Ryan ORL

Particularly agree for the flight to Marathon. Water on the Gulf side of the Keys is generally only a few feet deep and quite warm. In fact many places you could probably touch the bottom easily. Boating on the Gulf Side can be quite hazardous if you don't watch out for all the shallows and channel markers. It does get a bit deeper on the Gulf side near Marathon but you're never much gliding distance from very shallow water.

In my experience, Uber in the Keys outside of Key West is very hit or miss. You may be waiting 30+ minutes for a car, or not get a car at all.

I agree that students should be expected to fly with that same precision, but the reality is that most pilots don't stay at that level of proficiency. I feel that blaming this on inadequately trained CFIs is a bit unfair. Consider that your average PPL is flying maybe once or twice a month and probably only flies with a CFI once every 2 years for the required 1 hour. There is plenty of time for rust, complacency, and bad habits to develop. I'm not saying it's impossible that a 40 hour freshly-minted non-IR PPL is flying up to that standard. In fact, they probably fly a lot better than a lot of 400-hour PPLs who haven't seen training outside of a flight review in 15 years. But are we talking about "the way it ought to be", or the way that it is?

From the poll results so far, looks like I will break with the majority in saying I think you should be Instrument rated before stepping into a Mooney. For one, I think this is actually more important than total time, as there are plenty of non-IR PPLs out there with 500 hours worth of weekend day VFR hamburger runs and a lot of bad habits. As an instructor in my local flying club, I fly with a lot of these type of pilots, and they would definitely get themselves into trouble in something fast like a Mooney. But also, I think that an Instrument rating teaches you to fly with the required precision and procedural mindset that I think is necessary to be truly safer in a faster, more complex airplane. Not to mention that, in order to really get the most out of what a Mooney offers (speed, efficiency), you're going to want to be flying higher (and so encountering more clouds) and probably IFR much of the time. As for getting your IFR ticket in a Mooney, I guess you could... but most of my instrument students have more than they can handle at the beginning in something like a 172 when it comes to getting behind the airplane in IMC. Adding 40-50 knots to that and it would come tumbling apart pretty quickly. I suppose you might also learn pretty quickly (to think ahead), because you have no other choice.

So, not quite Florida, but very close over the border into Georgia (a short flight in your Ovation!) is Saint Simons Island (KSSI), which is a great destination by itself, but there's also a great BBQ place that is a 1/4 mile away and easily walkable from the FBO. (Which is incredibly friendly) Would also greatly recommend St. Augustine (KSGJ)... cheap fuel, and Uber/Lyft to Old Town. Great day trip. St. Pete-Albert Whitted (KSPG) is right on the water and right next to the excellent Salvador Dali museum, and around great walkable restaurants and shops. Also the Dale Chihuly glass blowing studio and gallery is nearby. Once you get more experience in your Mooney (and if you feel you can get onto a 2400 foot runway safely with no room for error), Cedar Key (KCDK) is legendary and is a great walkable area. Stop by Orlando Executive (KORL) and Uber/Lyft a few blocks over to see our great downtown area near Lake Eola. Tons of great food and shops. The Florida Keys (KEYW and KMTH) are no big challenge, I wouldn't hesitate to visit them soon. Nice, long runways and not terribly busy or complex. The Bahamas is more of a challenge, mainly for paperwork reasons.

So based on this, if I leave the tail light as-is, I assume I won’t have any of the annunciator issues?

Thanks for the PIREP! After some more reading, I think these are the thing to do.

I guess there are also these: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/whelenchromaled.php Those seem to replace the W1290-14 bulbs... however no idea about the gear indicator issue mentioned above. I've seen lots of threads about people who have put LEDs on their Mooneys... I would think this must be a solved issue?

Red nav light on my 84 J is burned out and needs replacement. Appears like from a cost point of view, it's nearly the same cost to just go to LEDs. Based on the parts catalog, I think I need the Whelen W1250 compatible ones like these: https://www.knots2u.net/whelen-led-position-light-whelen-71379-series/ Does anybody have any experience with these? I've seem many people go with the 'full' replacement that also takes care of the strobes, but that seems much more involved (not to mention much more costly), and as I fly often at night, I don't really want to wait for the downtime. Would it be foolish to try and just do the LED nav lights only?

I think you definitely mean a sellers market.

