Pasturepilot

The boards have a Mooney part number on them (not the GSE number but close) and placards that state which models they're used for. The F model is listed on each board's placard. And yes, we could absolutely work out a swap for avionics work!

@Ronnie Pool where are you located? I’m in Atlanta and have travel boards, that I have not yet had a chance to use. I’ll have a long stretch of time off coming up, and a C model that can fly chase if you want to look at gear doors in flight. If you want to meet up for a rigging party, PM me.

@BenP see above!

My #2 CDI is way over on the right panel. I don't miss it - it's mainly there for cross-bearing checks anyway. I started out with the JPI on the right panel, where the Manifold pressure and tach were. I later moved it to the upper right corner of the main instrument panel (required cutting a new panel.) I'm very happy with that arrangement.

Posting a little late, but here’s a little write up from the trip to Arkansas to meet up with @0TreeLemur to watch the eclipse… https://wordsaloft.substack.com/p/flying-far-for-four-magical-minutes Hats off to Fred for picking the winning destination. Clear skies, ramp space, and a fresh grilled lunch courtesy of the local maintenance shop.

I’d encourage digging deeply in the couch cushions and going forward with the EDM900 if you possibly can. Did mine a couple years ago and it’s an amazing change. I would you my old cluster but I gave it to the son of my Mooney’s original owner as a bookend. That’s about all it was good for. Oil pressure was the only component that really worked anymore. Anyone who said they would even crack the case on my old cluster made no promises that they could fix anything, much less warranty it.

Five years since I first said hello around here... Still doing Mooney things today. My alternator bit the dust this summer right after Oshkosh - wound up going the plane power route to replace the old alternator, regulator, over voltage relay, and then a whole lot of "while I'm here, I might as well knock out such-and-such" projects snuck in. Master and starter solenoids, Bogert Aviation battery cable kits, rewiring the heavy gauge wire between bus bars... Have I ever mentioned I hate electrical work? But then again, the whole panel is electrical these days, and I wanted the confidence that I'd lacked with some of those pieces being 1965 vintage. Anyway, for those who haven't read the tale of I wound up with the Mooney and don't want to wade back through a mess of posts, here it is in two substack articles, along with some additional pictures and a few fresh words, to boot: https://wordsaloft.substack.com/p/tales-a-mooney-might-tell-part-one And the second installment, of how I've connected with the original owner's son, and gone flying with him: https://open.substack.com/pub/wordsaloft/p/tales-a-mooney-might-tell-continued?r=2zm3id&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true Time to put on some shoes and head to the hangar. Amy and I are gonna fly down to south Alabama today and stock up our deep freezer with some Conecuh sausage.

Post on here that you'll have free lunch on Friday at your hangar and you'll have every in a 150 NM radius parked on your ramp saying hello.

Now I know where I want to break down if I have to ask a favor.

We’ve got a couch mounted on a metal chassis with castering wheels. You can roll it into sunlight or shade, as desired, and easily move it out of the way when it’s time to go fly.

Hey friends, I don't post a lot here these days - the day job gets in the way at times. But knocking about the country in my C model remains my favorite hobby. Tinkering with it is slowly tapering down from major projects to minor maintenance, thankfully. The pandemic gave me all the time I needed for a major panel overhaul and some other rainy-day projects I'd put off for a while. For several years, I was writing at Plane & Pilot magazine. After some changes in that industry,I decided to start a substack based on my flying stories - I've got a big folder full of them. Many are Mooney-centric, such as this tale about flying to Kitty Hawk a few years ago, the feeling of standing where the Wrights stood for their historic flight, and maybe, just maybe, passing along some of the magic to a kid I met on the ramp while preparing to fly home. The story crossed my mind as the 120th anniversary of the Wrights' historic flight passed this weekend. I revisited a column from a couple years back, added some context and detail, as well as a picture or two. https://wordsaloft.substack.com/p/on-hallowed-ground Incidentally I missed Mooneyspacer @hmasing by about a day, according to the visitor's log in the line shack. If you visit the site and like what you see, a free subscription gets you a Friday round-up of news briefs from across the aviation industry, and a Monday morning flying tale - catering to those who are settling into a desk to start the work week, hoping to offer a little inspiration to get aloft at the next opportunity. And with that, the I see the mercury finally climbing past freezing here in Atlanta. Time to go to the (unheated) hangar and put the Grey Gal back together from her annual. I've flown nothing but jets for almost four months between training at work, and the annual inspection. It's time to fix that.

With all this talk about VFR into IMC, the same applies when you fly a true approach to minimums. It ain’t like when your CFI would holler “ok, you can look now,” and then your view is clear and a million as you swat away your view-limiting device. The transition from IFR to visual cues is a challenge. I’ve logged right at 10,000 hours, about 90 percent of that on IFR flight plans. Of that time, you usually get a visual approach, or break out well above minimums. I’ve been in the simulator a lot lately, because of reasons, and almost every approach has been to minimums. When you’re at minimums and pick up the approach lights, the transition to visual, even for someone who does this for a living, ain’t a straightforward switchover. Peek at the lights, then back to the instruments. Stay on the flight directors. Peek out - lights are still there. Back to the FD. Peek out - there’s the runway end lights. Back to the FD for a moment, then peek longer at the runway as it really does come into sight. I peeked too long at the approach lights on a single-engine approach during checking event, before I really had all the visual cues I needed and came back into the cockpit to find none of the needles where I’d left them. The maneuver was a pass, but I was racing up against a metaphorical and regulatory wall tighter than Ricky Bobby at Daytona. “Getting a peek” is great… but man, you can shoot yourself in the foot real quick trying to fly that way if what you’re seeing isn’t enough to stay well-oriented. Sorry for that tangent. Back to the original post. 21 year old kid bought a time builder, wanting to be an airline pilot. He died as a lot of those pilots he wished to join cheered him on, hoping for a better outcome. Two of my friends were above, monitoring guard, unable to help. Heartbreaking. A lesson to be learned, that just keeps repeating.

Yep, it'll come out the same way as the '66. Luckily you know how it exits - I ended up breaking mine because I was wedging against the outer sheath not realizing it was going to come out with the button. Snagged a replacement on eBay and haven't looked back. You'll get there.

Have you verified your vernatherm is fully working? I had similar oil temps and the cooler was basically ambient temp. Hit it with an infrared thermometer after a flight and see if it is as hot as the rest of the oil.

Fun times all around. @RoundTwo we talked a time or two, the final time being as we were about to Uber to the airport yesterday. I did hear center handling you on a different freq at one point. You were probably up in the flight levels… I was down at 9,000. Nice to meet the bunch of y’all, and to learn some stuff along the way.