Chris White ex-N205KD

I just received a call from Liz at Lopresti, wanting to know if I was still interested in the cowl. She said the price was still $12.5k, but would be going back up "in the near future" to $16k. Business must be brisk! Thought I'd pass this on if anyone's on the fence. Any word on the group purchase?

Uh-oh: Future Service on Apollo GX Products Impacted by Critical Component Availability: Garmin offering customers upgrade path to GNS430W and GNS530W series products. The availability of spare display boards for the Apollo GX series of GPS navigators is depleted and the original parts manufacturer has discontinued producing the parts. Garmin will continue to support the GX products with repair service as long as possible, but as a result of these events Garmin is launching a trade in program for GX owners with non-repairable units. For a limited time customers can purchase a GNS430W / 530W series product at a discounted price. The program enables affected Apollo GX customers to upgrade to a Garmin WAAS navigator offering many advanced features including: precision LPV approaches, vertical guidance on thousands of GPS approaches, primary navigation, terrain alerting, and many other capabilities the older GX products do not support. Owners can trade in their TSO C129 GX-series unit and receive between $1,000 and $2,000 off the list price on any new Garmin 430W / 530W series product. The trade-in value depends on the model number of the Apollo GX. GX55 owners will receive $1,000 off the list price of any GNS430W / 530W series product; GX65 owners qualify for $1,500 off, GX50 owners $1,750 off, and GX60 owners can receive $2,000 off the list price. This is a limited time offer by Garmin that will expire December 31, 2009. Quote: GeorgePerry Seth Of course everyone either wants a 430 / 530 or plans to get one...but let’s face it, even if you buy a used one you’re looking at dropping $9-10K with installation. If your looking for a low cost / high utility option you might want to consider the Apollo GX line of GPS’s. The GX-50 is an IFR enroute and (non precision) approach certified NAV GPS. I have one in my plane and I love it. That’s not to say I don’t like the Garmin products...they are great pieces of gear. Infact I fly several locally owned business aircraft and they all have Garmin 530 / 430 set ups. They are nice, but after getting back into my personal aircraft I find that I don't really miss not having a Garmin to drool over because my GX 50 does all that I need it to do. If you want a GPS NAV/COMM Apollo also made the GX-60. The same functionality as the 50 but with a radio built in. You can pick up a used GX-50 on ebay for about $1000. A GX-60 goes for a bit more. Garmin still supports both units through jeppesen data updates, which is not the case for some king products. If you don’t want to hassle with ebay you can checkout fully reconditioned units at bennet avionics. http://www.bennettavionics.com/gps.html (and no...I don't work for them. They just have good stuff) You should be able buy the GX-60 GPS($1200-ish), get a Jeppesen database subscription ($350) and have the box installed ($1000ish) for under 3K. No bad for an IFR approach certified GPS NAV/COM. If I remember your bird's panel, there's a big RNAV unit that the GX box would fit nicely into without alot of modification. Hope this is helpful...Good luck.

Here's part of an interview I found relating to this very topic, from the then-president of Mooney Christian Dopp. It was given in 1999, right when they discontinued the mid-body Mooney. The last question, about the Cirrus and "Lancair", I thought was interesting. I wonder when that view changed? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Which brings to mind the demise of the J-model, probably the best seller in Mooney’s history. Why was such a popular airframe dropped? The margin on the J-model is just not there. It wasn’t even breaking even. In our estimation, on every J-model the company sold, we lost money. By comparison, for every Ovation or Bravo we would build, we would have to build four or five J-models respectively to get the same margin. Using the same manpower, that means if we were building 10 Bravos and 10 Ovations a month, we would have to build 40 or 50 J-models [Allegros.] It didn’t cover the overhead and it just didn’t make sense. The J-model is a product that had its time, but unfortunately, the time has passed. How about the 252/Encore? It was recently re-certified then just as quickly dropped from the product line. The 252 was and is a great product. When the previous management brought it back, I think they saw a niche for it. But the niche in that market is at a price point a heck of a lot lower than we were selling it for. We have found that buyers who want top-end performers are willing to spend the dollars for the Bravo. A big driver here, too, is getting the commonality of the long-body airframe. You’re setting up machines in the shop now for basically one airframe. With both the short body and the long, the build times were up over 4000 hours. With one airframe, you shrink your cycle times and you get your inventory turns up higher. The entire economic argument against the short bodies was just too strong. How about the J-model for a low-cost, high-performance trainer? That’s something we have discussed. Is there demand there and if so, at what price? Can you get the economics to do a limited run? We just don’t see it right now for the J-model. But it could happen sometime. I think the Eagle is more likely. We do see an advanced training requirement of some sort, not just for piston airplanes but for turbines, too. If you look at the military now, for every two pilots they’re training, they’re losing three. There are significant pilot shortages. Delta Airlines and other airlines are talking about starting their own internal training programs and these are going to require airplanes, so the demand for advanced trainers may be good in the long term. While Mooney hasn’t had the four-place, high performance market entirely to itself, it certainly has dominated the field for the past decade. How do you see the Cirrus SR20 and Lancair Columbia shaping up as competition? We don’t see Cirrus as being a contender, really, at any point and Lancair still has to overcome issues related to marketing and production. We’re not confident that they’re going to perform to the degree that they need to to achieve a market presence. So for us, it’s not so much seeing them as competition as it is redefining our own product line and offering better value for the money. In soft times, typically, we’ve found that the wealthier buyers are always there for the high-end products. The Ovation, for example, has had a considerable price increase but continues to sell well. And now we’re going to provide a performance increase on that airplane commensurate with the price and offer the Eagle for the entry-level market. Then we’ve got to consider the next product."

This is a posting from the Beech list. The information in it is unconfirmed, but interesting and hopefully correct! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I received a belated response from Aspen yesterday indicating that later this year they would have FAA approval for the Aspen Pro to directly drive the KFC series of autopilots, thereby eliminating the need for the KI-256 and vacuum system. Of course one would need a back-up alternator and an electric standby AI. My airplane is going to have a lot of antiquated equipment removed if this comes to fruition. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote: Terry