Well, I stopped looking about a month ago when I got under contract on mine, but at the time I had called almost every single active listing nationwide and found that: Listings aren’t updated and many ‘active’ listings are already under contract Major damage history, recent improperly repaired prop strikes, etc “150 SMOH” planes where the engine was overhauled nearly 20 years ago and has been sitting for years at a time Missing logs or other ‘irregularities’ Brokers refusing to use escrow and demanding people put down the deposit with them and other sketchy contract details Generally speaking, airplanes that don’t have these things going on don’t stay on the market more than a day or two. I didn’t even bother calling sellers that were delusional in their pricing... $110k for a no-GPS 80 J model with a factory original King radio stack, etc. Your mileage may vary, but it took me about 45 days of stalking the listings to find one that wasn’t already sold or overpriced/sketchy/junk.

What I had trouble accepting is that in this market, is that virtually nobody is seeing airplanes on site, in person. I expected that I would travel to see airplanes in person then negotiate and get under contract. But good airplanes are going under contract in a day or even hours, with multiple full-ask offers. Everyone is buying sight unseen. I lost out on 2-3 airplanes initially because I didn't know the buying process well and took a day or two to work out exactly what I wanted in the contract, etc. By the time I called back, they were all under contract. I found my J on a Facebook group, and I called the seller the day it went up. He already had 10 calls and 3 serious buyers before I even called him. This was on a Tuesday, I think, and he already had a buyer who had planned to come see the airplane on Saturday and put down a deposit. I went under contract that evening on my airplane based on photos, logbooks, and a spec sheet. I wired the deposit the next morning. I didn't see it in person until a week later, but if it weren't local (~1.5 hours) to me, I wouldn't have likely seen it until the prebuy or even closing.

As someone who just purchased one (albeit not with speed brakes), I can say that the market is extremely hot right now. Be sure you've got alerts set on Trade-a-Plane, Controller, talk to brokers (see above), join all the Facebook Airplanes for Sale groups, etc.

I get up there often actually, for BBQ of course!

I certainly plan to!

I'm based at KORL but some of the photos above were from KZPH (where I bought it), and KDED (nearby).

It has that, as well as the ability to program random holds on fixes, plus it supports all the types of more unusual legs you get on DPs/STARs, like heading to intercept radial, heading to altitude then direct, etc.

Thanks! I will check this out. This GPS seems to have quite a dedicated following, from what I've seen by looking around. It does have quite a lot of capability versus the 430W/530W series, but the UI is a bit complex

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

After I work out some minor bugs, plan to do several cross country flights with my wife... to see her family in Cincinnati, to New Orleans, and ultimately I’d really like to cross the CONUS coast to coast. At some point soon I’ll also put a GDL-50R so I can ditch my portable ADS-B in (this has a 330ES), and further down the line I’d like to do a GTN750/GTX345 setup.

Hey guys, I finally closed on my 1984 M20J today! I've been wanting to get a Mooney for quite a long time, and finally managed to make it a reality Thanks very much to the very helpful people in this community who helped me focus my search a bit, especially @gsxrpilot, who went out of his way to help me when I was just beginning my search. I'm looking forward to all the adventures I'm going to have in my Mooney! Now I just need to learn how to use this weird GNS480

Update: Owner managed to find a serviceable one locally somewhere, so I think we're good! If all goes well I will officially be a Mooney owner on Monday!

My prebuy A&Ps tell me this one can't be stop drilled, unfortunately. I'll try to find the exact part number. Good tips.

Hey all, Nearing completion of the purchase process on a 1984 J model, and only one real squawk that I need to address right away: There's a crack on the spinner bulkhead. Based on my searches, it appears (from mostly older threads) that people haven't had much luck with repairing these, and spare (salvage) parts are hard to come by. So, since this is probably blocking me from closing/picking up the aircraft, what would you guys suggest? Are there any non-salvage replacement parts available for this sort of thing? Who would you call about finding one of these? Any guesses on how much this repair should cost? Seems like the prop has to be removed and replaced to replace that part? In case it matters, aircraft is currently located in Zephyrhills, FL (KZPH)

In general that has to do with the convergence of stall speed and the maximum mach number. Not really the same as Vne because it's not an indicated airspeed, but same idea. Would be nice if a Mooney was fast enough to have a maximum mach number