natdm

Hope you don't mind @Alexm. I'm at Willmar and couldn't help but try the new camera on this beauty. Edit: Looks like it's gone through *three* owner changes since this post. Jesus.

Anti-glare screen fixes this. Mostly.

I’m actually buying a Juki 9000c-FSH. I guess I could try something similar and not do sheep skin..

The gen2 pencil is great. Though I do hate the magnet. It popped off in pre-flight and I didn’t notice. Fell in the seat rail, and I was wondering why the seat wasn’t locking. Pencils all busted up now. I’ve also gotten a change in route and went to get the pencil and noticed too late that it’s vacated the iPad a few times, so I have to write with my finger which always looks illegible.

The best place to start is to have a good relationship with your mechanic, and ask the questions and note the answers. When I have an annual done, I have my mechanic thoroughly point out any work he wants to do, and why. The "I never work on it" thing is fine, but the "I just fly the plane" thing is probably not. You want to be able to fly the plane and know why certain things are the way they are. I'm nowhere near a mechanic, not even close, so you'd be better off with someone like Rich to help. So take all this with some caution because I'm not much more knowledgeable than you, I'm just starting.. But the steering horn can be seen here on page 109 and here at Lasar. . This is for an M20J but I believe most of the mid/long bodies are pretty similar. I was told parts of the steering horn tend to go bad or get bent after a while but it only affects steering, and was told to not worry about it. That said, I had complained about mine for 3 years before the mechanic finally commented that it was pretty bad. After my mechanic in AZ replaced that, Oasis Aero commented that I need oversized bushings and I believe, from what I saw, that's for the Support Truss Assembly in the diagram at the bottom of this page. I'm told all Mooneys tend to go bad with these parts and they need overhauled in time. Bad landings exacerbate the situation. I'm under no illusion that me buying the plane with 120 hours under my belt, and these two things going bad, are unrelated.

One of the more valuable things you could learn how to do is to create a new flight plan while having the current one still activating it, and then activating that plan when you're ready to go. A good example would be when you can't make the airport due to minimums, you're in the MAP hold, and you get instructions for a new plan. Adding these stops to the current one, IMO, is messy and a lot better to keep the hold activated for that FPL, and create a new one with the stops/waypoints mentioned by the controller. Then activate that when you're ready to go. The 430/530 and 650/750 have this feature.

I should have also taken a video of that, but I've been told by Eric that he needs the oversized bushing from Lasar, so my guess is it's the pivot bushing. I saw the part, I just can't find a diagram to point to what it was. He said he should be able to "patch" it a bit in a week, but the parts on backorder from Lasar and he might be able to get it by next annual (almost a year).

@N201MKTurbo is this what you mean? I've got Eric at Oasis repairing what he can of that next week. He said all Mooneys get bad but mine is 20x as bad as the next. The steering horn was just replaced by a Lasar one, so it's not that. He showed me it's the oversized bushings that are needed. Until then, "kicking the rudder" will fix it?

Sad but true. As long as you can show the 101 basics you'd pass. Even when I bought my plane and it had two 430's, I didn't get much from the ferry pilot either. It's really up to you to make sure you know your avionics, and the risks of going up while not knowing what to do when thrown a curveball. As mentioned before, AZ will overheat my iPad on departure, and has. I didn't want to get flustered and bust a Bravo because I was staring down at the 650 with question marks floating around my head, or have a traffic conflict. Obviously the first thing is to always fly the plane. Something better would be to prevent confusion as best as possible in the first place. I prefer the iPad, for sure -- ForeFlight is amazing. I do what I can on the 650/355/760 for the days when the iPad dies or overheats.

100% agree. I think one of the last flights I did to willmar was IMC the whole way and I was able to research airports, look at diagrams, find and switch frequencies, look at NOTAMS, runway analysis, etc, al on the 650 and G500 (the old one). Felt great, and also felt right. The iPad was just chilling on the next seat.

