cap it there, but best to call them as things may have changed. Skip

Interesting thread. What causes a bounce? Try this thought experiment: Imagine a crane lifting your favorite Mooney ten feet off the ground. Then the cable breaks. How high will it bounce? I actually witnessed something similar years ago at Mammoth Lakes California. The runway is at 7135' MSL and runs east/west. To the south is Convict Lake in a cut in the Sierra Nevada mountains. When the wind is out of the south at more than about 15 kts, it funnels down over the lake and hits the runway about midfield setting up a nasty wind shear. A friend and I were tightening the tie downs our airplanes due to a gusty south wind when we saw a M20E load up four people and taxi out, so we decided to hang around and watch. Hey, maybe the wind shear wasn't so bad and we could go home after a long day of skiing Mammoth Mountain. The Mooney climbed to about 50 feet and then started bobbing around as the wind shear hit it. If the pilot had put the nose down and landed - the gear was still down - he'd have been OK. Unfortunately, he tried to climb out of it. The plane settled to about 10 feet before it quit. We saw it hit and heard the rumble a second later. It didn't bounce noticeably from our vantage point 500' away. It taxied back to the ramp under it's own power and everyone deplaned and walked to the FBO, presumably to attend to their underwear. We walked oven and casually inspected the plane. About 4 inches of the prop tips were bent and the landing gear doors were bent outward at 90-deg. That's a lot of main landing gear compression! @Shadrach is right: If it bounces, it's flying. That requires excess speed and an increase in AOA which is supplied when the pilot unconsciously pulls back when surprised by the initial ground contact. Skip

Sounds like the KC 192 computer has a problem. Mid-Continent is probably the best bet to repair B-K components. They are an B-K authorized repair center. Autopilots Central and Executive Autopilots send the units there that they can't repair. Mid-Continent recently repaired my computer - works like new. Skip

Stewart Warner (now Mitchell) made mechanical recording tachometer models calibrated for several cruise RPMs, with 2300 and 2566 being the most common. Mooney used the 2300 RPM model. So, at 2500 RPM it will read 2500/2300 = 8.7% fast. I discovered this when I had my '78 J tach replaced. The electric tach that drives a "Hobbs" meter on my '94 J seems to be set closer to 2500 RPM, but I haven't tried to calibrate it. Maybe someone knows. Skip

Usable (not minimum usable) qty is 6 qts. 8 - 6 = 2 minimum. 1E10_Rev_28.pdf