A64Pilot

50 years ago there was the Meyers Interceptor 400, TC could I’m sure be easily purchased,and all the work is done, just start manufacturing. It is a Certified airplane, pressurized and may meet most realistic goals, but a Meyers is a heavy constructed aircraft as it’s fully 4130 tube out past the landing gear,but it’s Hell for strong as is one of the very few aircraft that’s never had an AD on the structure. Pics are of the piston D model at the Albany Ga plant https://www.flyingmag.com/interceptor-400-barn-discovery/ http://www.airbum.com/pireps/PirepInterceptor400.html https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/november/01/will-the-interceptor-400-only-live-twice

Nope, not at all. magnesium was one reason that had me shying from a Bo, but never seriously got interested, just tire kicking. Buy Army wise I spent over a million a year changing out magnesium gear boxes, many could be saved by being treated and the corrosion pits filled, but many couldn’t. Magnesium is lightweight and strong, but there is a reason why they quit building wheels from it a long time ago.

We were forming skins on our hydropress for some customer that had an STC, Beech control surface skins, were formed them I believe from .025 or maybe .020 aluminum, but not Bonanza elevators. It’s my understanding that those have to be magnesium, aluminum of sufficient thickness to get the required stiffness is apparently too heavy. I’m amazed at how many V tail Bo’s there are, I would have thought with all the magnesium corrosion problems we had in the military that they would have been long gone. How is it that they don’t corrode? As it seems many that own those aren’t financially constrained there must not be a market for Bo V tails skins, or surely someone would have made them by now, it wouldn’t be hard to make the tooling and assuming magnesium sheet is available, knock them out?

Bingo, but after you shut everything down, the battery minder will happily charge the battery to 100% SOC. occasional discharges so long as the battery is quickly recharged won’t hurt the battery at all. It’s leaving a battery in a discharged mode that will lead to sulphation. I won’t argue that desulphators don’t work, but would ask why chargers costing hundreds of $, specifically built to charge and float LARGE banks of batteries like in a cruising boat don’t have them if they did? Large deep cycle banks cost thousands of dollars and weigh hundreds of pounds. Good large chargers have programmable equalization cycles, and everything is programmable. What does work and is supported by pretty much every battery manufacturer is often called an equalization charge, which is a controlled intentional overcharge, follow your battery manufacturer's recommendation, not someone on the internet . ‘Concorde Ithink calls is it a reforming charge? It’s in their manual.

If you are a welder, they aren’t hard at all to make. I put one on my Maule and copied the M20 design, I did it because I was putting an Airwolf (Pesco) vacuum pump on and they discharge oil in their exhaust. The photos will show the internal piece parts, the brownish color is where I alodined them.

To fly is fun To hover is divine

You use the thick white plastic washers?

Ref carrying chocks etc on the hat rack. Don’t put anything on a hat rack that you would be upset if it hit you in the back of your head, because it might in an accident.

My advice is if your going to buy, don’t put another nickel in what you have, if you put another 60k or so in it, your not getting most of it back when you sell. The flip side or that is try as much as possible to buy an airplane that’s configured like you want, it will be much cheaper then buying one only to replace the panel.

Removing the belly panel doesn’t take me 5 min, and I’m old. Get a good electric drill with an adjustable clutch, and do not scrimp on a creeper, get a good one with and adjustable back rest, a comfortable creeper makes a big difference. Get a handful of new screws before you start, it’s likely a few should be repaced.

I bought two from Ebay, only could find the new red ones, though, and they are pretty obvious copies, flat printing, but you have to look hard to notice. I think however he needs the center piece of the yoke too, which means I assume a junk yard?

It’s the individual mechanic that does the work, whether they work for themselves of a company doesn’t really matter, some are good and some aren’t. Any company with several employees will have some better than others. So don’t blame the MSC necessarily, other than maybe their failure to supervise etc. Different mechanics can explain why some have excellent service, and others don’t from the same shop. However if you work with a one man shop, we’ll then you know who should be blamed, or congratulated and thanked.

