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.

@Fly Boomer

I got my username as a nickname after hitting a cow patty at touchdown in a Cub with the door open. It was a messy day. Still.. I'll take that cleanup job over using a Hartzell butcher saw any day of the week.

Are we all gonna have our MS usernames on our name tags? Feels like we should. Launching from the Atlanta area may be a tricky bit of timing in the morning. I moved my bird to CTJ yesterday evening to launch from a paved surface. The home strip is likely to be a muddy mess tomorrow morning. Draining gatorade bottles now in preparation for the 3:30 nonstop. I'll leave my pets at home though.. everyone loves to scratch a pup's ears, but nobody really enjoys when a hen just stands there and poops on their shoes. See y'all in Longview.

My kind of crowd! Pretty great turn out, considering the weather was pretty scuzzy this morning Even got to meet a couple of MS’ers including @0TreeLemur and @201Steve who despite owning N201ER is not to be confused with the MSer with that handle. I drove - I’d still be digging myself out of the mud if I had gone to the airstrip today. Kudos to the Cole Aviation crowd for putting it together. The food and hangar flying was fantastic.

Did someone say "travel boards??‽!!"

We’re pretty close to being on the same page. I think 65 may be the only year with the gyro in the tail. We can ditch all the gyro instruments; other years would have to keep the turn coordinator. But yes- keeping the vacuum pump in place to run only the PC system seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us unwilling to spend a LOT of money on an autopilot. The PC system gets a lot of hate but it’s simple, cheap, and not that difficult to maintain if you study it a little while. A few Mooney steps steps “fell off” after owners or mechanics removed their fasteners in the search for an additional half knot.

I’ve got a 65 C model. The gyro for my PC is in the tail, so I’m able to keep the PC active with G5s replacing both gyros in the panel. That way my step still retracts too. if you’ve got a later system with the turn coordinator running the show, I see no reason you couldn’t keep the vacuum for the TC and the PC system, you’d just need to cap some vacuum lines.

It was about $120 delivered; I shoehorned everything onto a single 8.5x11” sheet.

I used the website https://drytransferletters.com they’re a print shop in Los Angeles, and their turnaround time was pretty quick. I laid out my placards in Microsoft word, saved it as a PDF and uploaded it to their website order system. Here’s where it went wonky, and learn from my mistake. Because I wanted white text, I converted the text to white in the word processor, saved the PDF, and uploaded it. When they process the PDF, the file corrupted and the text turned into crazy characters. The good way to keep from getting a print of comic strip curse words in the mail, is to upload it with the text Black but attach a note telling them to print it as white. applying it isn’t difficult. There are YouTube tutorials on applying dry transfer decals - basically it’s printed onto the back side of a transparency sheet. You cut the decal out, and tape it down around the edges. You use a hotel key card (or something similar) to burnish the transparency and the text sticks better to your panel than the clear plastic. but throw a coat of clear over it quickly, as it’s easily damaged when not protected. 10/10 would recommend over a homemade label maker. I’ve got placards printed to do the rest of the panel when I get around to it.

Holy thread revival, Batman. But… it’s my thread and I’m gonna do it anyhow. It’s been a moment since I bought the mooney four years ago and had big ideas about the panel. G5s. GPS 175. Engine monitors. Man, it just seemed like so much money. I don’t post a lot here but I do read the forums regularly. Just figured I’d check back in. Before we headed out west on that first big trip, I replaced a failing gyro horizon with a G5, and that’s about the last time i posted much about the panel. as you can see, the turn coordinator wasn’t real pleased with its new gee-whiz neighbor. The Pandemic struck and boom. Travel tanked, and as an airline pilot, I had a lot of time on my hands. I bought a GPS 175 after an IFR across country to Kitty hawk where every controller tired to clear us direct, so I took the hint. Also picked up an EDM900 engine monitor. I wasn’t ever what you’d call an electrically-inclined a&p so there was a lot of studying as I went, but the installs were both successful. We’ve done a few big trips, and have more planned. But I found myself using the g5 in HSI mode pretty often to follow a course and I’m better tracking a HSI than a CDI. and I’d stared longingly at y’all with your six-pack panels until it was time to act. Last fall I picked up a g5 HSI kit and… procrastinated. In January, I began tearing the panel apart. and cutting metal And fixing 50 years of airline pilot “improvements” that included a lot of electrical equipment just grounded Willy nilly all over the plane. I laid out a bunch of placards and had them produced as dry transfer text. Applied over paint and then clear coated, they look great. It took a while, and there’s a few things left, but I flew yesterday, nearly squawk free. Oh, and I added a garmin USB port. I’m sick of carrying batteries to keep my foreflight devices juiced up on long trips! So… wrapping up. If you’re on a budget and have big ideas, hang in there. Things don’t have to happen quickly, or all at once. Like a mouse devouring an elephant, one bite at a time, you’ll get there if you just stick with it. Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.