dzeleski

Not to be that guy to ruin the party but if $4,000 makes or breaks you buying a plane its probably not a good idea to buy a plane. One bad annual could easily double or triple that.

Mike Busch has a ton of great webinars on this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc-IpamUhzvGsAfMzH2lIcA/videos Some are pretty long but there is a lot of really good info. He also has a few books on amazon that are also really good.

At 78 hours post PPL a ~100k M20J cost me roughly $3,500. Id guess that $2,000 would be a pretty close estimate if you had your PPL

Its not insulated so im not sure how well it will hold the heat. Honestly though just being able to preheat the engine using a cell enabled switch and being out of the wind during preflight is good enough for me at this point haha.

Im working on it as we speak

Thanks! Yeah the hangar is more then the plane payment

I put my name on a few wait lists for hangars, where I live they are quite long. Never expected to get one and thought being tied down outside wouldnt be that big of a deal. After several months of lugging a generator down to heat the engine, washing the plane 2 times a month (4 hours every time), dealing with a cover every time I want to fly I some how managed to get into a hangar. Been in it 2 weeks and its worth every dollar spent, less cleaning, electricity, no cover. Just gotta get some chairs/couch and a mini fridge

I would complete your PPL before getting a mooney. I didnt have too many terrible landings during training, but im glad the ones I did have were not in the plane I owned. There is also a lot to learn from a systems and maint perspective that you dont get during your PPL. Doing all of that at once would probably be pretty overwhelming. I did 78 hours in 172s before I bought my moooney, getting into my plane with zero previous mooney or complex time felt very strange but its still a plane and it flys like one. Thankfully I had instructors that forced me to fly a 172 to the book every time, as well as planning descending well in advanced. I used x plane and a mooney add on to practice all the flows and procedures before flying it. Moving to a mooney for real I continued to fly by the book and plan far in advance this made it much easier to fly, the numbers were different but it was basically the same process. At 78 hours I flew down to TX one way commercial, did my 10 hours of insurance check out and flew the plane home to NY. I have 50 hours in my J and regularly fly into <2500ft airports with ease. Fly by the book and it will land by the book.

I tend to land a bit flat now which keeps the nose wheel closer to the ground. Makes it easier to hold it off and when it does come down it has less distance to travel which makes it softer. I dont use full back pressure. I went from hearing the stall horn just as I touch down to never hearing it. I get very consistent results like this, but your airspeed on final needs to be on the dot.

I bought through All American, Jimmy was super helpful. Wouldn't hesitate to give him a ring if I was ever going to change planes. Its also convenient that they are now apart of Maxwell, which makes the inspections easier.

Im an SRE for a major tech company, the nature of my job is to keep things running and reliable even when things break. I caught a lot of flack for carrying 2 ipads, my cell phone, a sentry, a dual bluetooth gps adapter, a portable radio, backup batteries, and flash lights with me in my flight bag. My thought was if my instructor had a stroke or something I had to get this thing back on the ground some how. To this day I still carry all that stuff. Anyone that isnt planning for everything to fail is unprepared. I've tried to think about every single possible item that can break and what I would use to replace it to get on the ground. Im slowly removing the old avionics in my plane and replacing them with solid state tech that has redundancy built in. I dont trust vacuum instruments and want them out yesterday. Especially after I slowly watched my AI fail on a trip back home 2 weeks ago. I had my avionics shop yank it out and replace it with a G5, no questions asked.

Check this out: https://www.advancedpilot.com/articles.php?action=article&articleid=1838 Specifically the "Leaner is cooler and cleaner" section. In short yes. 50 degrees ROP is the most dangerous operating condition for any engine, either run at least 80 degrees ROP or run LOP. At less then 65% power it is impossible to hurt the engine by leaning, higher then 65% power and you need to start paying more attention to what you are doing as you can actually damage things at this power level. I personally wouldnt cruise at anything higher then 75% power. Your engine monitor needs to be calibrated in order for that % power figure to be anywhere near correct however. The red fin is my favorite representation of how this looks, I stole this from Mike Busch (already linked above) but it does a great job of explaining how you properly use the red knob.

Of course I did actually read it as well as bought and watched the training to go with it. Im a massive proponent in understanding how every single system works in anything you operate. It always makes troubleshooting easier. Im mostly explaining in a (tongue in cheek way) how much harder the 430 is to use then the 440, and when things do go wrong something that is more intuitive naturally is going to be easier to troubleshoot. No offense taken, your point is correct.

