Utah20Gflyer

None available as far as I know. While there are mogas approvals for the O360 the Mooney airframe has never been approved.

LASAR may be able to repair the nose gear dent and update it if it doesn’t have the stops. They also may have an exchange unit. The big issue is sometimes they have exchange units and sometimes they will repair and sometimes they don’t/won’t. So you’ll have to call them to find out. They are also a good source for all the bushings, hardware etc.

I rebuilt my steering horn using new bushings. Whether that is possible depends on the location of the wear. I believe the two different steering horns can be interchanged as complete units but the sub assemblies may not be interchangeable. I.E. can’t take half of one and splice together with half of the other type.

I’d second this hypothesis. How did the mechanic isolate the play to the tail of the plane?

The consensus seems to be don’t use a mechanic who has done work for the owner previously. I have mixed feelings about that strategy because the mechanic the owner is using might be very good and the one you try to find who wasn’t used might not be good. It’s really difficult to know the difference between good and bad until after the fact. While I think a prebuy is prudent I almost think vetting the owner and their attitude toward aircraft ownership is more important than the prebuy. A person who is constantly proactively fixing things on their plane and trying to improve it will have a plane that is going to be lower risk than a person who puts the bare minimum in to keep the plane airworthy. This shows up pretty easily. Also if an owner gives you a lot of “I don’t knows” to your questions then that’s concerning. I’m not saying an owner should know everything but they should know quite a bit about their plane. All planes come with risk though so you are only trying to reduce risk, you can’t eliminate it.

That will be a nice set up! Congratulations

This is an important consideration. Many individuals are reporting downtimes of a year because of parts availability issues and shop backlogs. What you want to do is find a plane that flies a lot because that is going to minimize the likelihood of needing an overhaul in the near future. This would apply to low, mid or high time engines. The higher time engines are lower risk in my opinion given its being flown a lot because a low time engine can need an overhaul and it’s difficult to determine that during a prebuy.

I fly some for work and it has worked out well. For my particular application I have a great deal of flexibility which is what makes it possible. I can easily move my trip forward or back on my schedule several days and in most cases I could probably bump as much as a week. Generally within a weeks time there will be a good day for flying. Of course there is always the option to drive as my trips are usually around 250 miles or less. I’ve done that a few times but not for weather but because my plane was down for annual. If I had to be at location X at exactly 8 am on March 1 or there would be consequences then I don’t think general aviation would work.

Yeah, I get what you’re going for but let me give you an example of why renting can be more efficient than owning. A couple weeks back the oil change came due for my plane and since I work really hard during the week the only time I had time to do it would be the weekend. So I didn’t fly the following week and then did the oil change over the weekend and then didn’t have time to fly again until the following weekend. Yesterday I was at my plane updating databases after work but the GI 275 database update failed and so I’ll need to go back tomorrow. Last weekend I spent an hour under my plane cleaning oil residue off the belly. I flew a little that day (to do a VOR check) but spent more time cleaning than flying. I still need to send off the oil sample from the oil change and need to cut and inspect the filter. I’m trying to arrange a prop ECI inspection in the next week or two to clear an AD and am starting to prep for an annual in a month. I’ve got to research parts and order them as well as coordinate that with the mechanic. Like I said, owning a plane is a part time job. I also have a full time job to pay the bills and a family that needs attention. Add some training and it’s pretty difficult. I’d like a partner just so I could split all the plane work.

I would personally suggest getting your instrument rating before buying the Mooney because owning an airplane is a part time job and will likely make it more difficult to get the instrument rating over renting a plane. I know this from personal experience. Also with your instrument ticket and more hours your insurance rate will be better. There are a few people here who encourage people to buy their forever plane early, I’m not one of those people. I think a high performance and complex airplane like the 252 is too much plane for a newer pilot. I don’t disagree that it’s possible to do it safely but there is also a lengthy track record of low time pilots killing themselves in high performance planes. When you are a new pilot it’s easy to get task saturated and a plane like a 252 has a lot of extra tasks, especially when flying single pilot IFR. There will still be 252s around a year or two from now.

I did very similar upgrades but did the HSI first and then the ADI as phase 2. The HSI does not disappoint. My phase 3 is the autopilot and will complete my upgrades unless my older audio panel goes kaput.

Part of the issue is the yoke is aluminum which I think creates a higher chance of a problem. aluminum and thread lock can be a bad combo. The main reason I ended up using a small amount of thread lock was I tried tightening once without it and it came loose almost immediately. I agree there is some risk and would say if one uses it to use the absolute minimum amount you can. I understand that the yoke will not come off with the set screw loose but I absolutely can’t stand the feel of a loose yoke and I worry that it would create additional shock loads on the shaft. I have a couple hundred hours until my next yoke shaft inspection so I guess I’ll see then if I made a big mistake. What was the solution to getting the stuck set screw out?

How much thread locker was used? Did you just do the very end of the screw like I did?

That’s an understandable concern and I had the same thought. My solution was to only use the loctite on the last portion of the screw. So I screwed it in 75 percent put the loctite on the remaining 25 percent and tightened it down. I don’t expect it to be a problem removing it.

What makes you think you’re about to fail the yoke shaft inspection?

Mine was loose when I bought my plane. I reinstalled with loctite, tight but conscious not to over tighten. That was three years ago and haven’t had any issues since.

Or a GI 275! The functionality of an HSI is much better than a DG. If you have to spend money then it might make sense to bring the plane up to modern standards. Yes you spend more but you also increase the functionality and value of your plane as well. From my understanding if you go the AV30 you want the magnetometer. Lots of reports of precession issues without it.

What made you think a Missile would be a good starter plane? Hopefully you are just trolling us because a Mooney missile is the exact opposite of a good starter plane. If this wasn’t a joke please get working on your license and building some time in a nice Cessna or Piper before attempting to transition to the Mooney. There is a reason insurance is unavailable to students for high performance complex aircraft and it isn’t because insurance companies want to make you fly a boring Cessna 172 to ruin your fun and I’m not writing this because I want to be a buzz kill. If you were trolling then haha you got me. By the way, beautiful beach house, looks amazing!

I did the electric step when I removed the vacuum system from my plane. It has worked well with no issues.

I don’t have a clue what the issues might have been when you did your install but I will say the calibration for me was finicky. We had to do the process twice to get it to work. As far as I could tell there was no difference between the first attempt and the second. Just one time it didn’t work and the next time it did. Since then the fuel sender/gauge combo has been very reliable.

We should all be verifying there is fuel in the tanks before takeoff and to do that with the 52 gallon capacity tanks you need about 4-5 gallons to see the fuel when you pull the caps and look in. So 5 gallons should be the baseline because otherwise you are placing complete reliance on the fuel gauges to be accurate. If your fuel sender float sticks and your sump drain is leaking you could end up with much less fuel that the fuel gauge indicates, and this has been known to happen. A fuel totalizer is a third data point to manage fuel. I do all three - Visual check, accurate fuel gauges (CIES/aerospace logic) and use a fuel totalizer. Personally I like 8 gallons as a minimum.

Here is data from 68 G model, fuel capacity 52 gallons. Inboard senders only. Aerospace logic gauge.

You do not have outboard senders. The G model is the one mid body with only one set of inboard senders.

I am not an AP/IA but my understanding is you would need to plug the static air hose and then placard the auto pilot as INOP and get a logbook entry stating that the auto pilot was made INOP via whatever method and the aircraft is returned to service. Maybe someone else more qualified will come by and give you a more authoritative answer.

I agree when at sea level full rich is prudent and almost certainly doesn’t come with the power penalty you get when flying in Utah in the summer.