TheAv8r

Hey Nick! Few things to think about: The fuel flow gauge might not be accurate - the way to check this is compare what the fuel totalizer is saying is USD against what you actually put in the airplane. If it's considerably off, then it could be the gauge or the actual instrument itself (which is basically a tiny little fan that counts pulses). You will see SOME variance in fuel flow because of density altitude, pressure changes, etc. I would not expect that variance to be 1.5gph at the same altitude and power setting though, more like .2 - .5 on the IO-360. Make sure your RPM setting is the same, when we're pulling that prop back in cruise we are taking a more efficient bite of the air which gives us comparably the same speed but better fuel flow, so if you were running 22/2500 rpm on one flight and 22/2400 rpm on the next, that 100 rpm would show marginal speed difference but you would see LOP fuel flow variance. The 4kt speed difference could indicate being leaner, but it's close enough that it could honestly be a lot of things and that might just be the conditions of that particular day or slight thermal/downdraft activity changing the TAS. My E will do 142kts some days, 145 kts other days at the same power and fuel flow setting because of these variances. Check your GAMI spread (pull your logs and put them into Savvy Analysis), it's the fuel flow delta from the time the first cylinder peaked to the last cylinder peaked. If you have a big GAMI spread, you COULD have a clogged fuel injector. The JPI 900 is giving you the comprehensive LOP setting for the engine, looking at each cylinder and basically averaging it out and giving you that "-20" number. If you have 1 cylinder that's way off from the others, it could be way lean while the others are not, and skew that -20, so while you're at "-20 LOP" by the computer, in reality, 1 cylinder is 80deg LOP, the other 3 might be right at or slightly above peak, which would result in higher fuel flow. Just something to rule out. If you want to go up and mess around with it, feel free to shoot me a text .

Hey Shawnson, CFI/CFII specializing in Mooney Transition training with over 700hrs in Mooneys. Not based out of Terrell but happy to help!

My GTX335 does this very rarely, maybe once every 150 hours. I got to the same state as you Rags, just turn it on and off again and it fixes it and it's so infrequent I don't want to tear the installation apart to fix it. Also have dual G5s in my bird.

If the paint is as rough as he's saying, a new paint job is $30k. It has no speed mods. The fuel tanks were resealed in 2001, so it's 24 years old, very likely a reseal is on the short-term horizon, that's $5-7k. Engine is high-time, compressions look surprisingly awesome so it might go over TBO but it might not, and that's a $50k+ job, so in the next 1-2 years you're looking at possibly having to put $85k into it, which at $63k is $148k invested. Take away the paint and $118k short-term horizon if you fast-forwarded to the market of a great panel with rough paint and a fresh engine sounds about right, if a bit on the higher side but you never get 100% out of what you put in.

I use Philips XC 20W50 with Camguard in my Mooney, but am honestly of the mind that the priority order is: Fly the airplane weekly Change the oil at least every 30 hours Change the oil when it's 4 months old Anti-corrosion additive when it's sitting Oil type If you fly it regularly and change it frequently, the actual oil type doesn't really matter much.

Hey Steve, sent you a text, happy to help if you still need a ferry pilot.

Sure thing Don, would be happy to help! Weather's been tough lately, when we get a break from the cold lets connect and talk through what you'd like to work on together. I'd love to check out your Aerocruze AP too, you can teach me a thing or two about how to use it! @rex280ia Absolutely, let's stay in touch, I'll DM you my contact information. I've coached a few through the Mooney purchasing process as part of their transition training.

Don is closer to you but if that doesn't work out, flying up to Dallas is a good excuse to fly and we can take my E up for a spin. I'm also a CFI/CFII and will let you do some flying .