Ref the EVTOL thing, Elon Musk has looked into it and according to him it would take a battery that produces 400W per Kilogram I think to work, and the Tesla automobile isn’t close that, I think 1/3 of that maybe? Read that awhile ago so maybe misremembering the numbers, point being the power to weight ratio of current batteries isn’t even close, yet. But there has been HUGE amounts of money spent by some rather large companies on these things so far? So are they stupid? Are they scams, or do they know something Elon doesn’t? Maybe a turbine spinning a generator for sustained flight and some kind of super capacitor for short hover times? Sure you can build a tiny ultralight type of electric fixed wing trainer but it doesn’t have the endurance to actually go anywhere, but to actually hover requires a rather large amount of power and due to the square cube ratio a four passenger vehicle capable of vertical flight takes buko power to weight ratio. Electric motors can do it easily. but your limited the length of the extension cord, in my opinion. I think Elon’s right.

I think you can now buy a factory built LSA from Van’s and if so that makes them a manufacturer. I do concede your point about there being a market, and the fact that the common man is priced out of it. If that was your point. That is THE issue and is in my opinion why GA is dyeing, back in the 60’s and 70’s when I was growing up every weekend at the airport you would meet the local Druggist, maybe a building contractor, the guy who owned the local HVAC business and maybe even a owner of the local garage, and they flew relatively new aircraft, not antiques like most of us do today. My Google fu is messed up, someone look up what the price of a C-172 was in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I bet it was about the average Joe’s salary for one year, then look up what a new one costs today and see what the average Joe’s one year salary is. On edit, I did find this article just now and it explains better than I could https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2021/04/28/prices-for-new-general-aviation-aircraft-may-be-pricing-pilots-out-of-the-market/?sh=4c41bd6a3722 Apparently a new 172 should cost 85K, but costs 400K. New GA airplanes are the 1% er toys now, because only they can afford one. Not knocking that, but at that level why not just buy a fractional Net Jets membership?

I don’t believe until recently that Vans was an aircraft manufacturer and in fact most of their business is still likely kits? Which isn’t to say that’s not a model to pursue, but there is very little similarity to a Certified production aircraft.

Way we got Thrush was Ayres Corp went bankrupt, Quality Aerospace I believe was the major debtor and they got it and ran it as a parts business for awhile, we bought it from them for not much really and restarted aircraft production. Our Lawyers structured the buy specifically so that we cut the liability tail from previous manufacturers

They could produce everything on the type certificate as well as parts, without any liability for products produced before they purchased the company, I know because we did. Issue is as many have said, is there a market for Mooney’s anymore considering what they would cost? Even if I had it I doubt I’d pay $800,000 for a J model for instance Look at how many GA aircraft are manufactured by anyone, compared today to the 1970’s. It’s not hard to make the case that any small aircraft manufacturing is as I’ve heard it put a buggy whip manufacturer, there just isn’t a market. From what I can tell there are 20,000 fewer Ga aircraft in the US than there was 12 years ago. What I was wanting to do was find Cessna’s production from say 1976 and compare it to Cirrus of the last few years, last year may have been a bust due to Covid, But I couldn’t find any Cessna data so I gave up.

I connected my Garmin 696 to my PS audio panel years ago in my Maule, it did’t stay connected long. You can’t mute it is why, if I could have pushed a button to shut the thing up it would have been OK. I got way tired of hearing “Terrain, Terrain, Pull up, Pull up” incessantly every time I landed at a grass strip. Coming in now to land at my grass strip which is in the Database, foreflight knows it’s an airport, even the safe taxi works, but it freaks out on approach with Terrain warnings and the screen displays some kind of terrain alert, I’m sure it has a audio alert too, that I bet you can’t mute, the display you can make it go away, but it comes back almost immediately. But yes if something would have a “check gear down” I’d like it, especially if you could mute it after you checked gear down.

