airmocha

Sounds great, y'all! Though I'm still as-yet relatively little-to-almost-unpublished by anyone else (AOPA Pilot indulged me with a blurb about the airshow deaths of Jimmy Franklin and Bobby Younkin once, back in the mid-2000's, and some guy who ran a good (but of course unsuccessful) e-zine published a few articles I wrote, but that's it), I too ran a blog like @Skates97 for several years. You can still peruse it at www.writingtakesflight.com, but I quit keeping it up, so it's all old stuff, mostly intended to help build a platform as an author to help me get my novel published, which never happened. Because no one in the literary world seems to think there's a profitability-sized market for an aviation-themed novel, and because they were too closed-minded to believe that, while its main characters are pilots, that it wasn't about flying, I had to publish it myself, and the result is a whole other long, sad story. But hey, I love how it came out, I tried, and I may yet finish the sequel I'd already begun by that time, and try to resurrect the damned thing then. I'm also trying to put up a whole new site (using software) at www.flightpathvector.com, mostly just to express myself to/for myself and to anyone else who cares to listen. But it's nowhere near done, so if you go look, please don't bother trying to comment yet. It's NOT ready for critiques. Nice to know I have a few more readers, if/when I decide to try to whisper any of my thoughts into the hurricane of 21st century civilization again.

Beefcake pyramid point of a totally cool line of airplanes. Jealous!

Hank, my taste for/in coffee came, and changed, a lot like my taste for/in beer. Mom's coffee was weak, light with 1/2/ 'n 1/2, and sweet as marshmallows with sugar or saccharin. Dad's was a little stronger, barely lightened at all and only with milk (yuck!), and lightly "sweetened" (if you can call the twinge of saccharin that) with that awful, carcinogenic concoction. I got sips of both growing up, have escaped cancer thus far, and preferred mom's, but when I flew the nest in '86, I began to make my own with dad's strength, mom's 1/2 'n 1/2, just not so much of it, and a tsp. of SUGAR, of all things, per 12 oz. Tried going black in college, for simplicity's sake, but, just like with whiskey, could never stand the taste. Then, in '94, I came to California, and met Starbuck's. Hated it at first (eww! It's BURNED!), but it was the only legal source of narcotic stimulants around, so I acquired the taste. Met my Jet City woman in '98, (my email was EmbizoFlyer and hers was gotmocha...so...) and our tastes in coffee, as with so many other things, are identical. So yeah, for us it's Starbuck's French, Italian, Komodo, Gold Coast, or Sumatra, with enough 1/2 'n 1/2 to fill the cup to the rim, 3 Sugars in the Raw for a venti, 2 for a grande for me, and about half of a stevia packet per cup for her. I think Starbucks should make a t-shirt or hoodie with their logo and "Starbucks...enhancing aviation safety since 1985" on them. Bet they'd sell like, well, good coffee.

Merry Christmas and Happy "get thee behind me, 2020," everyone! I'm a little tardy in doing so, having bought my '85 231 in October, 2019, but I want to introduce myself and maybe begin building an identity here in 2021. My day job's being a mid-seniority captain for a major airline whose name I'll have to try to keep a secret, but, as is also the case about much of my other background info and history you can see on my profile page if you're that interested, I want to say: I mention it all not to convey how in love I am with my own history, position, or identity, but because, after more than 40 years of flying so far, I'm just still so in love with aviation that I have no better way to express it than to cite how, how much, and for long I've been "plane crazy," which is, in all truth, longer than I can remember. I have a great wife (obviously, if I get my own Mooney!), we have two sons from her previous life and another of our own, all gainfully employed and/or married and/or out of the nest, but I'm still the only pilot in the family, unfortunately. With that brief sketch, I'll sign off with a question, hopefully to get a conversation started... What, if anything, do you feel is missing from this community or do you wish you could see more of here? I ask because I enjoy writing almost as much as I do flying, and writing about flying is the best of both. I've long wished to have a column in a magazine, but my tone/tenor/subject matter is apparently largely out of step with whatever the editors of the major aviation magazines seek for content, and I just don't want to be under a deadline for any fly-by-night and/or digital-only outlets. If I have to produce on a schedule, I want to know that some significant number of people are actually looking forward to reading me. My union has a forum that's absolutely toxic, in which I rarely dare post even a single cold, analytical thought, which will predictably be torn apart by the hyenas which dominate that pit, let alone bare my soul about anything as sublime as most of what about flying compels me to write. Facebook and most other social media have clearly become propaganda tools working (rather well, sadly) in opposition to my hopes for the country and world, so I quit them, and that leaves me kind of searching for a community with which I might be able to interact and be a little of what used to be considered human now and then, without (much) fear of running afoul of the trolls and sociopaths. If you're old enough to remember Gordon Baxter and Richard Bach, they're two of my larger influences and what I feel the aviation "literati" are sorely missing today. If you just want more Martha Lunken or another Richard Collins, you'll definitely want to ignore my stuff. Interested to hear any thoughts from anyone, but especially those who've been here the longest. Can MooneySpace use some more "heart," or are y'all hopeful to make or keep it more/much like many other online/aviation communities, a place where pilots come mostly to talk nuts and bolts and switches and knobs, and take the touchy-feely stuff elsewhere?