Depends on the airplane, but for your J, I teach: Don't touch anything Pitch for a 500fpm descent Adjust mixture every 1000ft to stay outside of the red fin Adjust throttle as necessary so you don't exceed VNE (or target a % power setting) 7nm from the airport, pull the power back to 15" MP, slowly work prop to full, and adjust mixture as necessary, retrim to keep a 500fpm descent - this starts slowing the airplane down If you've done everything right, you'll hit TPA at 3nm from the airport with your power set for pattern and that 2nm from there to the pattern will bleed the remaining airspeed off and you'll enter downwind at 90kts. (VCALC on your GPS is an excellent tool for finding ToD to give you this time to slow down) There are certainly other ways to do it, but this is a consistent method that maximizes the speed performance of the airplane while still ensuring consistent airspeeds in the pattern and time to slow down. When you do it right, you really do hit downwind exactly at 90kts and don't have to touch the power again until abeam the numbers. The 2 most common errors I see with this are: As the airplane accelerates in the descent, the nose wants to come up (going back to the airspeed it was trimmed for) and most students will let it the first few times, leading to segments where we were only doing 200fpm so we end up high by the time we get to the pattern. The inverse when pulling the power to 15" MP, they let the nose come down and don't retrim it back to a 500fpm descent, so the airplane picks up extra speed and you end up hitting TPA farther from the airport.

The problem here is an uncoordinated stall runs a high risk of entering a spin. As others have said, you do not want to spin a Mooney. The recovery procedure is the exact same, keep ailerons neutral, reduce the Angle of Attack by lowering the nose, if a wing drops, use rudder to bring it back up and smoothly apply full power to minimize altitude loss (then clean the airplane's configuration up once positive rate of climb is achieved). Spin prevention starts by staying coordinated - and that's what we teach in airplanes not approved for spins. If you're always coordinated, you won't spin. There are lots of scenarios we could approach as "but what if it doesn't do that," but it's not always safe to train in the actual scenario which is why we train prevention techniques and focus on that. If you want to get better at spin recovery, go up with a CFI in another airplane that is approved for spins and do spin work, but the Mooney isn't the airplane for that. For example, lets say you ask "what if I didn't do my flight control check and the elevators were binding after takeoff, I'd like to train for that scenario." It's certainly not safe to takeoff with the elevators unable to move or some kind of control lock in place to train on how to fly it. What could you do then? Prevention - focus on checklist usage, flows to reinforce checking the flight controls, preflight verification, maybe have your CFI walk you through a trim-only landing. That gives you tools at your disposal to never get into that situation. Not every situation is recoverable, so the best we can do is avoid them in the first place.

The blue lever should be touched at a minimum, 2 times while inflight: When setting cruise power, moving the RPM to the desired RPM for cruise. Prior to landing, set at max RPM to have full available takeoff power in the event of a go-around. Outside of those 2 times, it's pretty normal not to need to touch it again .

I have a GTX335 that I've been wanting to upgrade to a GTX345 but I want the physical unit. If you get a physical unit and are still interested in a swap + cash for an upgrade, feel free to shoot me a note.

It was a remote install, controlled through the GTN750

I don't think any more details are needed other than he faced a truly nightmare scenario: engine failure, at night, shortly after departure, from an airport that has nothing but trees on the south end of it, and walked away. Well done sir.

I overhauled my IO-360-A1A last year (well, 2023, but didn't get it back on the plane until last year due to the 7m lead-time). New angle-valve cylinders were unavailable everywhere I looked, the shop told me it took them 2 years last time to get a new order so I went with overhaul. I did Nickel cylinders as I live in Houston and it's very humid here with nickel being more corrosion-resistant than steel. I did DLC tappets on mine, but nothing else. My hottest cylinder is #2 and at cruise at 75% power 150deg ROP, it runs around 340deg CHT with the other cylinders around 310-320deg CHT. At 65% power, 20deg LOP, it's 310CHT, so nickel cylinders haven't made the engine run hotter, but that's a N of 1 engine. I added a SureFly mag, GAMI injectors and fine-wire plugs but did not do any additional cylinder work.