hubcap

Based on my experience upgrading panels.............do it ONE TIME ONLY. Get it all done at one time. You do not save any money and your plane will be down longer if you do your upgrade in stages.

I am not going to engage in the discussion other than to say, I will continue to use 100LL exclusively as long as I can. When/if that is no longer an option, I will decide an alternative course of action.

Took Myrtle up for the 1st time in 2025. Flew 3 approaches and 3 night landings. Was blessed with an absolutely gorgeous sunset. Now we are going to get hammered with weather. Myrtle is tucked safely away.

I have the build sheets for Myrtle but I have not reviewed them to that level of detail. If @LANCECASPER has seen them without factory O2 installed that would be good enough for me to consider it definitive. Personally, I cannot understand why one would want a turbocharged engine without O2 available, but it seems some folks are uncomfortable on the O2. I have met people who own turbocharged Mooneys, who will not fly on the O2. They stay down in the altitudes with normally aspirated planes.

I believe all the turbocharged Mooneys had oxygen as standard. Myrtle is a 1982 model and it is built-in.

Happy New Year!

I have never heard of a full panel upgrade being done in 5 weeks. If you have a service provider that does that kind of work in 5 weeks you are very fortunate. Myrtle was down for 6 months when she was upgraded. I believe @Pinecone had a similar experience as well as several others here on Mooneyspace. I believe @Schllc had a project that took well over a year. I would still suggest allowing for significant downtime on major panel upgrades. Just my opinion.

For the shop that takes care of Myrtle, I always give a $50 gift card to a local Italian restaurant to the owner and all his mechanics. The family that owns the Italian restaurant are also friends, so I end up buying $500 worth of gift cards from them every year to hand out to folks I appreciate.

Merry Christmas @Hank !!

I sit on the Board of my local airport. Our airport is the busiest non-towered airport in Missouri. The airport is owned by the city and staffed with city employees. We currently have 132 aircraft permanently based at our airport and a couple of active flight schools. The airport barely breaks even. Our voters passed a bond earlier this year for community infrastructure improvements and there were plenty of locals complaining loudly about the money for the airport improvements. If it weren't for fuel sales, the airport would be in the red every year. That would not be popular with the taxpayers. Bigger airports may have more ways to generate revenue, but the battle for tax dollars still continues and oftentimes its difficult to find allies on the City Council or at Planning & Zoning. I can see why airports may consider this an option for capturing some revenue and I suspect it will become more common rather than less common. However, I am not a fan, and most of the money for airports comes from the federal government. I think the stoplight cameras are a good comparison to this issue with Vector. Fortunately, Missouri has outlawed stoplight cameras in our state. Maybe we can get the state to outlaw Vector.

I will throw in my 2 cents worth - Before spending any money on any airplane, choose a plane that has been flown regularly and cared for. You will save a lot of headaches, dollars and downtime by choosing wisely. What looks like an attractive price could be a money pit. Planes that have been sitting and flown very little are typically not as well maintained as planes that fly regularly. I average 100 hrs/yr on Myrtle, for example. I would be very leery of a plane that had only been flown 10 - 20 hrs/yr for the last few years. Ideally, choose a plane that has a panel you can live with. Upgrades will likely be costly and likely keep your aircraft down for a significant amount of time. A full panel will likely take 5-6 months of downtime. Budget for an expensive 1st year of getting maintenance "caught up". Choose a plane you can afford to FLY not just a plane you can afford to buy. My total annual expenses including fixed and variable costs average ~$25,000 / year. That includes hangar, insurance, gas, maintenance, etc. Which works out to about $250 per operational hour. This is a little different guidance perhaps than you were looking for, but hopefully you will find it helpful.

Bob has spoken about this issue at Mooney Max. I have followed his advice on the issue as I believe him.

I am usually about 30 knots slower than that at 1/2 mile final. Sounds like all the holes in the Swiss cheese lined up.

I just had to do the math - 5,400,000 engine revolutions over 1,800 hours. Fewer revolutions means less heat and less wear, all other things being equal.

Have you verified the gauge is reading correctly?