Assumption is due to liability as they know where it’s going that they wouldn’t sell it to you. We bought many off the shelf parts, our prop, fuel control and throttle cables were boat steering cables and the company would not sell to the public due to liability for instance, Our trim handle was some kind of lawnmower part if I’m not mistaken, neat lever, it had locks that held it in place until the handle was moved slightly, that unlocked it, but no realistic force could move it when it was locked. Brake Master cylinders came from NAPA and we installed the correct seals for hydraulic seals, fresh air vent cables came from NAPA etc. But I’m nearly certain that when we entered the purchased parts into our Quality control system, that made them legal aircraft parts and “our” parts and that protected NAPA etc. Like Alcoa made the aluminum but the Aircraft manufacturer produced the parts and the Aircraft manufacturer is liable, not Alcoa.

I believe that’s exactly what was done when we bought the defunct Ayres Corporation in 02 or 03. But as I’m no Lawyer I can only speculate as to how exactly it was done I know we had no liability for the Rockwell or Ayres manufactured aircraft. As far as liability insurence, you just don’t carry it, you structure the company so that it has little if any value. Story is every so often a Jet full of NY Lawyers descend on little Maule in Moultrie Ga, tours the plant and I’d guess takes a look at assets, then gets back in the Jet and leaves, there isn’t enough there to whet their appetite. You can’t get blood from a turnip. So someone spends big bucks to sue Mooney, what are they going to get? A TC that no one will buy? Only real value Mooney has I’d bet is the Production Certificate. Ayres plant using that PC built and still does many contract parts, some for Boeing, all the 727 cargo doors for Fed-Ex were built the as well as the hush kits. they also built I believe all of the MD 600 fuselages for Mcdonald Douglas for a number of years, we pressed skins for someone who had an STC to replace the Magnesium Beech skins etc. etc. Lots of people want to sell airplane parts for their STC’s etc. but don’t have the capability to manufacture aircraft parts as they don’t have a PC. That would one revenue source, it’s small, but a few bucks here and there helps.

It’s very easy to buy a company and not buy the liability of the previous owner.

Your one of the very few I’ve seen use disbonded as opposed to debonded. I used to say debonded until I was corrected by a Boeing Engineer, I bet you have a lot of composite experience?

It’s been since 1989 since I was at the factory, and it was old then. The value is the Production Certificate, with it you can produce aircraft and parts, not necessarily Mooney’s. but I doubt it’s worth anything close to 15 Mil. But all of these VTOL flying taxi start ups are going to need a PC to build any of those things, an existing PC has value cause you can start building right away, to get a PC would likely take a Looong time, and you have to pass every environmental regulation etc, an existing one is Grandfathered in.

My opinion is we are “overcome by events” to use a military term, something else else has our attention and we just don’t do whatever, the Everglades slow descent into the swamp as an example. Also there is something called SLOJ or sudden loss of judgement, which means no matter how good you are, you occasionally do something stupid, like the guy who drives the same way to work for years, one day runs the stop sign they stop at every day. So long as your paranoid about it, in my opinion your less likely to be bit by it. I share your paranoia, mostly because I don’t want to look like a fool, and the costs. In answer or your question about has anything been done, the answer is yes, even automatic systems to lower the gear if you don’t have been done, but have brought their own issues. Do not allow your self to be rushed, use the word “Unable” to ATC or ask for more time if needed, simply tell them you need 30 sec to run the before landing checklist if you need it. Flip side of that is try not to be complacent, don’t allow yourself to believe your too good or too smart to do something like that.

A PPI or anAnnual would not have discovered this shim, only prop removal would have in my opinion, it may not have been visible but maybe if it was thick enough? Whoever singed off the installation of the prop may be looking at prison time if it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that’s when the shim came into being, again, another opinion. Purpose of the shim was to restore blade track and hide the bent crankshaft, presence of the shim proves the mechanic knew the crank was bent, again an opinion I went back and scanned the report