Ned Gravel

I know what it feels like to work with a mechanic that good during a pre-buy. Mine saved me $17,000 in repairs - and you already know who he is.

Depends what time of year. This time of year should not be too bad. March has a whole pile of mechanical turbulence over the Grand Canyon routes that kept Ute and I out of them in 2015. Locals told us they would not fly on those days.

He called me yesterday and indicated some radio conversations had taken place with you, but nothing was said about, well, you know.... the act. I am shocked.....truly shocked. As “Joker” once told me after watching me emulate our “Snoopy’s” own Happy Dance: Some things can never be “unseen.”

And now from Paul Bertorelli: https://www.avweb.com/insider/how-not-to-be-a-hero/

Mount to yolk using Ram mounts. direct eyeball vent next to left knee up to the back of the iPad. Problem solved for me.

Cocktail and movie beats flying????? In the Mooney Caravan???? Am I missing something???

I recognise this airport (Sikorsky Airport in Bridgeport, CT). Kept my Mooney there for two nights while the airport I was using (Oxford, CT) had closed their operations for taxiway resurfacing. No comment on the "intercept and save," although I have heard that level of concern (from the Arrow pilot) in voices over radios before - another life and another profession. It is clear to me, however, that the instructor: thought he needed to help, and is self aggrandizing the result. Just my 0.02.

It's not really all that easy to access some of the avionics. I have scraped more than one section of skin off my hand trying to get stuff done in there. Fred also uses a different sealer than I do. His is clean and nice. Mine is the recommended one. It is ucky and black and sticks to everything but has not allowed any leaking into the avionics bay since I bought my airplane in 2004.

Slim!!! Zat you? Welcome to Mooneyspace........

Yup, we got there on Sunday, visited my friend's little cabin in the Talladega National Forest on Monday and then walked the ground at Chickamauga on Tuesday. We started Monday Morning by taking their youngest (now a PhD candidate) for a ride over the Coosa River down to the dam and back. We left there yesterday. You have a nice little airport there.

We just flew out of Pell City yesterday on our way home (love flying Alabama!!) to Ottawa. Dodged three big cells before we put down in Owensboro, KY - where we stayed put and will probably only launch tomorrow morning (early) to clear customs in Windsor, ON before continuing on home. I am sorry we will not be around for the get-together being organised here.

I am with Jim on this advice. CO detector is to save you and your bride's life. Engine monitor is to save your engine's life. GPS is to save your approaches. I had an old Trimble TNL 1000 (then 2000, then 2000A) in my E model long after I had purchased the JPI 700 and the CO detector (although we never learned about the CO detector until years after I had the JPI). The WAAS GPS was purchased only last year. Going from IFR capability to conduct 25% of all published approaches in North America to being able to conduct over 90% of all published approaches in North America was exhilarating. The CO detector and engine monitor are must-have-right-now (in my opinion) instruments. The WAAS GPS is a really-would-like-to-have-right-now instrument (again, in my opinion). BTW: Great story. Good luck.

I am also going to be there with Ute "Tribble." And we will both volunteer to help set it up.

Great clinic. First one and I have flown six Caravans already. They let me help qualify two pilots - one first timer and one coming back after a hiatus. Made my day!!! I had forgotten how getting close to another aircraft in flight (something the veteran Caravaners do all the time) would make a non-Caravan-trained pilot feel so uncomfortable. Total time for a pilot is not the issue. Mooney time is not the issue. It is breaking the paradigm to accept that we can actually do such a thing safely, consistently, and repeatedly. We scare those who have not done this before. But......watching non-trained pilots get the training, practice the skill, gain the confidence, and look forward to the execution - that is priceless. Bob "Breakdown" Belville @Bob_Belville did a great job organising it. Cue Queen - "And another one Bites the Dust..." Queen-Another-One-Bites-The-Dust.mp3

Us too! Our days of packing 35 pounds apiece and the canoe into Algonquin park are over. Schlepping across the grass on the North 40 to the port-a-potty twice per night has lost all the lustre that activity may ever have had. AmericInn for us.

Got here yesterday (OK - to do some business too). See https://flightaware.com/live/flight/CFSWR/history/20190611/1330Z/CYRO/KROC to get through CBP. Then https://flightaware.com/live/flight/CFSWR/history/20190611/1545Z/KROC/KEKN for the obligatory rest stop (required by age). Then hhttps://flightaware.com/live/flight/CFSWR/history/20190611/1845Z/KEKN/KHKY for the long descent into Hickory.

