jlunseth

Two stories re this topic. One, when I picked up my plane at purchase it was in AZ and we (my non-Mooney instructor and I) flew it all the way home to MN. An annual had be badly done in AZ, and on takeoff the door came open even though it was latched. Landing and closing the door did not help, same result. We tried the procedure in the POH and could not close the door. The good news is that the slipstream is strong enough that nothing is going to happen, no one is going to fall out, it is held very strongly in place. In the paper days you had to make sure one of your charts did not get sucked out, but that is the worst that can happen. The bad news is that the slipstream won't allow the door to close either. We flew over Raton at 16k, it was cold and somewhat noisy with the door in that condition, and all the way to Garden City where we convinced the door to latch and held it in place during takeoff. It was subsequently discovered that the latch was not adjusted properly and I have not had a problem with it since then (2009). So I completely agree with 201er, forget the door. If you get in a bad situation as a result of the door coming open that is because you panicked and failed to continue to fly the plane. As for the baggage door, I had a friend and famous aviator decades ago who took off from a field in ABQ that is not there anymore (Coronado) to fly his family to Taos for some skiing. It was a twin with the baggage door forward in the nacelle. The door came open on takeoff and they did not survive. The pilot tried to return to Coronado to land, but was unable. There have been several "the baggage door came open in flight" incidents on this forum over the past 14 years since I joined it. I recall one in which the door departed the fuselage and made the rest of the trip lodged in the horizontal elevator. He made it all the way across the Atlantic in a the first ever balloon crossing only to perish about three or four years later in an avoidable fixed wing accident. So here is my rule. I always, always include the door in my pre-flight, and no one except the pilot is allowed to close and latch that door. I always lock it, and check that I locked it, following advice from a couple of the instructors at Mooney PPPs. I had one girlfriend years ago who would get very offended that I would not allow her to close the door, and she would purposely try to open and close it herself. Not my girlfriend anymore (not the only issue). Don't worry about the safety on the inside, that will work when you pull the pin even if the door is locked. The chances of getting back there and out the door in a forced landing situation are not that great anyway. As we all - I hope - learned in beginning pilot school, one of the very important items on the off field checklist is to open the main door while still in the air and shove something in it to keep it open so it can't jam shut on impact. Then you won't need the baggage door anyway.

I put the gear down six miles from the airport like the big iron. For a couple of reasons. One, too much potential for distraction in the pattern, so I want the gear down before I get there. Two, I am usually descending from a high altitude at a high rate of speed and I need the gear to get to pattern speed. Have had our local tower chew on me a couple of times because I was not slow enough. They have lots of school planes in the pattern. Flaps can wait.

Just to be clear if it is not already, the multiplier (13.7 or 14.9) only applies to LOP ops. The formula does not apply if the engine is operating Rich of Peak. When LOP the power output is determined solely by fuel flow, or so the GAMI people tell us. While ROP it is determined by both MP and FF. Have to go to the POH tables for ROP ops power. I have a JPI 930. I have well over a thousand hours flying with it. I ignore the % power display, it is based on an algorithm and the algorithm needs a calibration factor called the "K factor." The K factor is supposedly pre-set from the factory for your aircraft. From many hours of experience with the 930 the display is just not accurate. It is about 7 - 8% off in my aircraft. And how would you as the pilot calibrate the K factor? With what instrumentation? You would need instrumentation that would accurately read out the BHP the engine is producing while in flight. The one way I found to approximately calibrate it is to learn to operate LOP, then make a LOP power setting while flying the aircraft in level flight. The LOP formula can then be used to determine percent HP and note the airspeed. Then get out of LOP operations and, while still in level flight, operate the engine ROP, allow the airspeed to stabilize (t takes a little bit in a Mooney) and determine what ROP combination of MP and FF is required to produce that airspeed. Then look at the percent HP display and note how far off it is from the percent power you obtained using the LOP formula while in LOP operations. Adjust the K factor so the percent HP display is correct for that ROP power setting. I never did this in my own aircraft, it seemed like alot of screwing around to get the display to read approximately correctly. I just ignore the % power display, it is not required equipment.

Well, it should be. This happened to me in Canada, and the Canadian mechanics immediately figured out that the quick drain was leaking. But they also found that a fairly large piece of rubber gasket material was swimming around in the oil, and managed to plug the intake hole of the quick drain. So the engine still had about 2 1/2 quarts of oil, it was not completely dry. The OP got to 4 psi because I throttled the engine to idle to try to save it in case I needed a little power to make it to the runway, and also because I tipped the nose over fairly sharply because I had to dive about 18,000 feet quickly to avoid being blown over Lake Huron by tailwinds. Tipping the nose over causes the oil to run away from the pump intake. It was not unexpected, but still tightened the sphincter muscles. So the Canadian mechanics felt they did not have to disassemble the engine. Unfortunately, the steep unpowered dive caused some piston slap and within a couple hundred hours I had the entire engine IRANd, which is probably what should have happened right away.

