AndreiC

Tub o' towels works great for me in order to remove oil and grime. It does absolutely nothing for exhaust gray streaks. What do you guys use for that?

Don't give him access to 121.5, though!

Haha, this is an older picture of my panel... I no longer have the ADF (it was a doorstop anyway), the DME was moved from the far right side to under the KX155, I have a digital transponder now (KT76C), and the vacuum gauge has been moved to where the marker beacons were (the MB's were removed as well).

I don't have a Garmin indicator... it's just an old King CDI/ILS indicator. If that is what you were referring to. I don't think I could get much money for it, nor for my current DG. I already have GPSS installed. It's covered by the right side of the yoke in my picture, but it's there and I use it all the time.

Strange. After I land, most times I do not need to adjust the trim at all; the trim indicator is split about half-way by the top line of the marking on the side. (My transition training drilled the poem "flaps/flaps/mixture/switches/trim" into my head, and I do this after each landing; i.e., flaps up, cowl flaps open, mixture rich or leaned for ground ops, fuel pump and landing light off, trim adjust to take-off setting. But most times I do not need to adjust the trim at all.) I don't do touch and goes. If I am at my base field, where the runway is short (2900 ft) I always taxi back. If I am practicing at KMSN (10000 ft runway) I stop on the runway, do the poem above, and then go again. Too many touch and go incidents end up in gear ups.

Would look really weird with one square instrument in a whole panel of round ones...

My vacuum driven directional gyro is starting to show its age -- it drifts more than I would like if I do a couple of 360 degree turns. Whatever I install needs to have a heading bug to interface to my STEC 30 autopilot. Below is a pic of my panel. My options seem to be a) refurbish my unit (about $600 at Rudy's); b) install a new electronic unit (AV30C - $2200, GI275 -- $4500, plus install cost); c) find a used, good condition replacement unit for my vacuum unit (maybe some people are changing theirs with electronic ones and want to get rid of theirs?) I am a CB, and also not a huge fan of the newest electronic gadgets. I fly in instrument conditions maybe 5% of the time, and rarely hard IMC, so I don't see it justified to pay the cost to redo my panel any time soon. I don't think the added benefit of avoiding a (low risk) vacuum failure in IMC is justified -- my autopilot is independent of the vacuum instruments and could get me out of weather in a pinch. Plus I have a Stratus which provides an electronic AHRS on my iphone if all else fails. What do people recommend?

No, sorry, I realize now that what I wrote is confusing. My KIAS was about 130, if I recall correctly (I did not write this down). The GNS 430W has a TAS calculator, where you plug in your altitude, altimeter setting, air temp, indicated air speed and it calculates for you the corresponding true air speed. The 152 kts was the calculated TAS from my indicated airspeed, after all the corrections. So it *should* have been my actual airspeed if my ASI was showing correctly. Compared to the TAS calculated from three GPS readings at 90 degrees each, and inserted in this calculator here http://www.csgnetwork.com/tasgpscalc.html the TAS computed from what the ASI shows was about 6 kts fast.

I would be quite concerned about the plan to save money by owning a Mooney for the purposes of training, even if you already have the PPL. First of all because flying a complex aircraft is (as the name says) more complicated than a simple trainer. But also the cost of insurance and cost of annuals will be *much* higher than for a regular trainer. I owned Piper Cherokees for twenty years before my current Mooney. I am very happy with the switch to Mooney, but only because I plan to keep the Mooney for a long time and I am willing to pay for the advantages it offers. If saving money per hour was my first concern, the Cherokee would beat the Mooney hands down; probably overall costs would be almost exactly 1/2: -- the Cherokee did not have an airframe that could corrode easily, so I felt alright to keep it parked tied down outside with only a cover; the Mooney needs to be hangared. This costs 4x as much. -- annuals for the Cherokee were a (long) one day affair, costing roughly $1200. The first annual for the Mooney was closer to $3k, and I don't expect the next few to be much lower. -- insurance (and I am in the sweetest spot possible, instrument rated, >150 hours in type, >1200 hours total, no claims) is 3x as much as it was for the Cherokee. If you plan to buy the plane long term, make it yours, and improve it slowly as you go, by all means buy a Mooney and, on the side, do your IR and Commercial in it. It is very nice to be very familiar with every button in the plane, to know the exact flight characteristics, etc. But as a financial savings vehicle... definitely not sure of it.

