jlunseth

The service ceiling of the 231 The service ceiling of the 231 is 24,000. At least that is the ""Maximum operating altitude" in my POH. You aren't going to get much higher anyway. The critical altitude is 22,5, give or take depending on day temps, even with the Merlin, and with the MP knob all the way in and the MP dropping the climb rate is very anemic. I went there once to say I did it, so now I have done it and don't have to do it again.

@Pinecone. I get that he is just running the formula and displaying the numbers. I apologize, I am not looking to start any arguments. Its my own frustration. We have had long discussions on the forum about LOP operations for over ten years now, and just when I think people are getting it, up comes another post where the pilot says he is running LOP and he is clearly not, he just thinks he is, which is bad for the engine. Trying to be helpful.

@Marc_B I am a little surprised you have LOP fuel flow numbers as high as 12.8 GPH that are lean of peak. What manifold pressure do you use to make a LOP mixtures with a 12.8 GPH fuel flow?

I ordered a new TSIO360LB from TCM a couple of years ago. Supposed to take 8 months. More like a year. BTW the new engine costs was only about 7,000 more than the factory reman, and either one was far more expensive than a few years earlier. I finally got my engine and it is a nice one, but the plane was down for more than a year.

I don’t have an SB but I can tell you that the LOP formula divides by rated horsepower of the engine, in your case 220. That is what “percent power” means, it is percent of the engine’s rated horsepower. But just remember that LOP is an air/fuel ratio, not a power setting. In other words, just because you are running the engine at 10 GPH or whatever number you come up with from applying the formula to your engine does not necessarily mean you are running lean of peak. You need sufficient manifold pressure to make the air/fuel mixture lean. It probably does not make much difference in this instance since you can run the engine LOP, ROP or at peak if you are operating at or under 65% HP, which you probably would be. In other words, it does not matter much whether you are lean of peak or not at a 65% power setting, it is safe for the engine. But it is important to know that you are actually operating lean of peak because the formula only applies to lean of peak operations, it definitely does not apply to rich of peak operations. %HP for rich of peak operations must come from your POH table.

I live in Minnesota where we see some truly impressive cold temps on a routine basis. Every year, at the start of the winter, I have my A&P install an oil cooler block. It is just some blocks of foam taped together that fits in the oil cooler. In the K's the OT must remain above 100 dF. This is in the POH. The issue is that if the oil gets too viscous it fails to pass through the very thin bearing space of the turbo, where it provides both cooling and lubrication. You don't want your turbo to go without oil. I have often run with the OT down to 100 dF without incident, but for me it becomes a real concern on super cold days if the OT want to be colder than that. I don't see any problem with 125 or 150, I ran the old engine there quite a bit in the winter and it went several hundred hours over TBO and the turbo went several hundred hours past the 1,000 mark. After 1,000 hours I had the turbo borescoped very annual just to be sure and there were no problems. But use your own best judgment. There was just a thread in one of the other forums on cold weather ops. One other thing to note is that if it is really cold, say anything below 15 dF, it is important to spend time on the ground running your checklists and letting the engine warm the engine compartment. There are some non-engine-attached components in there that need to be above freezing, notably the air/oil separator. If it freezes it blocks the breather with the result that the compression in the running engine causes the oil to exit through every available orifice. You can get remarkable oil streaks as wide as 18" down the sides of the full length of the aircraft. I am sure the brake master cylinder would appreciate a little heat also.

