William Munney

Ordered. Thank you. The wingtips are now too expensive to learn as you go..

Wow. When did the wingtip lenses get so expensive?? Can $376 per side be right?

Thanks Lance! Hey. Do you know if the position light on the tip of the tail will need an additional wire run or what they meant by that? Also, I’m pretty sure my landing/ taxi plexiglass has the metal retaining frame. No need for this? Just screw in the new ones and go?

Modern glass cockpits. Sheeeeesh

Rotten luck. Sorry to hear this.

Ha ha. They told me it would ship in 6-8 weeks and that THAT was being conservative. We’ll see. Everyone gets one mulligan. So far, they have been good to deal with. End of January is the new delivery date. I’m chipping away at a list I made when I bought the airplane. Might have a squishy brake deal to chase down as well.

I had a long list. They are not playing favorites. I’m new here so I don’t know who is who. I’m pretty sure that decision is still mine though.

I am re-doing my entire 1996 Ovation with Whelen G3 LED lighting. Every exterior light is being replaced with LED lighting minus the small white recognition lights on the back of the wing tips (no Whelen replacement yet) and the ice light in the fuselage. In fact, the package just arrived today. I’ll post some install pictures and the finished product when I am done. I called Whelen directly for advice and sent them pictures of the current configuration and they made sure I was ordering the correct part numbers and suggested some resellers. The order came with the Whelen Black Friday 15% discount which was a big help. My understanding is that the install is very easy and that an A&P must sign it off. Installing the LED beacon upside down on the belly of the Ovation may require a small bit of fabrication and the rear white strobe may need an extra wire run depending on if you intend to run it as a strobe or steady white/ strobe? Simultaneously, I am replacing the original plexiglass wing tips and the landing/ taxi light plexiglass covers with new. The original wing tips are bubbled by heat from the forward facing white lights on the nav light assembly and the taxi/ landing “glass” is chipped and cracked by 27 years of flying. Should be better than new, brighter and longer lasting. Air Power has delayed delivery of my IO550G by 6 weeks so I’m completing some projects until then: A full set of landing gear discs are on the way. The prop goes out for overhaul next week.

So, does this just sit on the floor inside the airplane? On the carpet? Sheet metal? Maybe baggage compartment shelf?

Great suggestions. Thank you. I’m in the upper Midwest in a non-heated hangar. Hey, at least it’s a dry cold.

Thank you. I’m just a bit hesitant to leave any heating device, other than the engine heater, cooking away in the hangar with no supervision. This sounds like a good idea with some testing time necessary.

Does anyone have any experience with the Tanis Cabin/Avionics Pre-heater? Did you install it yourself? Recommended? Sounds like a good idea to me.

Thanks all! I’ll start looking at both.

Folks: 1996 Mooney Ovation with integral O2 system. Which masks or cannulas do you recommend? Are regulators needed for each mask? Is there a a specific tip that’s required to connect the mask/regulator to the outlets on the overhead center panel? Happy Thanksgiving and Thanks all!

I don’t have the books with me. The red/maroon is “Claret”.

A few pictures as it sits waiting for the engine. These are after 9 hours of work with a buffer, wool pads and a heavy cutting compound. The bottom of the wings and fuselage still need done. The completed areas have a ceramic coat on them. Converting to all LED lighting. Doing the gear pucks and tires soon. Interior next.

Thanks John! A first good look around in there confirms what you have said. Ceiling center console is going to take some time. The remainder does not look too difficult. I bet that clean up, once the interior is removed will take a bit of time to do it right.

