Hank

There has been some discussion on the forum lately that I can't find [granted, it may have been on one of the MAPA mailing lists] about 3-blade props and whether they are the same or shorter than the 2-blade models. I'm in annual right now, and I took a ruler to my prop while the spinner is off. Granted, it's a ruler, and I had to measure the diameter across the middle, so allow a little tolerance both for the squint factor there and for general measurement error everywhere. There may be a little additional induced error because I left the paper in the hangar, but I still came pretty close with this re-creation. See the picture below for details. Pretty much comes to 74" when measured to 1/8" accuracy. The center is 5¾" in diameter, more or less. So we have 32¼ + 1-7/8 + 2-7/8 = 37" from center to tip; 37 x 2 = 74" diameter. It's just not as easy to measure as a 2-blade. Seems my scratchpad at the hangar last night came up to ~73-3/8 or so; I'll double-check the numbers tomorrow.

In these limited conditions, my choices in order are: 1) Interstate highway. It's wide, flat and in an uncongested area may be traffic-free. No power lines, few signs and pretty straight and level. 2) Relatively flat ground, plowed, planted, whatever is available. Short crops [beans, cotton] are preferred, because corn, wheat, etc., are tall enough to mask many surface undulations. Pastures are nicely clear but often use second-quality land that is bumpy, rutted, holed and gullied [can I verbify those nouns?] as well as being slanted sideways to my intended approach. 3) In mountainous terrain, I'll take what I can get, but most level places are occupied on the east side of The River. Rivers and lakeshores provide options if you treat the shoreline like the runway edge and ditch as close as possible, but few mountain rivers are suitably wide, deep enough and rock-free.. Traditional 4-lane divided highways are way down on my list, just after "full-stall flare into the treetops" because of the proliferation of roadsigns, power lines, poles, mailboxes, etc. My wingspan is 36'; most traffic lanes are 10-12' wide, and shoulders are often no more than 3' toward the median and 6-10' toward the outside, giving 29-37' [often less] between the reflector posts. All it takes is one roadsign or mailbox 4x4 to completely ruin your rollout with a violent skew toward the impact. I remember reading about a poor soul who put a Mooney down in the treetops at night two or three years ago, southern Alabama/Georgia/N. Florida area. After daylight he climbed down, walked around, found a house and used their phone to call 911. I've also read recently about someone in Virginia who tried putting a long-body down on a dirt road between a plowed field and the woods, and hit a tree, spinning into the rest of them. The crops might damage the gear or the belly, but is unlikely to bash in the wing; with my plane, either would total it out, but I know which one would most likely hurt me more--sudden stops are to be avoided at all cost.

The only mention of slipping that I can find in my book is: "To preclude fuel starvation, avoid extreme sustained side slips toward the tank in use when that tank contains less than 36 pounds of fuel." But with proper airspeed control around the pattern, and a nice visual descent, slipping is not necessary, to say nothing of "extreme" slips; before attempting an "extreme sustained side slip" in either direction, I would opt for a go-around. No, I don't frequent one-way fields, but I did drive to see one, once.

Quote: jetdriven What do the FARs and the AIM say? Not only about right of way but patterns in general?

Could you post pictures of the LASAR and Rosen visors? I'm curious as to how different they are from my own, apparently non-stock visors installed by a previous owner. For the price, they should be the cat's meow.

I'll use whichever is easier based on the direction of my approach: - from the same side as downwind: 45º entry - from the opposide side as downwind: midfield crossover; at short fields like home [3001'], crossover at the numbers. For practice approaches, I'll breakoff at some point depending on traffic and either miss or join the pattern; if there's no one around, straight in. Other than that exception, I don't like straight-ins, as not many places I go have VASI/PAPI lights. Flying a regular pattern is much better. If towered and operating, I don't often have much of a choice.

Love your shirt, Sven--looks like good traveling attire! Wearing it near home would also turn it into sleeping attire, trying to stay warm on the porch . . . I used to favor "nose heavy flies poorly, tail heavy flies once" as an RC pilot, now I prefer "fly as if your life depends on it--because it does."

Quote: JimR

To each his own. I have neither reason nor opportunity to fly over much more water than the Ohio River, and if I can't glide to the bank [where airports seem to be concentrated] then I have serious problems. "Hostile terrain" is a very vague definition. Surely looking down at the Badlands counts as hostile, as does the NC/TN border. More people live in the latter, but the former is probably easier to make a forced landing simply because it is much closer to being flat, while surviving the post-crash period would be easier in the latter. At night, neither one would be friendly to forced landing. I operate regularly in the Appalachians, and hope to reach the Rockies again in my [single-engine] plane some day. Many factors preclude private operation of twins: acquisition cost; maintenance cost; operating expense; need bigger hangar; need additional training & certification; ongoing additional training requirements; etc., etc. For myself, they ALL apply, along with others that I'm not thinking of right now. "Ditching at night" is not something that I worry about, as the odds are stacked very high against it ever happening [after all, it requires a large body of water]; "forced landing at night" is something I hope happens in good VMC if it ever occurs; "night IMC" to me sounds much more risky than "night flying," which after all I did as a student pilot. As far as cold northern water, it is at its warmest in late summer; the coldest swim I ever had was mid-June in Canada, but it was really good incentive to learn really fast how to handle a canoe. The Great Lakes are never warm . . .

