Jeff Uphoff

It's not East Coast, but it's not a bad flight in a Mooney, either: I've done my two most recent pre-buys with Don Maxwell in Gladewater, Texas and had (knock wood) good outcomes. He found a substantial number of squawks on the Ovation I'm now flying, which the previous owner paid to have fixed.

I took my Ovation lower cowl off solo today--I lay down under the plane and dropped it down onto myself. I didn't dare try putting it back on solo, though--not after having it repainted barely over a week ago! I got help. (There were three of us, which made it easy. Two would have been doable but more difficult.) --Up.

After all the exterior cleaning yesterday, I went this route today--took off both cowls (the lower one is a two-if-not-three-person affair on the M20R), went over everything, scraped out the induction intake, inspected the filter, etc. The mess was indeed confined to that intake. (The gear wasn't down yet when I hit the bird, so no chance of damage to it--it was clean.) I could do without any more of these sort of nocturnal surprises! --Up.

I should have included this picture with my post. Note: things cleaned up nicely with a wash mitt and some Ivory soap, leaving only some feathers behind deep down in the induction intake that I'll fish out with something else.

No part of the bird entered the engine compartment: it wasn't the cooling inlets that got feathered; rather, it was the (filtered) induction intake down low on the nose, just in front of the gear doors. The engine itself is clean. The initial point of impact was below the cooling inlets.

I hit a smallish bird the other night (in the dark!) at ~4000' AGL in my 2000 Ovation at about 160KTAS (on approach). The blood streak started just below the point of my spinner, went between two of the prop blades, down the cowling, and across the engine intake, where a bit of feathery gore was left behind. I've cleaned all the surface mess up, but I can see some bits of bloody feathers deep down in the engine intake--looks like the edge of the intake took off the tip of the bird's wing. My question: given everything ran fine after the strike--I landed within about 10 minutes, and the engine was running fine--I'm guessing it should be OK to fly the 40nm to my local shop to get things taken apart, perhaps a new induction filter put on, etc.? Given there are no big "chunks" down in the intake, a few bloody feathers shouldn't be a problem? Thoughts? Thanks! --Up. -- N194V, 2000 M20R, KROA