Ryan ORL

It’s hard to track all the various G100UL threads but it seems like they’re all full of complaining that we need 100LL to remain available until we get a perfect replacement and then for quite a long while after that. Some of these are even seemingly directed at George Braly for reasons I can’t fathom… they’re probably better directed at your congressman, or maybe members of the incoming administration. GAMI isn’t taking away anyone’s 100LL, but it seems crystal clear to me that it’s only a matter of time before we (the GA community) lose the battle and governments (local, state, and federal) force the issue. Whether it ought to be that way isn’t terribly important, because that’s how it is. We can’t even keep our airports open and financially solvent, let alone simultaneously fight a never ending battle against the environmental authorities. It also seems likely now there’s not any silver bullet forthcoming… G100UL has the big STC paperwork hurdle and these possible paint/elastomer issues, and reportedly the (only remaining) EAGLE candidate from VP/etc isn’t able to meet the full octane requirements. So what do we do now? Give up and hope something else emerges? 100LL extinction is coming whether we like it or not. I have my own concerns about G100UL based on the o-ring test and reports of leaks. But I think it would be useful to have a sober and objective look at how serious these problems are and whether they can be overcome. It’s highly relevant to me whether, for example, G100UL attacks and compromises even freshly sealed tanks using the sealants in wide use today, versus only older tanks with various patches, etc. Does it affect bladders similarly? Is the o-ring issue causing actual problems in the field and can Viton o-rings be sourced if needed? Does it affect all types of aircraft paint, including new paint, or does it primarily affect older oxidized paint? Yes, it would suck have to do a full tank strip/reseal just to use G100UL, but as a Mooney owner I know that’s inevitable someday anyway. It would just be good to understand whether newer sealants are more compatible or will it just leak again in short order, etc. Basically, if G100UL ‘wins’, what does the world look like for us? Also, if it really is true that the EAGLE alternative is lower octane than ‘100LL’, I don’t know that a slightly better materials compatibility situation outweighs the loss of detonation margin, especially after it seems likely that the UL94 valve seat issues were octane related.

Figured it was worth posting an update. Made some flights in December in a Cirrus to and from Asheville, and in my Mooney in the last couple weeks. In all cases threw the Starlink on the dash. They have clearly made some firmware updates... it no longer struggles to connect when facing south. It isn't quite as fast or reliable on startup when going south, but it no longer gets stuck on "Calculating Orientation" indefinitely.

I have had a handful of GFC500 uncommanded disconnects in the last 2 years since I had it installed, on average this happens like... once every 50 flight hours? It's pretty rare but does happen. (I just re-engage and it doesn't happen again) But when these happen, I have never seen the HDG PIT annunciations you're showing there. I also did have a GSU25 failure (under warranty) right when I first got my G3X, but it didn't behave like this. It was more like a total failure, the attitude went absolutely wacky for a few seconds and then (if I recall correctly) I got some AHRS failure messages and it went to the G5 standby AHRS.

To me it's purely academic whether the FAA can do things on their own without Congress because they have shown next to zero willingness to do anything major on their own. Haven't virtually all of the major reforms recently been effectively mandated by Congress via the various FAA Reauthorization bills? BasicMED, the CFI renewal stuff, etc? If a group like AOPA got onboard, you could easily see the necessary language sneak into one of these bills.

There is a local Cirrus guy here that has been pioneering a ton of the in-flight Starlink stuff (they have a nice rear/top window to use) and I've heard similar about the forthcoming plans. Apparently some Cirrus owners are also working on a mount inside of the wingtip on the Cirrus, and one such example is already flying. edit: To clarify, it is inside the wingtip i.e. through the composite fairing!

Right, that is why the law needs to change. This is why BasicMed exists, among other things. Congress can just decide how this all works.

Feels like this whole STC requirement paperwork mess could go away if there was the political will to do so. It isn't like some natural law of physics that it has to be done this way. Like has been done with many of the recent FAR changes, Congress could effectively force the FAA to bless G100UL (or any suitable fuel) as a blanket addition to all type certificates or whatever other regulatory remedy was most expedient. But I think to get to that point, G100UL or another unleaded replacement are going to need to get a critical mass of adoption first. It's just too bad there isn't some better carrot/stick situation here like there was with the ADS-B mandate. (FIS-B weather, traffic, etc) Ultimately I think California is probably (inadvertently) doing GA a service with their mandates that are forcing this along. Certainly it was going nowhere fast otherwise.

So I got a Starlink mini (mainly for Hurricane Preparation here in Florida) and I decided to temporarily upgrade to the $250 plan and throw it on the glareshield of my Mooney. Heading north (Orlando to Charleston), it worked perfectly. Over 100 Mbps at times. I didn’t find it to be in the way at all. Heading south, this evidently didn’t provide enough northern sky view so it would get stuck and refuse to initialize fully (“Calculating orientation”). I decided for fun just to hand hold it up to a side window and point it as north and east as possible. And it finally connected. But the interesting thing was, once it connected, I was able to throw it back on the glareshield and use it just fine! It held connection that way with no noticeable drop in speed for close to another hour, including a few course changes. If anyone else decides to try this, try that if it gives you trouble. I sure wish the mini had been available when I went to Alaska. Wasted $600 on a used Iridium satphone and $500 or so on 200 (very slow) data minutes to get in-flight weather in Northern Canada. I’m willing to bet Starlink would have worked much better!

I have a warranty on my overhauled engine (early this year) that covers a narrow set of potential failure modes, so I guess this counts in some way. Probably anyone who gets an overhaul from an actual engine shop has something similar that usually runs up to a few hundred hours and probably runs out in far less calendar time than that would ordinarily require to fly. (I believe my warranty assumes a 25 hour per month utilization rate)

Yes, afaik it is required currently only in Class B which in Canada is basically everywhere above 12,500 MSL. The Class C mandate is a few years off I think.

