Sue Bon

Love that plane. Love that name!

I've had to wait a couple of times for parts to be found and then shipped from the US. It's a minor inconvenience, but well worth having a Mooney.

I absolutely love this photo. It should be something... A movie poster? Our banner? I don't know, but this photo is... just... captivating...

I don't know about you, but for me the photos always look so much more benign than when you're actually up there... manoeuvring around them... Were you VFR?

I had this problem for a while, but with banking to the left. My maintainer fixed it by trimming the rudder.

I flew to Biarritz, then north to Deauville - Normadie, east to Saarbrücken and then home with basically the same view Hours and hours for three days of nothing but high fog to the horizon in every direction. It was eerie...

He's a very experienced flight instructor and apparently a super nice guy. I think that he could't believe it happened to him -- or at least with him in the right seat. This was a familiarisation flight into a tricky airport. Notice that there is no chance for a go around. They were both so focused on not messing up the approach that they completely tuned out the gear alarm.

That's ok. @Mooney in Oz and @Joshua Blackh4t can see them correctly!

Granola bars, water, oxygen boost, batteries.

Haha! I love the fuzzy dice!

Back in April I got this beauty of a briefing. The NOTAMs were 20 pages long, at least in plain English, and very repetitive. It was a challenge to get through. I wish I had a relief pilot to hand it over to. LOWS-LZIB HBDFA 05-APR-2024 1200 Bonforte ROCKETROUTE.pdf

Didn't @Jose Jo just buy an N reg? He's based in Portugal. Maybe he can help...

This happened to me for my PPL check ride. It was so unnerving! At the end, the guy complained about my American accent when I spoke on the radio. He said it made me sound like I knew what I was talking about when I really had no clue. Afterwards, my actual examiner pulled me aside and told me to ignore that guy. He said, "you sound very professional on the radio, but you're just starting out. Don't ever be afraid to ask for help if you need it."

Come to Switzerland! It's much cheaper here! Narrator: Sue was lying, of course. She's actually crying in her coffee reading about $650 annuals.

Hi! It's been a while. Welcome back

I, for one, really do like to know what's going on with the global (or mainly US) Mooney fleet and what is happening with other pilots and owners. I very much appreciate all the effort @1980Mooney puts into laying out the information available and sharing with us what happened. Even if the discussion doesn't go further than some observations from MS members that have visited the field or know the pilot/owner, it's really helpful for me to be reminded that these things happen pretty regularly and to not get complacent in my own flying.

I've had the opposite problem this year. Rain and TS basically every day. If I'm not available for the maybe two nice hours in a three week span, then I don't fly for weeks on end. Last year was so nice! I've flown less than half of the hours I'd flown by this time last year. It's so frustrating that I'm also wondering if maybe I should just do something else. It's almost impossible to stay current with these weather conditions. But I really do love to fly and can't imagine life on the ground. Maybe next year will be nice again.

OMG, you sound exactly like my Examiner on my last check ride! They're not allowed to pull circuit breakers, but even without that, he put me through the wringer! It was the toughest check ride I've had yet...

For the record.... I didn't mean something like that would never happen to me because I'm an IFR pilot in VFR weather. I agree that the pilot kept his cool and responded to ATC and got out of a harrowing situation safely. I was wondering about his planning while he was still on the ground. It is important to ask for help if you need it. It is important to be able to hand fly your airplane and to respond to ATC and let them help you. It's even better to not get into a dangerous situation in the first place. Pre-flight planning goes a long way in that regard.

I tend to agree. I'm an IFR pilot, but mainly in VFR weather. I will never fly if I know I'll be going down to minimums. I haven't checked, but I am curious what the weather forecast was for his destination on the day of his flight. If he had programmed his GPS wrong and was in IMC to minimums, that would be harrowing. Especially if not current in said conditions. Things can get overwhelming quickly.

I don't have a step. It is a bit uncomfortable -- especially when you have passengers who don't know what flaps are. I've started putting the flaps all the way down before letting pax get in, and stressing multiple times, only step on the black part.

That's nothin' for @EricJ in his '77 J!

I found some... MS uploads photos in random order so the order you should try to look at is (1) the one with all the snow/ice, then (2) the end of the snow/ice, the beginning of ground, (3) the airport in about the middle of the photo, you can see two little buildings, which are actually two giant hangars, (4) the runway on approach

There's basically nothing around for hours except snow and horizon and places you definitely cannot land in case of emergency, and then you see a little landing strip off in the distance. The little landing strip obviously becomes a big runway, but it looks so small at first. It's just out there all by itself, with a few houses next to it, surrounded by nature for as far as you can see. I was trying to find pictures, but my impulsivity got the best of me one night. The trip was one of the worst experiences of my life due to the guy sitting in the left seat, so I deleted a bunch of stuff that I now wish I had kept.

A friend of mine met some friends of his in Alaska. My friend was flying a C340 and his friends had a 252. The Mooney flew directly from Canada (not sure where) to Reykjavik while the 340 had to get fuel in Greenland. I think the Mooney flew for something like 12 or 13 hours. That's a hard pass from me. Plus the landings in Greenland are spectacular.