Going to attempt to feather the edge on this topic a little by referring any interested to a "howdy" in the General section, since I'm new and have heretofore only sought to "take" from this community. Seems like a nice bunch here, just taking a quick survey of the thread titles...refreshing if true, if indeed possible, in this time. I quit all my other social media earlier in 2020 because of the constant, draining rancor. Looking for other outlets. With that, I'll say "ttyl" here and hope to see more of you elsewhere in 2021. Safe travels, high groundspeeds (however you may achieve them), and greasy landings, all! Here's a link to my howdy post:

Ok so finally got some time, light, and heat in the same place. It's definitely the DRC cable. Thing's so old the conduit's mostly gone. Thing I thought was the intact, healthy cable's just the brake line. Can't believe I couldn't tell before, but it was dark, I was cold, and had Christmas bearing down on me... ..over which we enjoyed having one of our house's two sewer lines back up into the master bathroom. What a year. Hope 2020 DOES let the door hit it on the way out. Truly appreciate the help, y'all.

So no other J/K model owners who've read this out there have these ferric, uninsulated cables in their gear wells, then?

Eureka? What about a bonding wire for my static wicks?

So any clue what the rusty cables could be? The painted conduits are nicely intact, and the "DRC"/speed brakes worked fine last time I tried them.

Thanks and Merry Christmas, M20Doc! If I'm reading that diagram correctly (miracles DO occasionally happen), pneumatic lines may be carrying carrying the force (vacuum) out to a separate actuator in each wing, then, and the cables would then be relatively small/short, running only between each wing's pair of brakes and their dedicated actuator? So they wouldn't be exposed to much and only very slowly, if ever, rust. Part #26 on that diagram seems to bear a similarity to the rusty, stringy thingies I'm seeing in my gear wells. Could you perhaps post or send me a key to this diagram, or at least the name of that particular part? Only things out there beyond them are flap and aileron linkages, nav and strobe lights, and probably a magnetic flux gate, judging by the age of my slaved HSI. None of those things would seem to have any need for a ferric cable, but I think I took Aircraft Systems and Components, which I loved, the same semester as Basic Drafting, which I despised, so it's a wonder I can recall any of what actually mattered...

Ok so I just read the supplement in my POH, and they ARE vacuum actuated with suction from the vacuum system (no discussion of whether the standby would work or not), and NOT engine vacuum. Sorry for the wasted time. Didn't have the POH handy earlier and, like I said, when I'd read the description before it just didn't strike me as odd enough to recall, at least not for a year. Curious to me that the system is termed DRC, for Descent Rate Control, by PreciseFlight. Almost made me skip that supplement because I was searching for the term "Speed Brakes." The supplement mentions using 20" and 2200 rpm as a good power setting for descents, "to keep the engine warm." I've occasionally used lower MP settings than that for slow cruise, but the lower airspeeds and closed cowl flaps keep the jugs around 270-280, so I wouldn't think that could be harmful. Any info to the contrary? Onward and downward!

