mstephenson51

Yeah I agree that they have to modernize to be competitive. The old way mooney made them just isn't good enough any more. Seems like the path forward would be to: keep producing old model parts, revamp processes to make a new mooney more profitable, and then maybe add a new fixed gear entry level trainer. I mean, Mooney had good ideas. The M20 line is a great plane but shit business. The TBM is really their idea. The B/C johnson bar was a great idea.... Anyway. Dreams and ideas.

Buy gas or a house or rent an apartment, buy another plane, or food in TX and you will see 20% since last year alone.

electorate or elected? YES.

depends where you pull data from, I personally do not see how CPI is remotely "real life". and for those years its not what I meant. 20, 21, and now into 22 are looking pretty big. Lets look at worldwide average food price for feb to feb. Its 21% increase. just one of the many items we all have to buy. Then consider inflation of the things ppl here in this group want to buy.... PLANES. ;0) its basically doubled in price. Just saying, its a painful problem.

Yep. My thoughts exactly. Its still got a lot more to come. Its just sad and upsetting to see bad decisions made by others.

Maybe we get some of us together and buy it! half serious. Im an aero engineer and pretty experienced leading small manufacturing companies. I am sure that with some of the great folks here we could turn that much beloved company around and chase down Cirrus.

Bear with me, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with inflation. Thought I had everything pretty close to being able to pull the trigger on a 60's mooney, hangar, IR training, etc.... Then there was two solid (going on a third) years of over 10% inflation. dang it! what the heck does a person do! so infuriating. I even started thinking "well maybe I should drain the bulk of my savings to get a CFII rating and feed my aviation while getting paid, but on part time in addition to normal job." No, that's not a good plan bc I will not recover that investment for a LONG time. Then I thought, "there's got to be consulting gigs for my skillset out there that I can make real money" not so much. I know how to do a lot in small manufacturing company leadership.... BUT people don't seem to need that any more bc not much is made in the states any more. So what are all you guys doing to help feed the planes in these crappy economic times? Ideas? Anyway.... Rant over, thx team!

Putting out a feeler. Im looking at my flying options and looking for a few like-minded folks to partner with on a plane. One I am really wanting is a Mooney. Also considering a V-tail or 36 series Bo, or Lance/Saratoga. I have been flying from Denton, TX KDTO. Would also consider areas near here like Addison, Hicks, Meacham, etc. Anyone in the area open to the discussion?

Hey Cole, I fly out of Denton. I have been debating getting out of club flying and into Mooney.... Maybe we should meet and talk over partnership? No pressure, if that's not what you are looking for that's cool. No rush for me, just tossing ideas around.

I saw your bird for sale and wish i could get it too! Very nice, cool field to live at. Good luck with sale.

Hey MS-ers, I finally passed my PPL after 23 years of trying to get it done! Cant tell you how happy I am to be done. Anyway, if anyone flying out of DTO in Denton, TX (or nearby) needs a safety pilot to build your hood time lemme know. That is all, have a great day!

WANT! Very nice ship. If I had a few friends at DTO to go in on it, I'd be callin ya. BUUUUUT I have no flyin friends yet since I just passed my checkride. Best of luck on the sale for a very nice ride.

Yep. The price we would pay for a slick, light composite mooney would be that its parts are throw away if its ever cracked. =0/ I saw a comment back there about the cost of a new Ovation... Yeah they are retarded expensive, but remember that the FAA made them destroy like 5 of them in testing before ever getting to market. Then all that development cost doesn't have a lot of planes to spread across; what is it 14 a year? It sucks, but hey the FAR/AIM is written in blood so now we have to do it that way. Cessna at least has the advantage of selling the crap out of the 172 to flight schools. Spread all those costs out over more planes. But have you seen how much a new 172 costs??? OMG man, I would NEVER pay that!

Im pretty familiar with F1 and indycar composite structures. Very impressive, yes. Esp when you look at the loading of those structures, I mean you have a 1600 lb car doing 4 G's in a corner and 5.5 under braking. The suspension motion ratio is something in the range of 4:1, so in that 4 g turn the rear push rod is seeing 16,000 lbs of compression force in that carbon fiber rod. Then the "seat spacer" (driver) hangs it out over the curb and puts massive shock loading through the whole car over those 3" tall rumble strips. But yeah, composites can be very stiff, very light, very strong, but are really not repairable. I have repaired indycar bodywork but they end up not as strong and you pay a weight penalty. They can be very safe, again ref the F1 cars. The "tub" cockpit section of the car is all carbon and kevlar and is designed to take crashes and not crack. The cars are actually designed to have all the rest of the parts shatter and fall off so they take energy away from the driver. Dont really want that on a plane though, do we. LOL

I built a composite (carbon fiber) wing for my senior design class. Went well! did a lot with fully carbon race cars as well, so I have seen a bit about the design and fab of these kinds of things. I personally love carbon composites, esp for planes where cost isn't really an object. Metal just cost sooooo much less. Anyway, carbon/glass/kevlar composite have the obvious plus of being able to easily handle 250,000 psi tensile strength before yielding where 6061-T6 is like 40,000. Down side is that in COMPRESSION, they are way less. Also, one SERIOUSLY bad part is trying to do things like a bolt on wing. Have to have some kind of metal or phenolic bolting plate bonded in, and the heat cycles of a plane can shred that bond. Super hard to get the molded in mounting points to stay. By way of ref: we had the engine mounting studs of an indycar engine pull out of the carbon chassis because they were not properly bonded. Sorry to babble on and on.... Long story short, my carbon wing was small ish and about the size of a 1 seat plane. but handled 2600 pounds of load before yielding while the one side wing was only 8 pounds.