Yep still no BasicMed for Canada. Another lesser-known requirement is that Canada requires your N-registered airplane to equip a 406 MHz ELT. (It isn't fully mandatory for their own airplanes yet but technically any foreign aircraft needs it)

Moab (CNY) is one of my all-time favorite airports for nearby scenery! My wife and I completed our Lower 48 in May. Next you need to go to Alaska! Very doable in the Mooney.

Orlando Executive (ORL) is all good! Very glad, since I wasn't able to evac my plane!

Highly recommend that owners group list. I loved my GNS480 but I never had the GMX200, so don't know anything about those databases. Flew a few rentals that had that MFD, but I don't think I've ever seen one with an up-to-date database

We stopped at Springbank to visit Banff on the way to Alaska. They arranged a rental car for me… was a very easy experience. I think it was like $40CAD a night and they took some off for buying fuel, which wasn’t terribly overpriced. These prices are pretty typical in my experience for Canadian FBOs at busy airports, if maybe on the lower end. It’s only about an hour drive to Banff from there, but it’s closer than from Calgary anyway.

Wow, small world! I remember the previous owner telling me about his ferry flight from Idaho. My plane used to live in the Portland, Oregon area at one point also.

Yeah, it was a great unit. I loved mine. Did airways, holds, all the departure and arrival leg types, including less common stuff like heading to baro alt to direct, etc... (many of which the 430/530 units just shorthand as 'VECTORS'). I would take it over a 430/530 any day.

Yeah, the version they're requiring is already quite old. I already have a compliant version installed from back in January 2023 when the fixes came out.

Those GNS480s still have a bit of a cult following (they were a great unit!), you may look into getting the GNS480 repaired and selling it, depending on what failed. There is a guy (Chris Short) online who fixes these, since Garmin doesn't touch them anymore. He went over mine and fixed a bunch of stuff before I sold it in early 2023, it was a few hundred bucks, but very worth it considering I was still able to sell the unit for close to $4000 on eBay.

I would go for the 406 ELT. I just had one installed before my recent trip to/from Alaska. Especially if you ever plan to fly anywhere remote, it's a great idea.

This is also my experience. Granted, I only have made like 5 or 6 takeoffs above 7000ft DA, but my memory of them is that the rotation is slow, and the initial burst of acceleration you normally get just isn’t there. It feels like it takes forever to even get to gear retraction speed (which should be set at 65 KIAS I believe but I normally won’t command it until 70+), let alone Vy, but once you get them up, and get the flaps up, it starts feeling a lot more normal. I agree that I probably wouldn’t pull them up over the actual runway because settling does happen, but you also use up pavement pretty quickly at those True Airspeeds so I’ve always been more concerned about the terrain that’s right off the runway end, which unsurprisingly feels a bit more immediate at those speeds and shallow climb angles, even for minor little hills and bluffs that don’t even show up on your charts.

I think the biggest issue with the gear hanging out would be overheating the engine. With the gear stuck down you're going to need a long Vy climb at a high power setting. Even taking off from Leadville at 11000ft DA, I didn't have to do Vy for all that long and I was able to get into more of a cruise climb quickly and keep the temps under control.

It's being shown in that screenshot already, just between the MAP and RPM displays.

Yeah that large change is definitely datum related, especially with the old number being in the 1960s. If anyone is interested in the geodesy nerd type trivia of how this all works... Think about how we measure something like "altitude above mean sea level". You can't directly measure your height above it... it's not like we can drill down and find a magic plane in the earth that represents "where sea level would be" at any given point. Also how do you even decide what it might be, accounting for tides, etc? The answer is, we develop a mathematical model that approximately represents the shape of the earth, which is an oblate spheroid aka an 'ellipsoid'. (Because you can generate the shape by revolving an ellipse around it's semi-minor axis) Careful measurements of the earth have determined that the Earth is very approximately 6378137.0 meters wide at the equator and 6356752.314245 meters tall at the poles. (Earth is slightly squished) These measurements have changed several times over the years, which result in slightly differently shaped ellipsoids. Then, because differences in local density (and therefore surface gravity) exist, the actual "mean sea level" does not rest evenly on the surface, and the deviations here are as much as +80/-110 meters or so from the otherwise idealized geometric shape described above (which, if you think about it, is a fairly large deviation!). These deviations are best described by a grid with thousands of squares, with each square having an offset which represents the deviation from the idealized shape expressed as meters plus or minus. So you take the perfect mathematical shape, and you overlay this lumpy grid onto it, and in theory, that now represents the theoretical surface at which the sea surface would exist if Earth was a featureless mass covered entirely in water. Or a more accurate way to describe it is, that theoretical surface is an "equipotential surface", i.e. a surface where all points have the same gravitational potential energy. Now, you want to know how far you are above that magic point, it all comes down to accurate measurement. We somehow (via traditional surveying or these days satellite-derived methods) measure your absolute position in space, and we subtract away the theoretical height of sea level at that exact position on the Earth. Since the theoretical height of the sea level keeps changing as we get better measurements of the Earth, this difference keeps changing, but it's all fairly standardized now and the actual changes are getting smaller and smaller. edit: An interesting result of this stuff is that it is entirely possible for two points which are both "at sea level" on the equator to be physically as much as ~200 meters different in terms of their actual distance from the center of the Earth (Geoid min to max) and points "at sea level" on the equator are as much as 21 kilometers further from the center of the earth than at the poles.

*IF* you are landing at the proper speed, once the mains are on, you should smoothly go to max up elevator as your speed decays to let the nose down gently. If you are too fast, for one, you are going to be flat, but also, you're more likely to balloon back off the runway. I am at the up elevator stops on every landing rollout.