A64Pilot

At that age of aircraft it’s likely most will have some issues, most anything can be fixed so of course the consideration is cost. Corrosion is the exception, there are I’m sure several aircraft that have enough corrosion to make them uneconomical to repair, that should I think be your major concern. You really, really want the pedal extensions. I’m 5’10” and installed the 3” to get my knees from hitting the nose gear enclosure, and I think it put me right where I want to be yoke position wise. I’d suspect with the seat full forward and a cushion behind your back it might be difficult to get the yoke full back for landing etc. My original rollers were Phenolic, I believe they wear the aluminum as evidenced by the surface was covered by aluminum oxide, plus as they wear down the steel part of the seat frame scrapes the rails and wears them. It’s my opinion that the softer nylon won’t cause as much wear, but they may not last as long as the phenolic. Something has to wear, I’d rather that be the rollers than the rails myself. I think maybe keeping them clean and free of sand etc might also help.

Probably any of the above would help. I think it’s more likely corrosion than current discharge causing the problem. DC-4 I think, it’s clean and doesn’t make a mess like some do, it’s called light bulb grease because many put it on trailer tail light bulbs to prevent corrosion when backing the trailer into water, especially salt water. Helicopters build so much static because the rotor system speed is in the hundreds of kts even with the machine at a hover. I have never seen static issues in small GA aircraft, but then I only have a few thousand hours myself. I suspect Mooney put them on for marketing as much as anything, lots of things are done primarily for appearance reasons and not performance

I watched the video, they are obviously building an Experimental aircraft. That doesn’t do anything towards a Cert aircraft, nor Certification. What is that engine? I applaud their work, I’d love a Helio Courier myself, looked hard at one before buying the Maule, but the engine and I believe a wing AD sealed the deal. There are a very few Turbine ones out there, the Helio Stallion. It uses Thrush Exhaust, an owner in South Carolina owes me a ride for repairing his exhaust. I should have flown up there for the ride. Stallion was a bigger aircraft, think of it as a better looking Pilatus Porter.

I didn’t watch the video, but without a Production Certificate you can’t produce an airplane and sell it to the general public. I’m nearly certain that you can’t produce anything, even parts. A PMA would give you parts, but you would be unable to assemble them into an airplane. A PC would be enormously expensive to obtain and I’m sure take years to get. As far as I know Cirrus is the only one to do it in recent past. There may be others that I’m unaware of. However you can buy a PC along with the factory and start producing airplanes tomorrow if you have the required people, QC, DMIR’s etc. The PC is the only real value in Mooney, TC’s especially if they don’t have all the tooling etc don’t have much value. Assumption is all the drawings are kept by the TC holder, without drawings you really don’t have anything, just something you can frame and hang on the wall. If you own the TC, you have the “right” to do anything, having the right and the ability to pay for Certification are two completely different things.

Your not going to hurt the engine, I don’t know about you, but if I’m letting down from altitude at 500’ a min at cruise (23 squared) cowl flaps closed, LOP I have a hard time keeping the Cyl head temp in the green, in Florida in Summer. I often enrichen to add some warmth. When your near the bottom of the green temp wise shock cooling isn’t an issue But I’m a J model, not a Bravo. I depends on what you consider important I guess, to me I’m going to baby the gear. In truth I try to Baby the whole airplane, I’m just not one to run the guts out of it. Some are and that’s fine, I get the “I didn’t buy a Mooney to go slow” You don’t have to slow all the way to flap speed, but I can assure you as an old time A&P that if you don’t treat Maximum permissible gear speed as the normal gear speed pretty much everything in the gear will last longer. Surely none of us run the cyl head temp to redline in every climb do we? Why not, your allowed. I’ve watched time and again people hold that gear switch waiting for the instant they slow to max to drop the gear, many, heck I bet most do, I think they were taught that way.

In my opinion I don’t think anyone is going to worry about whether a non critical interior part came from Mooney, is otherwise approved or not. Think the Kool air scoop that goes in my ice window is STC’d or otherwise approved? I would hope not. Yes I know Rosen STC’d their visors, but surely that was some kind of marketing ploy?

There is a push, most likely substantiated by statics to rely more heavily on automation, automation when it works is often safer than a person. The stats for instance have been showing that automation is safer, for instance Tesla Full Self Driving is five times less likely to have an accident than hand driving and a Tesla due to the other automation is half as likely to have an accident than the average US car. https://www.torquenews.com/14335/tesla-fsd-releases-safety-data-5x-safer-normal-driving Having said that I still think it’s important to be competent driving myself and while I haven’t tracked ours yet, I’d like to just to find it’s and my limits, because whike I use FSD extensively, I don’t trust it. I don’t know anything about a Cirrus, never flown one, perhaps their Autopilot system is so well integrated and new, modern etc that it has an extreme reliability, but it’s my experience that systems in our older aircraft aren’t, very often it’s installation or other issues not directly related to the Autopilot hardware, I do know that broken or unreliable Autopilots are pretty common. Most don’t trust Vacuum pumps, I don’t although I’ve yet to have one let me down. I had a Pesco pump on the Maule and an electric standby attitude indicator. Maybe if there was a backup for the Autopilot I’d be far more likely to trust one, but so far as I know there isn’t.

IF there is oil in the intake, she will smoke on engine start, look for that.