That sounds really bad. I have been with the same woman for 40+ years and I don't understand your difficulty............

thank you. I am looking to see if my maintainer can do this.

If 1090ES out (such as we are getting in Canada) requires a Trig tray, can you tell us whether the tray shown in the pictures is such a tray?

Just to throw a wrench into this discussion, I would avoid the use of the term "calibrated" in this discussion because its use is fundamentally misleading. It assigns value/property/worth to a measurement which does not exist here. To quote the international weights and measures council (either CIPM or their technical arm BIPM - supported both by NIST (US) and NRC (Cdn) signatures), calibration is a term used to signify the connection of a measurement (these are all gauges reading a measurement) back to some base or intrinsic property or value which are held and maintained by our national measurement systems. Such is not the case here. The best we can ask of these instruments, without a calibration certificate provided by someone that includes a demonstration of the competence of the person making such connection, (or organisation - within our very good international system of accreditation of such competence) is to "verify" their operation within some tolerance. Very little real traceability of measurement is required for this - just some comparison with a more "trusted" source without chasing after the components of the measurement that relate it to NIST or NRC. Much cheaper and good enough for our purposes. But - and this is reason I am bringing this up, the control of the measurement process determines how good the measurement will be. In the case of the mechanical tach cable - it may have history, but the number of cycles it goes through have a real impact on its performance. In materials science, fatigue is the weakening of a material caused by repeatedly applied loads. Compare the repeated loading and unloading of the tach cable to some electronic reader counting the number of times a specific identification mark passes in front of it - such as this one. Light and/or electrical connection only. Still subject to fatigue loading but with a lot less impact on the validity of the measurement. The fact that EI still probably thinks this instrument is calibrated (when it is not really) is moot. It far outperforms (in terms of stability, precision, and resolution) the tach that came with my '65 Mooney E (which was replaced once before and still exhibited unacceptable performance before that one was then replaced by this little puppy). The design of our engines dates back close to 80+ years ago (1930's and 1940's). Many of our factory installed instruments (from the 50s and 60s) still use the technologies of that era. They still work - but when we are forced to ask ourselves why there is difference between them and some newer technology we have installed - albeit not certified as primary - by law we are forced to accept the certified technology that demonstrates less control of its measurement process. And to reiterate, measurements from both technological eras are not really traceable anyway (would add significant cost to the instruments) although both have been adequately verified as functioning within some stated tolerance - and that is OK. As Carusoam has pointed out, the source of the measurement for the electronic tach is different than the source of the measurement of the mechanical gauge - and for me (engineer) that makes a big difference in how much I can trust it. My 20 cents worth (you can get paid that much too if you can provide the definition of traceability of measurement contained in the VIM).

+1 for the PS Engineering models. Their innards are shielded. The Garmin’s are not. Had to change from a 340 to a PS8000 in 2013 because of that.

Hmm. Less likely caused by antenna proximity and more likely caused by RF emissions closer to the backplane of the radio. I have an "eye poker" (belly com antenna that causes difficulty to maintainers during inspections) on my Mooney too, but it is for the handheld, when all else fails. Com1, Com2, Nav1 and Nav2 are all up on the top - both navs to the whiskers on the vertical stabilizer. The com antennae are separated by about four feet. Running receivers off the same antenna is not a real issue - no power being generated. Transmitters off the same antenna can cause a bit more difficulty. However, RF pushing out of the transmitter (especially near the source of radiated power) can affect unshielded conductors for other systems that may be very close by - and that is what this sounds like to me. The sneaky one for me was very dirty NARCO transmitters keying both sets of radios because my Garmin audio panel had next to zero shielding and one transmitter was causing wash to the other through the audio panel. Fixed that with a PS Engineering audio panel - much better built. Just an amateur Signals Officer. No MUFs, or LUFs were harmed in the making of this amateur observation.

I have used both duPage and Palwaukee (Chicago Executive) to visit different areas of that part of Illinois. duPage is simple (but in the southwest part of Chicago) and Palwaukee is a full service setup with all the bells and whistles - but north of both Midway and O'Hare. I like both and if I was hard IFR down to minima, I would pick Palwaukee.

This is also true if you have the doghouse. The forward edge of the top part of the doghouse has baffling material (mostly rubber or some similar composite) and some folks who work on the aircraft do not always make sure that it is tucked into the top of the cowl. I have had to tuck it in more than once this year following an oil change.

We can do them in an approved simulator (such as a Transport Canada approved Redbird) if we want.