I have an LB and a JPI930 but in all other respects about the same as yours. I don't think you are running ROP at all at 11 GPH and 29". In my engine, ROP at that MP and 2450 RPM would be 13+ something GPH to get to about 125 degrees ROP. Maybe the problem is, what makes you think you are running LOP at that setting? Here is what I suspect. I don't know your engine monitor, but using my JPI the standard instructions are to start by running the engine well on the ROP side, put the monitor in lean of peak mode for leaning, and then lean out until the monitor tells you that you are LOP. Select your degrees LOP from the monitor and there you are. The problem is that this method is completely wrong for the 231. Lean of Peak and Rich of Peak are air/fuel ratio settings. They are not power settings although they can be used to make a power setting. The leaning mechanism in the monitors I am familiar with are all algorithms, in other words, our aircraft have no sensors that directly measure the air/fuel ratio the engine is running at. The algorithms I am familiar with all make the same assumptions, (1) that you start on the Rich of Peak side, and (2) that while you are leaning the fuel all other things remain equal, most importantly, that the manifold pressure remains where you set it when you started your leaning process. This works in the 252 and other turbo Mooneys that have truly automatic wastegate controllers that maintain MP where you set it while you lean out the fuel. The problem with the 231, even with the Merlin, is that MP does not remain where you set it if you start reducing the fuel flow. The Merlin is a differential controller, not a density controller. There are several things going on. One, there is an interlink in the TSIO360 engine so that if you set a power setting of, let's say, 30" and 13.3 GPH, and then decide you want to slow to approach speed, you can pull the MP back and the interlink automatically reduces the fuel flow to maintain roughly the same air/fuel ratio that you had at 30/13.3. Notice that when you do this the air/fuel ratio is not changing, you are still running ROP even though the EGTs have all dropped from their starting point. This interlink in my experience does not work as effectively when you pull the fuel back as it does when you pull the MP back, but it does work. So the MP is dropping as you lean the fuel. Second, as the engine begins to produce less power the turbo produces less compression, further causing the MP to drop as you pull the fuel back. These things are causing you to violate the basic assumption of the leaning algorithm - that MP stays steady while fuel flow is reduced, thus changing the air/fuel ratio from a rich setting to a lean setting. In short, if you do your leaning this way all you have done is reduce power, but you have done little to change the air/fuel ratio. The engine monitor will most likely detect a drop in EGT in all the cylinders, which is their signal to tell you that you are running lean of peak when the monitor really has no idea where you are running any longer. We just did a lean test on my new engine. The proscribed method is to start at an approximately 65% Rich of Peak setting, then slowly lean in increments of .3 GPH and record the EGT's on each cylinder. We chose 24.8 MP, 2400 RPMs, and 9.5 GPH, which I know from experience is a ROP setting. A move of .3 GPH did not change the MP much but a move of .6 changed it by a few tenths, enough that for about every two moves of .3 GPH we had to bump the MP back up a little. If you make a relatively big fuel move, like 11 GPH to 9.5 GPH you will get a fairly large MP decrease - on the order of 1" or more - and that invalidates the lean test you think you are running. If it helps - if I want to fly at least 125 degrees ROP in my engine at an MP of 29", I need a fuel flow of 13.3 GPH to 13.5 GPH. A setting of 11 GPH is going to be a LOP setting most likely, but not a very LOP setting at 29". At 29" you are probably just a few degrees LOP, pretty close to peak. Anything in the 12's is going to be a Peak setting or worse, around 50 degrees rich of peak. There is more to it, but based on what I would see in my engine at those power settings your 9.5 setting is probably a 60-65% power LOP setting and your 11 GPH setting is probably not lean of peak at all or if it is, it is just barely lean of peak, but it is not rich of peak. You are running too close to peak.

Cellular all the way. As mentioned, it is the only way to get GPS. I have generally traveled a lot, at least until the end of last year when I retired. I land and takeoff from many small rural airports flying for Angel Flight. Some still do not have WiFi, never know until you get there. So I just switch the cellular on and get my briefing, file my flight plan. As for the GPS, among other things that adds a little blue airplane to all my EFB charts including the approach I am flying. Great for situational awareness. Then when I land I get Maps to drive wherever I want to go. Text clearances from ATC. What’s not to like. Couldn’t imagine being without cellular and GPS. I have a “max data” plan though, so I have to switch cellular off and on in order not to blow the data limit. Does not affect the GPS.

Me too. Every excuse to raise the rates. I raised the hull value last year because the plane market is up nicely from when I bought the plane. One claim for hail damage ten years ago (plane was on the tarmac, damage was $1,200). No accidents, 2,000 hours, commercial instrument. $5,000 last year and probably more this year. They are pricing me out.