No, I did not use the chart to arrive at my setting. These are true numbers. I should add that I arrived at the setting with my old engine, I now have a new engine and am finding that it wants a little less fuel flow. Around 10.9, but otherwise the same. I am still working out the numbers for the new engine though. I derived the old numbers with fairly exhaustive testing using the individual EGTs, the idea being to keep the EGT that is nearest to peak, far enough away from peak for engine health. Once I know how that worked, I just use TIT. I keep my TIT at or under 1600 (the max is 1650). In the old engine I found that if TIT got over that number by very much it had a tendency to continue rising. I use a little flex in the number, in other words if the TIT is 1609 or something in that vicinity and is stable (is not continuing to rise) I am ok with that. The new engine is very slightly hotter than the old, either that or I am doing the testing in mostly summer conditions. The idea behind the 34" MP number is that lean of peak is an air/fuel ratio. The "perfect" ratio is known as stoichiometric mix. It is that mix where all of the O2 and all of the fuel is consumed in the combustion process. I put "perfect" in quotes because while it would seem to be ideal, it results in the highest Internal Cylinder Pressures and the hottest CHTs, which are hard on the engine. What you are trying to do with either lean of peak or rich of peak, is slow the combustion cycle, which lowers the ICP and CHT. In the case of lean of peak you are doing that by supplying the engine with a mixture that has more air than can be consumed by the available fuel. There are two ways to do that with a turbocharged engine. Either you leave the MP at a fixed setting and reduce the fuel, or you set the fuel at a specific number and increase the MP, which increases the air (O2) being introduced and thus makes the mixture leaner than stoichiometric. I was initially concerned that would be hard on the turbo, but the turbo in the old engine made it well over 1,000 hours without a problem. The percent power is about 70-71%. Percent power when lean of peak is determined by the formula 13.7 x fuel flow in GPH/rated HP (210). Please note that the 231 power controls are different from virtually every other aircraft because the wastegate controller is not automatic, in other words you can't set the MP to, say, 34", and then roll the fuel flow back to 11 GPH and watch your engine monitor to see where the peak is. The classic manner of making this setting, as I said earlier, is to either hold the fuel flow at a fixed setting and increase the MP, or hold the MP at a fixed number and decrease the fuel. But there is an interlink between the MP and fuel flow in the 231 engine, so a change in one parameter will change the other parameter. In effect you change the entire power setting if you do that and you are not affecting the air/fuel ratio much if at all. What I do to get to this setting is takeoff full rich, 36" and climb to altitude without changing anything except to adjust the MP up as I climb to maintain 36. Then at cruise altitude I reduce the MP to around 34-35" followed by reducing the RPMs to 2450. As you reduce the RPMs the MP will reduce so once you get the RPMs to 2450 you need to adjust the MP back up to around 34". Then reduce the fuel flow from wherever it is to your desired setting, say 11.0 GPH. Then you will once again need to adjust the MP to get to 34". In the first ten minutes or so of flight at this setting you need to watch the setting carefully, because the aircraft will speed up and so will the turbocharger, so you need to stay on top of that and keep the MP at 34 and the fuel flow at, say 11. Then periodically check the power setting during your flight to make sure it is staying where you want it. The 231 system is very analog, it takes awhile to settle in where you want it, and any changes that happen in ambient conditions will affect the power setting. That's what I do. YMMV

The Garmin 275s have a turn and slip indicator as well as being an Attitude Indicator. That's what I replaced my TC with. If you are looking for just a ball and turn you can go to pretty much any avionics shop and find one, or get ahold of one of the online suppliers like SEAerospace

Which doesn’t help the pilot. If the tower or the FAA wants to pursue a violation they will go after the pilot. What usually happens is just a scolding and you file a NASA report. But if the deviation caused a serious problem in the Class C or D that the tower is going to be responsible for, the pilot will be violated. When using VFR Flight Following it is the pilot’s responsibility, not the controllers, to insure that the requirements for entering the airspace are met. FAR3-2-1 VFR Requirements. It is the responsibility of the pilot to ensure that ATC clearance or radio communication requirements are met prior to entry into Class B, Class C, or Class D airspace. The pilot retains this responsibility when receiving ATC radar advisories. (See 14 CFR part 91.) This is really simple. ATC is not responsible while you are on VFR Flight Following, you are. You make sure you have yourself covered. You don’t treat ATC like an adversary, you cooperate with them and they with you. So if directed into Class C or D, or even B, and there is ambiguity, you are responsible to ask if you are cleared in.