Barry is actually doing what my Owner's Manual says to do, but I'm conservative enough that I switch tanks pretty much every hour. Don't have to remember to "note the time" since my wind-up clock in the yoke has the movable red hands, and it's on my Run-Up checklist to set them to match the moving white hands. Every time the minute hands are close, I look for an airport and when I'm near enough to it, I lean down and switch the lever. But anyway, when using the "book" method above, the extra fuel burned in the climb just gives you additional margin of safety to not run out of fuel as soon. Making a cruise-power descent will also increase your ground speed, buying more margin yet against the time-based method.

Three things live on my kneeboard: 1. Nav log 2. Destination diagram 3. Checklists I make notes all over the nav log--ATIS, clearance, reroutes, frequency, WHO the freq is, etc. Everything stacked in this order. There's no room to keep a notebook full of checklists, I wrote my own in landscape format, laminated and folded to fit perfectly on Sporty's little VFR kneeboard. That stuff needs to be somewhere accessible and visible. Ward, where does your navlog, clearance, ATIS, etc., stay during flight if not on your knee?

Quote: Parker_Woodruff 28 GPH sounds low...My 210 hp (about to be 220) M20K takes 24ish... Heck, I think a Bravo (with lesser horsepower) is something like 30-31 GPH on takeoff.

Hmmm, what did someone say about airplane design being a series of compromises? Change prop, experience RPM-restriction speed loss. Install turbo, regain lost speed, increase operating altitude, experience higher fuel burn and increased maintenance. Guess you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

And the low compression, too, even on our "high compression" aircraft engines. In a car, 8.7:1 is considered "low compression." My 4-cylinder automobile runs ~2500 RPM with the cruise set on the interstate, a condition that it should maintain for a long, long time. So far, driving conditions are much more mixed than what my airplane sees, and it's gone 192,400+ miles and still going strong. That's where a good chunk of my avgas budget comes from. But I still love my Lycoming!

"The next time your at your hangar, look at your airplane from the front and get a sight picture of hom much bank angle it would take to drag a wing tip with the gear down (imagine the wing as a seesaw with one of the mains as the fulcrum). I suspect I suspect the angle is a lot more than the mental picture you have in your head." Walk up to the wing tip, put your finger on your belly where the leading edge hits it; then walk to the wing root, and put a finger from your other hand on your leg where the leading edge hits it. That's the vertical amount. Wingspan = 36 feet; cabin width ~ 3½ feet => wing length = 16 feet or so. Going from memory, approx. 2' higher at tip than root. That means: bank angle = sin^-1(2/16) = 7º before your wing is level; to touch you will have to bank an additional amount equal to the gear length, which is also about 2 feet. The gear are 9' apart, or 4½' from the centerline, leaving 13½' of wing outside the wheels. Here comes more math: add'l bank = sin^-1(2/13½) = 8½º So to touch a wingtip, you need 7 + 8½ = 15½ degree bank at touchdown. I've never looked at the Art. Hor. when landing in strong crosswind, but maybe you could have a passenger check it out, or mount a video camera that would include part of the panel [Dave Morris, are you reading this?] and see how you are actually banking. Personally, I doubt this would happen. I've done wind 50º left of the runway at 20G28 [15-21 knot crosswind component], loaded heavy on vacation with my wife; no problem other than using lots of runway, because it was my first strong crosswind, but there were 8000' available. Taxiing worried me, though, as I had to turn right for the taxiway, then taxi downwind. Saw a few other landings while tying down that were much, much worse than my own. Like everything else related to flying, it's all about practice, practice, practice. Start with a good Mooney CFI.

Quote: N4352H And Hank multiplied. Your math is fuzzy. It should be: 5000-1000(arrive at TPA). To loose 4000 feet going two miles a minute, choose your decent rate or distance out. 1000 feet per minute 4 mins/8 miles out, 500fpm 8 min/16 miles out. Faster/slower..interpolate. As mentioned earlier in the thread, if you have a G430, the V-nav function kicks butt. I put it in first Nav window of my 430.