I also climb full power, full rich to whatever cruise altitude I intend to fly. That can be a prolonged operation, as much as 45 minutes if going to the 20's. That is not to say it is the best way to cruise an engine though, it is just the best way to climb over other methods that result in high temps. The POH also says you can push the cylinders to 460 dF as a redline but that does not mean you should, and I can tell you from personal experience when I first got my aircraft the engine won't melt or come apart, but it also is only good for about that one flight before needing major work. I am sure if your A&P sets the fuel flow high enough you can probably run near full power at cruise and still keep the temps cool, but why? - unless you like paying fuel bills. That is sort of the point of cruise power settings, one of the points anyway, that is - it takes an awful lot of fuel to push the power up to the limit for what, maybe a 10 or 15 knot advantage? There has been quite a bit of experience with pilots flying all the turbo Mooney models at full throttle just to get the speed. I am not an A&P, I don't do the overhauls, but I have heard way too many stories from A&Ps who do about turbos run to the max needing top overhauls and/or turbo overhauls at an early age. Don't believe everything you read in the POH. There has been a bad history of outcomes where the POH says something that marketing wanted, but that sacrificed engine life.

I don't know about the rest of you, but in Private Pilot lessons I was taught to always check for traffic on an intersecting runway before crossing, both approach and take-off, even if you are cleared to cross (or think you are cleared to cross).

I looked into the cost of adding TKS several years ago. Going from memory here, but I believe the weight is about 75 lbs and the cost was about 75k. Last time I looked, CAV was the party to contact but they were no longer doing the modification themselves, they would point you to a contractor who would do it.

Just to be clear, the climb speed I was referring to is intended to get you to 1,000 feet AGL, or whatever altitude in that vicinity allows the pilot to make the 270 degree turn to return to the runway. One of the things they did in creating that AOPA article was to practice the impossible turn, at a safe altitude, in order to determine how much AGL altitude the particular aircraft requires to make the turn, and it is a 270 turn to get back. I use 1,000 AGL.

@A64 In response to your climb rate note, there was a really good article in AOPA magazine a few years ago. The writer actually went out with a safety pilot and did some tests to determine when and if the impossible turn might work. According to their results - and if I recall the article correctly they had some other results on climb rate also- neither Vx nor Vy are very good climb rates immediately after takeoff. Vx is too nose high and in their testing, stall came too fast. Normal pilots, not expecting the engine to quit, would generally react too slowly to avoid a stall. Vy resulted in the plane getting too far away from the runway, so the impossible turn would not work out. What they landed on was a speed about half way between Vx and Vy, which works out to, guess what? Best Glide. So I always do my initial climb at 85 kts., which if you look at the Best Glide chart in my POH is in that range. I am a little inconsistent, if I am trying to stretch out a glide I generally use 82 kts. but when I am climbing out post takeoff I use 85, which gives me a little better cushion if the engine were to fail. In their testing for the article they required the pilot flying to wait for, as I recall, 3 seconds before "realizing" the engine had quit and pushing the nose over. They found that the pilot had the time to respond if the climb rate was at Best Glide, and even better, the plane was not so far from the airport that it was no longer possible to return. Sometimes I use a faster climb speed when I am out in a rural area where there are endless areas to land in the event of an engine failure, but my home base, KFCM, is pretty well hemmed in so whatever I can do to get to an altitude where a return to the airport is possible, that is the best choice.

My POH also has a graphical display of Best Glide and Maximum Glide Distance. The Best Glide table shows speeds as low as 76 at 2300 pounds and a high of 87 at 2900 pounds. I just use 81 IAS because it closely approximates the typical load when I am flying alone. Two things to remember. The most common fatal mistake in an engine out is to sit there dumbfounded, nose high during takeoff. You need to be spring loaded to drop the nose every takeoff to avoid a stall. Second, during practice for my commercial and working on circling a spot on the runway for an engine out landing, I found that best glide would sometimes trigger a stall alert. Makes sense - stall at a 60 degree bank angle is 90 which is higher than best glide, and on top of that, when flying with an engine out there is no prop draft over the wing helping the wing not to stall. So if I tried too hard to make my descent shallow I could get into a stall situation. Stall trumps Best Glide Speed so drop the nose as necessary even if that means breaking best glide. There have been alot of discussions in the Forum about prop effect. From what I recall, the Best Glide chart assumes a windmilling prop. It is possible to stop the prop, it requires a quick pitch up and then dropping the nose to avoid a stall, and it increases glide distance. Don't recall the number. I have put this in my memory bank if I am ever in the flight levels and needing as much glide range as possible, but I have never practiced it and don't think I would try it at lower altitudes because of the stall risk.