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@Yetti your "mid-slow" of 140 knots is generally faster than my normal IAS given the altitudes I typically fly (12,000 - 14,000+) out of my home base of Salt Lake City. I do get what you're saying about flying slowly feeling different - I had an hour of flying 90 knots indicated going round and round the lake on the Fisk transition waiting to get into Oshkosh this year. It definitely felt wrong to be cruising at such a slow speed, but I got used to it after a few minutes. I also agree with Don about doing slow flight regularly. Every time I do a proficiency flight I practice slow flight and stalls. Going out and doing slow flight, stalls and power off 180s really improves my flying and makes me feel more confident flying my Ovation.

Thanks for posting the video. It is timely for me, as just today my speed brakes decided to quit working. What a coincidence!

Sorry for my long absence on this thread...life has been busy. I did my transition training with Bob Cabe who used to fly for the factory and thus has flown in many Ovations. On our first walk around he went to show me the drain and was shocked that it wasn't there. He told me he'd never seen one like mine. I have not remembered to open the battery access panel and check and see if I can trace the lines as was suggested earlier in the thread. I will do so soon and report back.

Do you have a picture of the cut out? My Ovation has a "pixie hole" but my #5 is always the hottest by at least 35 degrees during cruise.

It would be great to see your analysis! My brief review of all Ovation accidents matched your description of landing and go arounds occurring at a much higher rate than the rest of the Mooney fleet. Further, the rate of Ovation takeoff and cruise accidents are lower than the rest of the Mooney fleet. My Claude AI subscription choked on doing the analysis of the 13 fatal accident reports such that I had to break it up into multiple conversations and then pull it all together. The total number of accidents is 3x the fatals so it would take me a fair amount of time to run the same analysis on all accidents. If there is any interest among Ovation owners I will find the time to expand the analysis. jamie

I fed all 13 of the fatal Ovation NTSB accident analysis into AI and had it create a table that included some of the pertinent facts, the NTSB's probable cause findings and a 100 word summary of the accident. I then had the AI analyze the information to categorize the findings and provide some risk mitigation strategies. Both the AI derived table and the summarization are in the attached Excel file. My own (non-AI) summary of how to avoid fatal accidents is use good ADM (like avoiding flying unairworthy aircraft or flying into ice in a plane not certified for it) and practice instrument flying enough to remain very proficient. Take a look at the data and let me know what you think. jamie M20R Ovation Fatal Accident Analysis.xlsx

I didn’t think to check as described. I’ll do that the next time I go flying. Thanks for the idea!

It's been almost a month since the last post to the Ovation board, so I thought I'd post something just to drive a bit of activity. Anyhow, every other Ovation I have seen has a static drain on the bottom left side fuselage behind the wing and a pitot drain on the bottom of the left wing just behind the leading edge. My 2000 Ovation does not have the static drain behind the wing. Anyone else not have the static drain or is my airframe a total oddball? Cheers, jamie

Here is the order form from when I bought them for my Ovation. It has the part number detail. You’ll see two different part numbers - one of them was for gear warning and the other for stall warning.

Flying back from OSH this year (in my low and slow experimental) my son and I stopped in Granite Falls, MN (KGDB). It has what looks like a very nice WWII museum on the field. We didn't have time to check it out, but the nice lady at the front desk let us poke our heads past the first hangar into the restoration hangar. It's on my list to fully check out the next time I'm heading that direction.

My Ovation spent time in Europe and Mastenbroek Aeroskill maintained it the last few years it was there. I put the plane under contract while it was in Europe, subject to a satisfactory pre-buy evaluation back here in the US. The plane came out with a clean bill of health at the Don Maxwell pre-buy inspection, and was noted to be in impeccable shape. I don't know what it cost to have the plane maintained by Mastenbroek (I suspect it was very expensive given the extensive log entries), but they did a terrific job.

I’m curious how you fixed the lights in the Moritz. I recently lost two backlights on mine.

Here's a picture of the valve face showing the asymmetry. I also included a picture of the seat where you can see an inconsistency where the valve is making contact with the seat.

@JimB Yes, I'm a Savvy customer. I sent them the pics of all the valves, but I noticed that the exhaust valve on cylinder #4 was asymmetric and pointed it out specifically when I posted the ticket. They agreed that it looked like a good candidate for lapping. @M20F asked about the compression of the cylinder. This was just an oil change and so a compression test was not completed. The last compression test was done in March during the annual inspection. I don't have the log entry in front of me, but I do know that none of the compressions were low enough to be on the "let's keep an eye on this one" list.