LardLad

Thank you for fixing the spam flood!

Probably not your problem, but I had a similar issue once that turned out to be my beat up carpet getting tangled up around the base of the johnson bar. This was remedied by a new checklist item to take a close look at the floor before takeoff for carpets, water bottles, ipads, or anything else you're about to smash into the mechanism. In any case, if you have a rough time getting the gear up I'd suggest trying to get it back down and come back to the airport to have a look. I didn't in the flight I'm talking about above, I just said "why is this so dang hard today" and forced them up. Seems like a pretty dumb thing to do after you think about it for a minute though, just too focused on performing the flow check and staying out of the terrain I guess.

Article on kitplanes.com says the same: While a new airplane can be certificated as an LSA with a stall speed up to 61 knots VS0, a Sport Pilot is limited to flying airplanes with a maximum stall speed of 59 knots in the clean configuration (VS1). This means that some newly designed, higher-performance LSAs may require a pilot to hold a private pilot certificate or higher to legally fly them.

That's definitely right, you can't change the certification of your plane. But LSA pilots operating without a medical right now can fly a J-3 cub because it falls inside the restrictions for light sport pilots. It will be the same as that, flying a Mooney under the same old certification and maintenance requirements but without the need for a medical and some different limitations.

I've got a question for the CFIs around here. There was a cfi-s that nobody ever really used before because only training sport pilots would be weird. As far as I can tell from a glance at the cfr( https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-61/subpart-K ) you didn't need a commercial license or even a medical to get rated as a cfi-s? Am I reading this right, that now a cfi-s will be able to teach in a Mooney or Cessna without getting a commercial rating or second class medical first?

Sure seems like it, but you'd then be limited to one passenger and below 10k or 2k agl and whatever other limitations sport pilots have.

That sure does look like the case. What in the world does that *mean* though I wonder? Maybe it's meant to be like retractable and variable pitch where sport pilots would need an endorsement to fly the higher speed sport aircraft? I haven't found the specifics but I'm assuming all of us with private pilot licenses probably get waved through that, or I guess at the worst just take your friendly local cfi up for an hour and get some logbook entries.

Sadly it looks like there is no path to us all enjoying that repairman certificate and doing our own annuals. I think Mooney could build my m20c next year, identical to what it is, and that plane could be registered light sport and somebody could get a repairman cert for it. They explicitly blocked any path to change registration types or anything for this purpose though, as far as I can tell. Not that I want to do that personally, was just hoping to see some of that bizarre red tape go away.

I've been confused about this too, it might be both but 61 in landing config is mentioned in a bunch of places: FAA considered all comments and has decided to increase the maximum stall speed eligibility requirement in § 22.100(a)(3) from the proposed 54 knots CAS VS1 to 61 knots CAS VS0 for special airworthiness certification of light-sport category airplanes.29 The 61 knot CAS VS0 is a compromise between the proposed stall speed that would provide lower kinetic energy for survivable emergency landings and one that could achieve safe operations of heavier airplanes allowed by this rule, as discussed in the following paragraphs. Though most commenters favored either a 58 knot CAS VS1 or a 54 knot CAS VS0 or higher, the same safety justification for raising the maximum VS to any of these values can also be applied to 61 knots CAS VS0 with equal validity.

As far as I can tell Mooneys are now (all?) able to be flown under light sport with the only real limits being 4 seats and 61 knots or lower stall speed in landing config? Well, I guess not the Mustang... But anyway, does this matter? I guess if you let your basic med lapse you can still fly under 10k until you finish the paperwork? Is that pretty much it for those of us already holding a private? https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/MOSAIC_Final_Rule_Issuance.pdf Wonder how this impacts new planes built under this standard. Specifically curious if, like current LSA, you'll be able to change factory built planes into experimental category with some basic paperwork. We could be seeing shiney new experimental 182s?

Yeah, seems like I misread a couple regs when I was diving down that rabbit hole a while back. Appreciate the correction @toto

Huh, I don't know now, you might be right.

I'm young-ish and perfectly healthy but going basicmed this time just out of fear of this situation. At some point my worrying about this is going to drive my blood pressure up above threshold just for the AME. Having given it some thought I see three basic ways around this while you wait for your special issuance: 1) ultralights 2) powered glider and the most practical 3) Hire a cfi to fly your plane with you Going option 3 you can't log PIC time but I think that's the only restriction. Then you'll keep from getting rusty and probably avoid a surprise in your insurance rate when your yearly flight time nose dives for the next rate quote. This is probably common knowledge for those of you already on basicmed, but I just recently learned there really isn't a denial for basicmed. So if you've got some issue at exam time nothing goes to the faa, they just don't sign the paper. Then you can work with your doctors to correct it or if it's something insane just find a less annoying doctor to try again. I'll happily drive across the border to avoid that kind of stress. Good luck!

There isn't a ton of model specific stuff to watch out for, the big ticket items are corrosion, engine condition, avionics, etc. that apply to any plane. The only C model stuff I can think of are landing gear disc condition, leaky wet wing, whether or not the original PC wing leveler is still installed and if so then it's condition, and the potential for a recurring 100 hour eddy current inspection on the prop. None of those are anything like a "deal breaker", just the only Mooney/Ranger specific things I can think of.

If you haven't had any luck yet, try to clarify with your insurance. I've got an m20c and they asked for same make and model, but when I pushed them to define that it turned out they were ok with the whole type code of M20P which is c,e,f and g at least. That opened up the cfi options in my area a quite a bit.