I’ll post some pictures as I go along for everyone. The airplane is down now for about 4 months waiting on the factory new IO550G and the prop so i thought this would be a good time to get to the interior but that may have to wait for last. Hector is out until 2025 and I want to get a feel for the scope of the interior project before i tear it all apart. The panel is done. Completely new. Garmin G500 TXi/ GTN 750 WAAS and 530 WAAS/ KFC 150/ L3 backup AI/ Remote Xponder/ Remote Bluetooth Audio/ Sirius XM Weather and music/ Flightstream/ Synthetic Vision and Terrain/ Onboard Charts/ Safe Taxi and a bunch of USB ports. I will do the LED lights conversion, the gear donuts, tires, and a new O2 bottle just before the engine arrives. My fuel tanks are getting stripped and resealed December 2024. 2025 will see paint and interior if I don’t do the interior sooner. This is todays plan. Ha ha

Gentlemen: I bought a new (to me) 1996 Mooney Ovation. One of the things I would like to do is refurbish the interior. It’s nice for 27 years old….but its 27 years old. Hector at Aero Comfort has informed me that they will no longer remove and reinstall the interiors for 2025. They want you to remove the interior, ship it to them, and then you have to reinstall it when you get it back. I like the one stop shopping solution but now if I am into the project for my labor I’m going to look into doing it all myself……..or source it locally. Has anyone removed an Ovation Interior? How hard was it and what kind of time did it take? Did you repair and repaint the “plastic” panels? How is it repaired and/ or painted? If not, who did you send it to? Insulation/ soundproofing: Does it get replaced? Seats: Who does them? How much? Where did you source the foam? How about the leather? Carpet: Same Headliner: Same Did you, or should you replace the windows while you are in there? Anything else to do while you are in there? I’m just getting started so any advice in any area is welcome. Thank you for your time.

Glass cockpits in general Aviation are simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen in GA. They are clearly better for a traveling airplane like most Mooneys but extremely expensive and very tricky to upgrade in some older installations like the factory installed G1000 or the Avidyne products in the Cirrus. What I see in the general aviation population are some nice airframes with panels heading towards obsolescence with no path forward……or a very expensive path forward. To be fair, I have flown most of my life with non-glass, non-RNAV, non-WAAS avionics in every kind of weather. A basic 6-pack of instruments and maybe an HSI. This includes a multitude of piston singles and twins, turbo-props, up to the Boeing 727 and MD DC9. It’s a safe as any other avionics package if you are proficient. However, todays glass avionics and autopilots for small airplanes are just fantastic and I highly recommend them. The amount and quality of information at your fingertips is amazing. Here is something else to consider. GPS navigation is the future. More specifically, WAAS GPS is the future. And soon, WAAS GPS with ground based augmentation for ILS-like approaches. The FAA FANS (Future Air Navigation Systems) programs ensure this. More and more ground based Nav aids will be decommissioned along with ground based Nav for instrument approaches. So, you have to be honest about how you use your airplane i suppose. If you are flying around your neighborhood, so to speak, and not in the clouds much I would not worry about any of this. But, if you are using your airplane as an IFR traveling machine, and planning on doing so for awhile, then all this is very important for the airplane’s present and future capabilities and for re-sale. For my use, I would only consider a Non-WAAS G1000 airplane at a large discount and plan on installing new Nav-comms. I don’t really see anyone presently offering discounts though. Otherwise, buy the analog panel with a modern GPS navigator and live happily ever after. I went through all this very recently before I bought my new (to me) Mooney Ovation. I must have talked to at least five avionics shops at length about analog panels, upgrade possibilities, WAAS vs Non-WAAS and first generation G1000 and Avidyne suites. I ended up buying a plane with a panel the previous owner had upgraded to Garmin glass even though it needed a new engine and a few other things……which STILL was less money than the panel would have cost me all by itself. The GA fleet has a big avionics bill coming due. It’s just a matter of who is going to pay for it.

I was asking around about installation of the Garmin auto-pilot. It is nearly impossible to get a line item summary estimate and a hard quote. And, the quotes range +/ to - $5000. Ridiculous. Then, they want 50% down and for you wait 6-9 months. What a racket.

Thanks for the recommendations all. I’m taking notes. I’m amazed at how expensive autopilot installs are…….and also the difference in quotes I am getting for the same work.

No idea how that duplicate post got in this topic. Sorry all.

166 vs 183. Still, I’m going to go with…..WOW….200 extra hours! Ha ha.

Looking for a trustworthy and fair avionics shop in the Midwest for a possible Garmin G500 autopilot install. Thanks all.