So it would appear that I have all-electric speed brakes, as in the pics RJBrown kindly provided, but I also have some very sad, rusty cables running through the aft portions of my gear wells, and I can't imagine what those would be for, if not the speed brakes. The pic is badly focused, I realize, but they are textured, like cable, and not smooth like wiring insulation. Next time I have it fired up, I will get someone out there with me to observe the cables' behavior and extend the brakes with the orange push-button I meant to photograph just now, but forgot, on the bottom of my panel. If the brakes move but the cables don't, I guess I have a mystery on my hands. It is comforting to hear that if they get stuck extended, or if one extends or retracts without the other, that the handling and performance won't be drastically compromised. I'll also pore through the POH again and see if my memory's just failing me (it wouldn't have been "memorable" to me to have read that they were either vacuum- or electrically-actuated when I read through it the first time, since both seem completely plausible and conventional to me), and my mechanic only just mentioned the need to replace the cables on my first annual with this plane last November. The shop that did the pre-buy for me didn't even mention them. As far as how I would hope/plan/intend to use them, I understand they're helpful/effective for making steep, unplanned, and/or less-shock-cooling-prone descents, and I understand, very, very well, that sometimes ATC asks the impossible of all pilots, and often relegates GA aircraft/pilots to last priority in favor of the airliners and corporate rigs. Many of those kinds of shenanigans happen "back east" and "out west" far more frequently than they seem to here in Flyover Country. All of that said, however, a) I haven't even had my plane over 10,000 MSL yet because I'm still awaiting my ADS-B-out installation, b) I fly almost exclusively over flatlands and in/out of low-elevation-airports, and I rarely run it so hard that there isn't plenty of room to accrete speed in a powered descent (so long as it's not bumpy), c) I make power reductions extremely gradually, typically commencing a few minutes before descent and try to allow at least one minute per inch of MP I reduce, until bottoming out at the gear warning, around 15". I have yet to see my EI monitor give the first indication of any shock cooling at all in doing so, so I believe I'm being kind to my turbo/engine. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. So I'm just not an adherent to the idea of using speed brakes as a replacement or mitigation for poor descent planning or as a normal part of every descent, and when I said I hope I "never" need the brakes, I was simply (trying to be) saying that I hope I literally never get faced with any dire need to land immediately (fire, heart attack, etc.) and figuratively only very rarely get so lazy and/or far behind the airplane that I need to use the speed brakes to facilitate what could have been a normal descent/landing at a low-cruise power setting, if I'd only just begun it sooner. By my training, doing so is sloppy flying and waste of gas, and I didn't buy a Mooney to allow myself to get away with either.

Pics of what I have...

It occurred to me right after I stood up from the computer that perhaps the source of said vacuum could be the same pump that's driving the gyros, and not the intake side of the engine. Seems plausible since the gyros would be unaffected by a momentary drop in suction, but again, a more detailed systems description in the manual would really be nice. Been a while since I looked for it - maybe it's hiding in there somewhere.

Carusoam, apologies if I'm wasting any of your time or seeming to be trying to come off as overqualified. I'd been under the impression I could relax and would be among friends here. I was actually trying to save others' time explaining basics to me by summarizing my background. I will try to post a pic soon. Holidays are upon us now, no time at the moment. I do dispute the idea that vacuum might be ever-available in all or even most gotta-get-down-fast scenarios, particularly when/if avoiding shock-cooling is a/the goal. it sure sounds like the vacuum-powered kind are what I have. Shocker, I know, but I'll admit I'm not educated enough to know, but I feel like I can sanely envision a couple ways in which a turbocharged engine with a still-functioning exhaust/intake system but severe issues in another area (such as a busted fuel line, for example, which could be feeding a fire at FL240, etc.) could still, perhaps even unavoidably, develop super-atmospheric pressure - particularly up where atmospheric is down in the teens of inches Hg. My understanding is that a closed or partially-closed throttle AND an engine spinning fast enough to create vacuum downstream of the throttle would be necessary, but I'm not even pretending to know. Again, Merry Christmas.

Well, simple-minded me, I just assumed there was only one type in use. It's on my list to investigate further. They are not the "lay-flat" type. They deploy vertically from within slots in the top of the wing. There are both placards on the tops of the wings near them AND cables running through the gear wells, and I could have sworn it only took electric power to extend them when I test flew my airplane before buying it, which led me to believe they were simply electric, not pneumatic/vacuum actuated. Having seen how rusted the cables are, I'm very hesitant to deploy them again for fear they may not retract. Obviously you mean the checklist would call for them to be deployed and then subsequently retracted before flight, but that doesn't speak to what power source is being used to deploy/retract them. My airplane is an '85 M20K with a ModWorks 262 mod. I believe the speed brakes came as part of that mod, and the manual appears complete, but I haven't yet found a section describing the speed brakes' power source for actuation.

Hmmm....well, maybe my memory's not so bad, then?

