Rusty Pilot

Happy New Year! I will also be visiting your area frequently starting this summer. Our son and daughter in law are active duty Coast Guard.

I am not too far away at KEZF Fredericksburg, VA. I bought mine about 4 years ago after a long hiatus from flying. I went with a 1974 Mooney C with modern paint, upgraded avionics and electric flaps and gear. I can provide input on maintenance, insurance and local transition training. We have some great Mooney CFI's at Shannon.

As others have indicated the cost of the airplane is the cheap part. Depending on your budget and flying goals you may be able to purchase a quality vintage Mooney and do gradual improvements and ideally avoid impacting retirement savings. That is the approach I took, but I must admit a Mooney 252 is still a tempting upgrade. Good luck!

Glad to see they survived. It looks like the pilot kept his focus and continued to fly the plane as long as he could.

Looks like a great deal for someone! Good luck with the sale.

It certainly depends where you are located, but I am paying under $3.00 for 87 unleaded auto gas.

It looked to me like he is looking to stay under $200K. Did I read the original post correctly? That provides a lot of great options.

Becca great point about pilot not referencing his personnel minimums. I am a new instrument pilot and have my personnel minimums set high for comfort and safety.

I went with the EI CGR 30P to fit nicely in existing panel. We are starting the installation later this month during annual inspection.

Well at least they got the tail right in the model.

My big takeaway is we fly a very structurally sound plane and when equipped with shoulder belts our chances of surviving a crash are high. Any other aircraft and this likely would have resulted in two fatalities. In this case a BRS would not have helped.

I was wondering if the pilot had the altimeter setting correct. It appears ATC was on top of their game and providing a valuable alert. I am sure we will learn more as the investigation is conducted.

Thanks, great feedback. Hopefully the next time I fly 7104V I will have new probes and engine monitor operating.

Sending prayers.

In my 1974 C model I am seeing my CHT reading at the very low end of green, just over 200 degrees while running around 75 degrees rich of peak. I was flying in cold air at around 5,000'. Should I be concerned? I am only getting the reading off of one cylinder. I am installing an engine monitor with my current annual inspection. TIA.

Inadequate transition training led to a Rusty Pilot's prop strike. Despite my name I am no longer a Rusty Pilot after 4 years of owning and flying regularly my Mooney. This one hurts the club. CLUB SPOTLIGHT: LEARNING FROM MISTAKES IS THE KEY FOR THE MONTICELLO FLYING CLUB September 18, 2022 By Steve Schapiro We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. That’s true for clubs as well as individuals. The Monticello Flying Club based in Charlottesville, VA found the key to improving procedures…after making a mistake that might have been overlooked by many clubs. The 12-member club operates a Mooney M20F and when new members joined, they were given keys to the airplane. A Mooney has two keys—one for the door, and a second one for the engine ignition switch. “We made the mistake of handing out engine keys with the door keys to new members under the logic that they are equity members and so should get keys,” Club President Michael Vanderweide said. The bylaws clearly state a new member is required to get a check out in the aircraft by a club approved instructor, who would provide the member with a sign-off sheet once their checkout was complete. At that point, a new member was clear to reserve the aircraft and fly solo. Mooney’s have a reputation for being slick airplanes that can be a bit difficult to land if you haven’t flown one. So, the checkout in a Mooney may take a little more time than in a Cessna or Cherokee. “Have you ever heard of the Mooney three bounce?” Michael asked. “If you porpoise a Mooney, usually on the third bounce if you don’t add power to cushion the landing you come nose in and bend the prop.” The club learned the hard way that there is truth to the Mooney three bounce reputation after a new member who had not completed the checkout had an incident. The new member was a rusty pilot. He hadn’t flown in 20 years, so he logged a couple of hours with an instructor in a flight school Cessna 172 and completed a flight review. He then flew two hours in the Mooney with a club instructor. At that point, the instructor said the member needed more work. “Our club requires a flight review in our Mooney and a club signoff on our club's official solo signoff sheet,” Michael said. “It is in numerous places in our flight rules and in the joining agreement that the member signed agreeing to the need for a completed solo signoff”. This member decided for himself, without a sign off, that “needing more work” meant he was ready to solo. While doing touch and goes, he incurred a prop strike. The plane was due for maintenance, so the mechanic had asked the line-people to tow the plane to the maintenance hangar after the member landed. The line guys called the mechanic and said, “you might want to look at this, the last inch of the prop is bent back”. Michael called the new member to ask if he had flown the plane. He said yes, and Michael asked if he knew that he struck the prop. The member admitted it was a hard landing but said he didn’t know he hit the prop. The member claimed he thought that when the instructor said that he needed a few more flights in the Mooney before a trip he wanted to take, that the CFI meant he could go do them by himself and that he had been approved to solo despite not having a signed and completed form. The CFI said he was very clear that those flights needed to be with an instructor. To prevent this type of situation from arising again, the club now has the CFIs hold the engine keys. They are only given to a new member after the checkout is complete and the new member is signed off for solo. This removes any chance of confusion about whether a member has CFI approval to solo or not. Another takeaway for the club was how it evaluates new members. The club doesn’t have a formal interview process for new members, but either the president or vice president, who also is the membership coordinator, will take prospective members for an intro flight. “You learn a lot by doing that intro flight,” Michael said. “What their safety mentality is, what their personality is. Then we recommend or not recommend the person for the club.” Now when they interview potential new members, they evaluate the person a little more carefully. The club requires members have their private pilot’s certificate, so they do not admit members who are student pilots. Insurance used to require 20 hours of retractable gear time and 5 hours in type, or if you didn’t have the retractable gear time, 10 hours in type. In addition, members needed to have 100 hours PIC. The current insurance policy no longer has those requirements, but the club has maintained them since it is a complex airplane and it helps ensure the members are more experienced. In addition, they are more careful with rusty pilots. The rule of thumb is you should fly one hour for every year that the pilot has not flown. If someone has not flown in 10 years, they should get a minimum of 10 hours of instruction. The Monticello Flying Club had clear bylaws and required documentation for how new members could get checked out in the club’s Mooney. Despite that, the simple act of giving new members the keys to the airplane on joining the club rather than waiting until the member completed a checkout resulted in a significant incident that required an expensive repair. The lesson learned is that even the small procedures a club implements should be well thought out and reviewed on a periodic basis. In this case, a small portion of the onboarding processes turned out to be a costly mistake.

Good point about the brakes and declaring an emergency was prudent. I would expect minimal issue with control on adequate length runway and ultimately shut down or switch seats for braking.

My wife frequently climbs from the front seat to the back to attend to a toddler. It has been a non-issue and I fly a C model, She is Mooney sized though

I looked too quickly at the post via my phone. I thought it was a new mid-engine vetted, obviously not

Congratulations, you will love flying her. Also, love the yellow vette!

Let me know if you still need one. I have a working one that i removed from my C when i installed 201 wrapped yokes

I found it interesting, useful load must be increased and chute needs to be at least an available option for future success. As a vintage Mooney owner remaining useful load with 103 gallons of fuel is an issue making a new Mooney an effective 2 seater, with a relatively high fuel burn. As always speed is Mooney's biggest advantage.

I suggest you look at a couple of Mooney's and go up in one. I am not sure where you are based, but I am in Fredericksburg, VA. I rented a 201 in NJ before I bought My 1974C.

I have a PDF of 1970 Mooney 20C POH. If you direct message me your email I would be happy to send you. I own a 1974, but find the electronic version handy. Some information will not be applicable, but most is.