I live very close to Aeromotors (like 50 miles away), and they overhauled my pump. Very fast turnaround and excellent service. Highly recommended.

Alright, I have more data points. I just completed yesterday and the day before two flights of around 3 hours each. I tried different settings to see what changes. The flights (KEFT-KJWN and back) were conducted at 9500 and 6500 feet, respectively. The overall point-to-point average was 143 knots, and this includes the climb/descent times. On the way out ForeFlight said I had a 7-8 knots tailwind, on the way back the winds were roughly calm. Moving my seat back as far as it could go (basically flat against the rear bench) gave me another 2-3 knots. The trim indicator was close to (but not quite at) the nose down stop, so I guess I had a fairly far aft cg. Running at 50F ROP (10.8 gph) gave me a lot of speed increase, about 8-9 extra knots over peak (9.3 gph). When leaning I used the strategy described above, where to lean to peak I was making sure all cylinders were lean of peak, while when running ROP I made sure all cylinders were over 50F above peak. I don't know why the difference in speed was this large, it is not justified by the calculated difference in power output. This would be interesting to try to hear opinions from others why it happens. All the cylinders stayed nice and cool, CHTs in the 335 range for three cylinders, and 355 range for the highest one (#2). Also, it appears my airspeed indicator is showing somewhat on the high side. Doing everything above to get speed (seat back, max power) I managed to squeeze 146 knots out of the airframe, calculated with a 3 direction GPS measurements (at 90 degrees compass headings). The calculated indicated airspeed at 9500 feet, ISA+10, 10.8 gph was 152 knots. So probably my ASI shows 6-7 knots fast. All measurements were done at WOT/RAO/2550 RPM. I was probably 300 lbs under gross. I am wondering if the numbers above strike everyone as expected, or some of you see them as wrong in any way (for example I was puzzled by the high fuel flow at peak).

I got the impression from reading other threads (but I may be wrong, and am curious what others think about this) that running an engine way past TBO increased the chances that some expensive parts inside the engine would need to be replaced at overhaul (crank out of machining limits, for example), costing more money to do the overhaul. Is this accurate or an old wives tale?

As many have said above, $65k is high. The big question marks for me if I were looking at this plane (I’m not) would be if there is any corrosion in the airframe (biiig question — this could be game over) and if the engine will need to be immediately overhauled due to sitting outside for a while. If a mouse made its nest around the tube structure and peed there, it will cause corrosion (big money to fix, most planes with corrosion are trashed). If the camshaft got pitted from sitting, it’s overhaul time ($40-50k). So your best bet would be, as suggested, to sink some money into it in the hope the news will be good. Get a good mechanic to check for corrosion, and do an annual, fly it 50-100 hours and you may be able to sell it, in annual, for perhaps $75-85k?

Even in climbs I do not see CHT’s over 370, so I hope my misadventures did not damage anything. But thanks for the advice, I will keep it in mind. (My concern was that as I now understand it, by running at peak but using the leanest cylinder as reference, ai may have been running with a few cylinders 20 ROP, which is bad.) I’ll adjust my leaning procedure. My EDM-700 reports a difference of about 50F between the highest and lowest EGT. Is this what the GAMI spread is?

This is what has been puzzling me too. Maybe the key words here are "provided you use the richest cylinder". I have been leaning using my EDM 700, stopping when the first EGT peaks. This (I guess) means that I am using the *leanest* not the richest cylinder. I hope operating this way has not damaged something in my engine (I always run well below 75%, closer to 70% or 65%). But next time I go I will try to use the richest cylinder for leaning to peak. Question: when going for 100 ROP, do you use the richest or leanest cylinder for reference?