Many thanks for the replies, guys. I did manage to learn that PreciseFlight was the source of the parts, but don't yet understand exactly what I have here. I consider myself fairly well-educated about aircraft systems and components (for a non-mechanic), with a degree in aviation technology, a career in the airlines, many type ratings, blah, blah, blah, and by my understanding, electrically powered (or hydraulic, or pneumatic) speed brakes could easily employ cables to merely transfer force generated by a motor rather than a hydraulic or air pump or vacuum source. Electricity would be said to "power" them, but the cables and linkage mechanism, likely involving springs or some other opposing force provider that would retract them absent the application of that power, would be said to "actuate" them. The cables are just the errand boys (girls). They are, regardless of power source, electrically controlled via the deployment switch on my lower panel. It's been over a year since I test-swooned my little heart-throb, but I could have sworn we tested the little buggers (which I have yet to need, but I know the day will come) on the ground with the engine not yet started, and that they deployed and retracted. But we could have already started it or even been airborne - I just don't recall. It's also entirely possible, though seems very unlikely, that a vacuum accumulator could be installed to store enough force to deploy them once in the event of an engine failure/fire where you'd be way up high and wanting to get on the ground ASAP. That accumulator, if working as designed, would allow at least one deployment without the engine running. But like I said, I only know of these things being used in non-transport category aircraft for one or two things - emergency gear extension, unfeathering propellers, or possibly a really high-end parking brake. In all of those cases, they're hydraulic, not pneumatic (or vacuum). PreciseFlight's tech told me they have no record of ever having produced an electrically-powered set for Mooneys; that it pretty much has to be the vacuum (pneumatic) version. I'm going to do some more research and, absent anything to support my fuzzy memory of them deploying on the ground with the engine not yet running, I'm going to just order the set for the vacuum-actuated kind. It sure would be nice if the manuals would get a little more nutsy-boltsy for us systems geeks, but oh well. I do appreciate the help! Merry Christmas!

My '85 K model (ModWorks 262 conversion) needs new cables for the speed brakes I hope I never need. Can't find them. Anyone know where to get them? Thanks!

My plane was painted by Tejas Air Services in 2006, (back when I was planeless), and it still looks great to me. (Factory/repaint pics below) That's black and gray acryglo over white alumigrip, always hangared. I just went down there to San Marcos to have them take a look at doing some very minor touch up work for me and found out there's a brand new 2020 Ovation in their shop...seems like quite an endorsement to me. They're under new ownership now, and have a new/additional name, Specialized Aero. Guy named Travis Ahlhorn's the/an owner. Number is (210)896-0603 Thanks to the conventional hysteria of late, they're booked deep into 2021, however...)

FIXED. Little principle called lubrication. Cleaned throttle shaft with kerosene saturated rag, wiped dry, wiped again with silicone spray. Zip zip. Can't get it to stick now even with friction lock cranked down hard.

Thank you! Hoping it's an easier fix than that. Issue is with the friction lock's washer, not with the cable itself. Hoping washer is the key/only part needing replaced. Always loved the quadrant throttles on modern Pipers. These push-pull things have always seemed ergonomically odd to me.

Flying my dad's AA1 Yankee from Missouri to California in 1988 taught me that, in almost every type aircraft (normally aspirated), if your takeoff runway isn't at least as long as your density altitude, best be thinking very clearly of doing something other than taking off at max gross weight in calm wind. I used almost every foot of the longest runways in Santa Fe and Winslow trying to coax that thing out of ground effect. Guardian angels...

On my flight home with my 231 last October, I got the throttle stuck in initial climb at about 32". For a while, I was afraid I was going to have to do an intentional shutdown and deadstick landing, but I finally got it freed up, took the friction lock off/apart, saw the problem (the little leather washer that's the heart of the friction adjuster gets pinched between the throttle control shaft and its housing), and learned how to avoid repeating my "mistake" (advancing power via vernier action with the friction lock in a relatively high state). I've operated other vernier engine controls in other airplanes since the 1970's without any trouble whatsoever. Since then, I've had no serious issues operating with this glitch, but today I began some formation instruction in preparation to fly in Caravan 2021, and really had trouble with the frequent power changes necessary. My instructor said he recommends I not attempt to fly formation any more until I get the issue corrected. Suggestions most appreciated! My mistress is a well maintained '85 231 with a ModWorks 262 conversion (252 FWF).

Yetti, what snapped is, I believe, the screw or other device constituting the "axle" or pivot axis of the left side visor. I too thought about moisture/corrosion, and that's my darkest fear. How could moisture sufficient to cause corrosion get into such a high place without it getting (in copious quantity) to many lower ones? This airplane has been based in both Northern IL and southern coastal FL, and has a few spots of corrosion on its skin that I saw immediately and ultimately didn't think too much of it, having referred the mechanic (a Mooney center) who did my pre-buy to them and both of us having noted in the logs that the Mooney center that maintained it in FL had already conducted at least two of the inspections required by that SB calling for steel fuselage tube inspections, mostly applicable to the older pre-J models. But, when that frozen visor screw snapped and all that powder came out, I admit my heart sunk. I understand the fix isn't much for the visor itself. What caused that corrosion - and what other corrosion of which that corrosion may be a harbinger, is what scares me.