This is simple. Midlifeflyers post is accurate up to a point, and I certainly don’t mean to get into an argument with him, from what I can tell reading the forum he is a good guy. But his post is based on the controllers manual. Pilots are not subject to the controllers manual, they are subject to the FARs. Don’t get caught sleeping if you are approaching a C, D, or B and have not received an express clearance and read it back, or you have not been handed off and talked to tower. Prompt the controller and don’t enter unless it’s clear that you have complied with the FARs. I have heard more than one pilot get yelled at on the radio by tower for this, or get a number to call if it has created a traffic problem for tower. Flight Following means you are VFR which means you are in control not ATC, it is going to be your problem. IFR is a completely different animal don’t get them confused.

This discussion has gone on forever, I don’t mean the discussion in the forum here, but the discussion about whether you can enter a Class B, C or D while on Flight Following, without meeting the airspace rules for contacting the tower or getting a clearance before entering. And the answer forever has always been the same. No, you cannot. It is your responsibility to contact FF and prompt them to hand you off, and/or do a 360. Will you get a violation? Unlikely. But it is your responsibility and not the controller’s to stay out of controlled airspace when VFR until specifically authorized to enter.

Yes, if the TIT varies when the fuel flow varies it is a real issue as opposed to an instrument issue. I had one fuel pump rebuilt as I mentioned, it had to go back once for a similar issue to yours. Don't know who the vendor was, it was 15 years ago. Good luck.

Well, it depends on how big the fluctuation is. I have had two engines with different fuel pumps and the fuel pump on the first engine was rebuilt back in about 2009 so that is three fuel pumps. All three behaved in basically the same way. When I fly LOP, very small changes in fuel flow will affect TIT, which is what I mainly watch. So it is not uncommon for the fuel flow to vary up and down a few tenths. And when I take a flight and set a LOP fuel flow it is also not uncommon for the fuel flow to increase by about .5 GPH or thereabouts, in the first ten or fifteen minutes, and for the MP to increase also. Probably this is because the aircraft is picking up speed and as it goes faster the ram air effect increases, and that increases MP which in turn increases fuel flow. I dial them down and after awhile the system finds and equilibrium. Remember that in the 231, fuel flow and manifold pressure are co-dependent, a change in one causes a change in the other. Now if your fuel flow variation is big, say 1 GPH or more, probably a fuel pump issue. But if it is relatively small the issue can be (1) the 231 MP and fuel flow control systems are inherently not that precise, or (2) there is an issue with the throttle control that in turn is reflected in changing fuel flows. Also, check the "waterwheel." That is the paddle wheel sensor that detects fuel flow and reports it to the engine monitor/display. I have had two of those wear out. You will see fairly large changes in fuel flow without significant changes in either MP or the temps that you would expect to see change if the fuel flow were actually fluctuating (EGTs and TIT). Relatively simple replacement. Best of luck, hope you can figure it out.

I did a search on my old posts and found the Turboplus instructions for setting fuel flow:TSIO360 Fuel Setup - NEW 08.pdf As I said earlier, some of us try to get the fuel flow set a little higher. Please note that the max power MP in these instructions will generally be higher than the 36-37" most of us use to set full power in flight. The fuel setting process is conducted on the ground with the aircraft not moving and therefore very little air is passing over the intercooler to cool the induction air. The intercooler becomes more efficient as the aircraft picks up speed during takeoff and flight, and air passes through the scoop and over the fins of the intercooler. At cruise at altitude it is not uncommon to see a differential temperature (Compressor Discharge Temperature minus Induction Air Temp) of 100-125 degrees. So the higher max power MP in the table in the instructions is not directly applicable to in-flight power settings.

I keep the Sectional up. I fly a few times every year to the west and find it helpful to have a relatively clean display with ground elevations and MOAs so I can plan my altitude adjustments as I progress. I also like to be able to pull up the VORs that are forward of my position and plug in the frequencies just in case of a GPS outage, and to keep that skill up. The Aeronautical and IFR displays are just too cluttered and lacking information I need. On rare occasions, if I have to fly IMC for an extended period I will use the IFR map. If I fly an approach I will put the plate on the sectional and that way I can see ADSB traffic during the approach.

Solves it. When you reduce power you will reduce OP. Engine isn’t working as hard, oil pump is not working as hard. In addition to your reduction of power, the act of tipping the nose over and going downhill reduces the load on the engine.

Do you by chance reduce the power for the descent?