I'll have to play with the Garmin vnav function. So far, it's been very easy to count thousands of feet from TPA to cruise, double that number, add 2 or three, and start down that many minutes out. If you've got a GPS that will give ETE, "distance out" is not needed, you've got time left and a descent rate in feet per minute--converting minutes to miles is not easy to do in your head, and it varies tremendously with wind direction/strength. If you want less than 500 feet per minute, triple the thousands of feet number. The key is to hold your descent rate pretty close to target, let the speed build [i walk the throttle and mixture during descent to maintain cruise MP/EGT all the way down]. From 10,000 cruise to 1600' pattern is 8½ thousand feet, or 17 minutes, so I'll start down around 20 minutes out, which is generally 50+ miles. If you're up in turbo territory, this may not work as well, but it works pretty good for me. When IFR, you can ask for descent, but it's pretty controlled in my limited experience.

No, I'm not left-handed. BUT I switched my kneeboard to 'the other knee' when flying the Mooney. In the Slowhawk trainer, right leg/right hand; in my Ranger, left leg/right hand. Try it before spending maintenance/fuel money on a fancy kneeboard. Also, there's no way I would put an iPad on the yoke--the Pad it too big, the yoke is too close.

Several comments: I read somewhere recently that the electric trim takes ~25 seconds to raise from full-flap/full UP trim to proper go-around position. Those of us with manual trim only need a few seconds [5? 8?] to move the full range. Thus the continuing discussion about go-around technique and trim. There's no free lunch, and this is the price to pay for having the trim available at your left thumb. Also, for a normal IAP, I put in Takeoff Flaps whenever I slow to 90 knots; when I am 1-1½ dots high on the glideslope, I drop the gear but make neither power nor trim changes, and that will bring me down the glideslope. With no vertical guidance, I drop the gear at the FAF and make no power nor trim changes except as needed to reach 500 fpm down to minimums or breakout. From breakout/visual acquisition, it's a normal landing. My normal procedures are no-flap takeoffs except when loaded heavy, with Trim set at the top of the Takeoff mark; and Takeoff-flaps for landings, varying flaps & power on final to maintain desired visual glide angle. (I.e., Takeoff flaps during the IAP or on downwind; on final, manage yoke, throttle & flaps together for desired descent.) Your POH may have different procedures, but this matches my Owner's Manual, my CFI and my CFII, and it works well. Often as I taxi in, I notice that my trim indicator is pretty close to the Takeoff position. If you need to go faster during the approach, flaps and gear need to go away--you can always bring them back later, say around the FAF, to slow down [just don't forget!]. Just as "no two landings are ever the same" because the wind and descent angle vary every time even when just doing laps around the pattern, "no two landing configurations can be the same." They all start out the same, Takeoff flaps and Gear Down, but I do what needs to be done on final to reach my desired landing spot. And yes, I fly a short-body from a 3000' runway that is obstructed at both ends, with no difficulty.

Quote: Jeff_S As a French major I can tell you "that's a lot of freakin' math." Or, I could tell you "c'est con ces maths!"

The prop is just fine, thank you. The whole trick is getting sufficient flotation from the itty bitty tires, since I haven't figured out the trick of retractable floats . . .

Quote: jlunseth When doing a climb to cruising altitude, level off at some point,say around 3-5,000, and let the aircraft speed up. Leave it at 100% power full rich. Once the speed has leveled off, pitch up for your climb. Now, maybe if you have a machine like the Bravo or Acclaim that has lots of power this is not a help. It is in the 231.

Quote: FlyDave Hank, What kind of speed increase do you see with an aft loaded CG? I've flown with an aft loaded CG but didn't like the way the airplane felt. I'll start a new thread on this as I think it warrants additional comments. Dave

One other comment-- When you reduce pitch to level off, don't reduce power until after the plane accelerates. At least, that's what my Owner's Manual says to do. Reducing power before acceleration, as you indicated, just makes it take longer. That's why you feel the need to dive. -Climb at WOT/Max RPM -Level Off at desired altitude -Accelerate -Set Cruise Power [my book says "upon reaching cruise altitude, allow acceleration to cruise airspeed, then trim the aircraft for level flight, reduce manifold pressure and RPM to desired cruise power." -Lean per whichever paradigm you prefer.

"Flying on the step" . . . works well when departing from smooth water--your airspeed will build up much quicker. Trying to use this aviation myth in cruise, all it does make a shallow dive back to the proper altitude, and the descent accelerates you to cruise speed a little bit quicker. Your cruise speed will be the same. [Try it, and check five minutes after leveling off from your "on the step" descent.] To maintain the higher speed, you have to maintain the descent. Mooneys fly at faster speeds when loaded more towards the tail. The further forward your CG is, the more downforce the elevator has to create, and that makes for additional drag. Load luggage in the back and see the difference. Just double-check your CG calculations. "Flying in the step" is nothing but a myth. High-drag aircraft accelerate noticably quicker in the shallow dive; Mooneys accelerate pretty well when levelling off without a 300-500' dive back to cruising altitude. Even my low-powered C reaches final cruise speed pretty quick.