Re: The actual topic Anything you can learn on the Garmin GPS/Navigator Trainer apps for the 650 and 355, and the RealSimGear plugin for the 650, I can do, which is to say most of it. Given that the iPad Trainer apps exist, I'd hope everyone knows how to do everything available if they've got Garmin. Sadly I talked to a pilot the other day that didn't know how to add waypoints given to him by ATC while flying, and would just find them on ForeFlight and hand-fly it based on the iPad. Once I showed him you can tap on a current waypoint and click Add Before or Add After, his mind was blown. That's the kind of stuff you should know. That said, I'm a bit of a tech geek and I love learning this stuff. If theres things I didn't know out of the box, it was how the new equipment interfaces with the old equipment. What the G500 can do (it can set altitude capture and heading bug but can't do V/S), and how much of all this works on the KAP200 I have. I learned all that in visual conditions before taking it in IMC. Also I try my best to see how much of the tech in the plane I can utilize. @201er says he can do most of it on his iPad. That's great, and true, but I don't want to. Once the flight plan is ported over via Connext, I tuck it away. I think the first week I had the plane, I took off in the AZ heat and the iPad overheated and shut down. Even with all that technology (It had two 430's at the time), I got a little worried. I didn't like that and felt with all the tech available, I shouldn't be using the iPad for anything more than the planning and research stage. I can do all the needed research on the 650 now, and the Aera 760.

How many missions in life do you have that make it worth switching that often? The changes in most models can't be significant enough to make a new mission flight profile that dramatic and worth the pre-purchase inspection, training, etc.

@KLRDMD - Why so many planes? Just like switching it up? Seems like a lot of upgrades then downgrades. I'd consider the SR20 a downgrade from a lot of those. You could say "well it has a chute and it's fancy", but you also downgraded from an SR22.

Wish I could go, just not working out that way for me again.

@Vance Harral - @N201MKTurbo is right. I dropped in at about 9PM and they were super chill. Here's the route: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N226C/history/20240808/0258Z/06C/06C I just radio'd in, said I was over the Northbrook VOR and requested southbound, then northbound, along the VFR corridor at 1500 or lower. They were chill the whole ways and gave me notams when I was headed back to Schamburg for REIL's out. They also had a DA40 on flight-following that even at 60% power, I was overtaking.

I installed a 650xi and a 355, as a backup GPS. While it's nice that the 355 cross-fills to the 650xi and had connext built-in, I think it was a bit of a waste. In hind-sight, I'd rather a large screen 750xi, add connext to it, and get something like the 215. So, it doesn't help you much, but there's that.

I had a piper 160 at $85 wet for my PPL (2021). Even came with a partial power plant failure training session. You can still find cheap here. You just.. get what you pay for, and it’s a lot less now!

Just join some of the Mooney groups on Facebook. Their admins will "@everyone" some swag they personally sell, whether you like it or not. It made me leave but if you're all about it, go for it.

3rd for willmar. Just don’t interrupt that work they’re doing for me.

It's so so much more than I expected. I'm still paying $$$ for things that the pre-purchase shop never checked. I'm hoping it mellows out soon. People say the first 3 years are more expensive and it's true. I did also have an incident, which hurt financially but will be great for the long-run. Right now I put a percentage of my check in an account for aviation. As long as that's above a certain number, I'm good. If it gets to a higher number, I get some new toys in the plane. If it gets too low, I throttle back flying a bit. I refuse to make it more complicated than that.

Reviving an old thread. Anyone have any ideas for seat covers that aren't sheepskin but have the same summer-time effect? I've got sheepskin thanks to the previous owner ( @rainman ) but I just don't like the look (or the smell).. and I'm a vain person. The copilot seat has another rip in it and I'm just going to put a cover on it for now until I want to overhaul the seat.

Then why am I practicing full stall landings?? Thanks for the help.

I guess that leaves me more confused as I'd think adding heft to the gear legs would weigh it down more.

But *how*?

Time to derail this thread. Any idea how the 252+encore got a higher UL than the 231, which to my knowledge has less to weigh it down? Did something actually change or get taken out? Or did they just certify it higher after new tests?