I hear people who say “I’d never fly IFR without an Autopilot” and I think what fools, what their plan when it fails? Because one day it will. It’s all proficiency based, I used to fly my Maule without an Autopilot and a Maule isn’t a good IFR platform without issue often to ILS minimums. But I flew real IFR a LOT, now I won’t fly IFR anymore because I’m not going to put the work into it that’s required to gain and maintain proficiency, plus I don’t do the cross country like I used to that demanded IFR. My belief is if you have an Autopilot you need to fly without it often enough that your comfortable hand flying. I fear many can’t they never really trained without one.

People who were taught in and fly “modern” aircraft really have no idea how to use the rudder, because you don’t really need to much, aileron to rudder interconnects are responsible for a lot of that. Worst I’ve ever seen was an F-16 driver trying to fly a crop duster, it ate his lunch. A Maule would have been worse as it has a lot of adverse yaw. Getting some tailwheel training will teach you what your feet are for, is fun and probably not that expensive. I thought having thousands of hours flying a tail wheel helicopter would mean that the transition would be easy, I was wrong.

We tested every wing tank at Thrush after manufacture of course. We used a home made water manometer connected to the vent line and the air pressure line to the fuel inlet. Advantage of homemade water manometer is it was just a clear plastic tube in a U shape filled with colored water and a ruler on one side. If you accidentally applied more pressure than you wanted it would just blow the water out and of course the air would then free flow, you couldn’t bust a tank. Many home builders here use a balloon, idea being too much pressure will blow up the balloon. Balloons are cheap and easy. Not as precise of course. The home made water manometer was so precise that you would see pressure build as the morning warmed up by just a couple of degrees. When we built the Military aircraft with hard points that penetrated the tanks we had more leaks, we switched to testing with helium as helium is a smaller molecule and will leak more than air. Ask NASA how hard it is to keep helium from leaking, Boeing anyway.

A few comments First be extraordinarily careful doing a pressure test, Gulfstream used to have a G-550 I think it was behind a curtain in their completion center, a mechanic made a mistake pressure testing a wing and ruined the wing. The area of a fuel tank is huge, even just a tiny pressure over such a large are is enormous force Second I’m convinced that fuel when warm will hold in suspension quite a lot of water, then this water can come out of suspension at altitude and cause problems, but it wasn’t there on the ground. Military before we could refuel the truck had to do an “Aqua Glo” test, if the water was above the threshold, they had to recirculate the fuel through the filter that was water absorbing, it would absorb water that was dissolved in the fuel until it was below the max acceptance point. I don’t think that’s done in the civilian world? Lastly My C-140’s factory fuel vents are two 1/8 holes in the fuel caps, of course rain will get water in the tanks so you must cover them. Two problems, cover must stay on in the wind and being on top of the wing it’s possible you may forget them. My answer was to buy two cheap red rubber toilet plungers, unscrew the handle and simply place them onto the top of the caps, they are heavy enough the wind won’t blow them off and if you forget them, being rubber they won’t hurt the tail etc when they fall off on takeoff. These things, cheap and easy

Not really, you think you can but ask anyone who has been through basic training if they have ever been that motivated in the civilian world, for me WOC “Warrant Officer Candidate” training made basic look easy. Air Force and Army “real” Officers it’s a lot more laid back. But the biggest difference I think is in the Military and I assume Commercial world, it’s your Job, the thing that you have to do well in as it brings home the bacon, buys shoes for the Baby etc. Then add in that you get up in the morning thinking flying, majority of the day is consumed by it and nights are spent studying and memorizing everything about it and the aircraft. There is just no way anyone with a real job could possibly put that number of hours per week into training, not and have a job anyway or actually a family really. There is no change the mindset when you get to the airport. The entirety of your life if you will is flying and training. I was Married and had a kid, but did not live with them, I lived in a Military Barracks, at some point I was allowed to go home on the weekends I think as long as training was going well, but I don’t remember when that was.

I was Military trained as well, but we cannot compare Military training to GA civilian training. It’s not so much that the Military pilots are “better” they are most often younger and much more highly motivated and those arguably make them more trainable. It’s their Job, no other distractions, my training was classroom training half the day and the flightline the other half, if we had a weather day, we flew the weekends to make it up. Civilians have a job that’s primary usually, they train and fly when they can, maybe a couple of times a week, plus their instructor is their employee, if they don’t like them they can get another, you take a checkride when you and your instructor feel your ready. Military isn’t like that, you checkride upon reaching the syllabus hours, fail just one and as a min you don’t graduate at the top of your class which means you don’t pick the aircraft you fly as a min. fail a couple and your out, in my case that meant staying a Sgt and back to being a mechanic, not the end of the world, but certainly the end of the dream, part of the motivation. So most civilian it’s a hobby, paid for by that job that they spend a min of 40 hours a week at so they can afford to fly. Military it is their job, so they can spend every day, all day training.

I got my fixed wing transition and Commercial / instrument at Central Tx College in Killeen Tx, as it was a degree producing program it made it easier for me to do while active duty. Anyway the purpose of that school was to produce Airline Pilots not Mooney drivers. According to them most or nearly all Airline type aircraft get approach flaps, not gear first, so therefore they required flaps first, then gear, which means of course you had to slow to 111 kts, put in approach flaps, then get gear. It’s easy to do if you plan it, but you have to plan ahead, you’re not making the approach if you hit glide slope intercept at 130 kts for instance. I have zero experience with the big iron, but bet they are similar I bet they have to start slowing well before the approach. I’m also convinced that at least for the aircraft with lower gear doors that slowing before dropping the gear is easier on the actuator and the mechanism, as is retracting it at as slow an airspeed that is safe to do so.