TangoTango

When I shopped Avemco this year, they quoted per-person sublimits, not per-passenger. I was surprised by this, and wondered if a potential claimant on the ground might be more aggressive in pursuing restitution than someone who made the decision to get in the airplane...

As long as you start with a big one, you can remove pages until it's just right

That's not been my experience, but one of my bases is an FAA tower. I suspect wherever you're based will be friendliest, as they recognize your comings and goings and get used to working with you.

Thanks for the tip, I just bought their last one and am waiting on shipping. I'd never dealt with Preferred Airparts; they were nice folks and had a surprisingly broad inventory with prices I found comparable to the competition. Their $20 order minimum suckered me right in though

My plane has had Hubba Hubba Caps on the mains for years according to the 337, and at annual I noticed a definite difference in cleanliness inside the wheel hub between those and my nosewheel (which does not have a cover). They definitely help prevent wear inside our (very expensive) wheels. My caps are older and unpainted so they have yellowed - LANCECASPER's are newer and look very nice.

I wonder if the problem was congestion on the Garmin end of the pipe. If enough people are downloading chart updates at the same time, maybe it slows down until you try again at a less congested time? For what it's worth, I use the GP on Android and never have any trouble downloading chart updates. Maybe Garmin hosts those updates on a different server. I suppose it's also possible Garmin uses some kind of regional hosting solution for update data and some regions get more congested than others.

I just ran a full report valuation on my airplane, and I am unimpressed. The full report is emailed to you quickly, and the first page is the "Report Summary" which includes lots of incorrect performance specs (it wasn't smart enough to catch the 2900# gross weight on later J models, it quotes takeoff and landing distances that can't be attained at 2740# or 2900# on an isa day, and it states the M20J range is only 700nm) and an "executive brief" with lots of adjectives. It also includes a "Base Value", but there is no description of how they arrived at that number (are avionics and hours included in this? It doesn't appear so) The second page is the "Windsock Value Deep-Dive" with a note that it uses a separate model and "does not indicate exact results but should be used as a rough sense for explaining why the model breaks down the way it does". This has lots of inputs with numbers attached, but very little description of how they work. For instance, it added $4,189.47 for "Aircraft Capabilities" and $5,751.79 for "Aircraft History" (these are separate from avionics and airframe time), and it included a $0.66 adder for an engine 150 hours from TBO (I guess the model assumes TBO as the baseline and adds $0.66 for the last 150 hours?). There is no total line on page 2, but if you add the adders up mine came out over 10% higher than the estimate on page 1. Some of the statistics on later pages are interesting, but the whole thing has a little too much AI for me to trust. I'll keep using Jimmy Garrison's guide.

I've lost FIS-B updates for a bit while traversing one of these areas, and the weather data just got stale until I regained coverage. As stated above, it isn't the entirety of the NOTAM area, and it isn't every time. It's occasionally annoying, but so far it hasn't been so annoying that I've changed mission plans or paid for Starlink / XM.

100% agree. I've never regretted the purchase of a quality tool. In fact, I like to joke around the house "he who dies with the most tools wins." It's only kind of a joke.

I'm feeling good about my decision to use Garmin Pilot now. If that story is true, it will be the beginning of the end for Foreflight.

Definitely low 140ktas in cruise, not climb. At those altitudes it's beneficial to climb pretty close to vy as long as you can keep it cool, which I usually have no trouble with. We were going for endurance on that trip since we had a good tailwind and weather concerns. At 2700 RPM and ROP you would likely gain a little bit, but my bird won't get 157ktas at 15.5.

We cruised from Phoenix to Dallas in our J at 15,500' earlier this past summer. With two aboard, full tanks, and bags, we were probably a little north of 2700# and it did fine. Climb rate was getting below 300 fpm toward the top, but we were isa plus a lot. I even pulled it back to 2500rpm, leaned to peak, and got low 140ktas. I wouldn't call it "mushy", it just felt like it normally does at lower indicated airspeeds. I did note that while it was cool and smooth, we still got about +/-10 knots of mountain wave while maintaining that altitude over NM. Still had plenty of margin over vy. For what it's worth, I routinely lean to takeoff EGT all the way up (17.5gph at sea level) and have no cooling issues with cowl flaps full open unless I sustain a vy climb for a long time in hot conditions. This time of year I could do it indefinitely.

I used the "Sunguard" brand static cling shades from Aircraft Spruce. Probably overpaid compared to the Amazon one, but it works well and gets a lot of use by passengers on long XC. They can put it exactly where they want it and move it around as needed, even double it up if desired. Also when I have passengers in the back seat, a cheap 12/24v heated blanket is a big hit when it gets colder.

According to the link below, it looks like a lot of small changes were made between the B and C, the most substantive of which were made to increase useful load: Design Changes in Mooney M20C Make sure it is between serial # 1701 and 1924. Before that are the wooden wing & tail Mooneys that require the requisite experience. Mooney Model Chronology I suspect parts availability would be much improved with a C model, but maybe somebody here with B model experience can attest to that.

Looks like field approval only? https://mooneyspace.com/topic/3700-extended-baggage-compartment/