Keep in mind this is coming from a 27 year old, 120 hour non IR pilot.... I cannot stand the 430s menu system and programing, it is the furthest thing from intuitive. It almost requires that you read the manual before even attempting to use it. I have flown with my new 440 for about 15 or so hours now and its night and day. Its far more intuitive, allows you to pre program way more into it, and nearly all critical features you can figure out without even opening the manual once. The reason I did not upgrade to something garmin was for three main reasons: 1) zero install cost 2) touch screens in turbulence are a giant pain in the ass. Having the option of using a touch screen or physical buttons is a massive plus. The BT keyboard that it comes with is also great for entering in flight plans manually if you dont just push it to the panel from foreflight. 3) I really dont like how garmins menus and programming are done on the newer models, ive used the 355 and 375 in rentals and it really wasnt fun to use. But this is strictly personal opinion. The only negative that I have found with the avidyne so far is the Jepp subscription.

I paid for them and regret it. Very poor production quality and out of the 3+ hours of videos I really only picked up a couple things I didnt know from looking over the manual and using the simulator. 100% not worth what hes charging for it.

Thanks guys super helpful! Ill probably resort to the glad press and seal for now. Obviously a hanger is the best answer but none are available where I live, im on several wait lists but it might be years before I get one.

Hi all, I keep running into this issue where we get rain during the day and then temps drop below freezing. Any water thats sitting in the top of the gas cap freezes causing the cap to be frozen in a locked position. I now keep a small screw driver that I can use to pick at the ice until I can open the cap but its obviously annoying as hell to deal with. Any one have a solution to this? Im considering making a cover for the cap on my 3D printer to try and keep most of the water out but I figured I would ask before I start trying to build it. Thanks!

Cool thanks, Ill plug it in and give it a flight test. Hopefully an easy fix

Hi all, I ran into a problem upgrading my 430 to a 440, but this issue also exists on the 430 so its not upgrade specific. When I bought the plane the glide slope worked just fine, 30 hours of flying later and the flags are up but the localizer works. Yesterday I went to pull my KI-214 to get it serviced and noticed a diplexer directly behind it, then I noticed an antenna cable not connected to anything, following that back to the diplexer G/S 1 port. So I put the the two together and reached behind the now installed 440 to find that the G/S antenna is not plugged into the back of the unit. Makes sense why the flags are up... My question is if I plug this guy back in is there any chance that I blow something up? I cannot find another loose connector and the cable 100% goes to the diplexer G/S 1 port and the glide slope did work 20ish hours ago so I assume it didnt get fully locked and vibrated off. Thoughts? Edit: Self test works just fine on the indicator (up and left, flags off, and both GPS and VLOC on).

Figured I would post back with an update. I swapped out the edm700 for a 730 plus fuel flow. Removed the FP-5L. Swapped the 430 for the 440. Very pleased with the 440 so far... I am running into an issue with the glideslope on an ILS but I reached out to avidyne for some help on that (having an issue with a setting not sticking). The 730 does not have FF or data to/from the 440 yet and the 440 is not waas enabled as my appointment with my avionics shop isnt until the first week of March. Thanks for the help

Standard WD40 is not a lubricant: https://youtu.be/f6531zzBkcE They make a silicone version that is as well as a PTFE version, but why are we even having this discussion over a 10 dollar container of lube? The service manual specifies what to use, if your engine says 5w-30 do you use 0w-20?

My point wasnt that we should be swapping windshields. My point was more around just because its not on that list doesnt mean we cant do it. As an example I pulled my Gami injectors and shipped them off to get serviced and adjusted, its not on the list but I think anyone that has turned a wrench for a few years can manage a couple injectors.

It doesn’t need to be on that list for it to be ok for an owner to do the work. That list is not all inclusive and is exemplary only. The coleal interpretation from the FAA explains this. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/october/pilot/savvy-aviator-preventive-maintenance

@EricJ Thanks for the recommendation on the MX 170C. I ended up finding one on Ebay for a decent price and swapped it out this morning. I now have a working secondary radio and the Nav side can pick up the VOR ID on the ground, the indicator woke up but I really wont know if its working until I flight test it and right now the weather is garbage. At least I have a working secondary radio now which is a big deal My plan right now is to go the idf440 route, with a potential edm 700 to 730 upgrade or depending on cost I might just pull the trigger on the 900 ill need to get quotes on that though as I assume its gonna cost me 3-5k in labor. The gnc-355 is nice but the screen is really damn small (I have used a GNX-375) and in turbulence I think having the option of buttons and the touch screen is actually quite nice. I think this will give me a good platform to get my IR on and more. Next year ill hopefully go dual G5s and a GFC AP but we will see what happens by next year. Ill hopefully be able to use the GA-35 for the 440 and then pull the GPS data off the 440 and send that to the GDL-82.

Ill hang on to the WX-900 for now, im guessing I dont entirely get its value because I have not flown in actual yet Gonna start making some calls and figure out pricing on these options, thank you all for the help. Ill post back once I start ordering things.