HopePilot

Awesome news. I'm going to have my checked too. Did they have it in stock at Spruce or did you have to special order it?

I had an image in my mind and Hector (Aero Comfort) helped bring it into reality. They will do exactly what they say and the quality is first rate. When I say this, I am using the work found in luxury cars such as Mercedes Benz and BMW for comparison. I think most new plane interiors look cheap or lost in a time warp, but Hector's are worthy of the Mooney brand.

If something isn't safe enough to have vintage fly-ins, I'm not interested.

Scott, in an E you might need more nose up trim then I do in my J. When I flew a C model I used all the nose up trim I had. That said, an example of this principle is what would happen if you were slow, and on final, then pull back on the yoke to get on glideslope, instead of using throttle. This can cause you to climb at first and then sink. The initial climb causes people to think that the plane is doing what they wanted, then they sink. Naturally, that is dependent on airspeed, etc., and I'm only talking about those of us who cross the numbers at a reasonable speed. If you are crossing the numbers at 90knots, which I know doesn't apply to you, you would climb and keep climbing until you had used your energy.

Clarification: Don't trim in the flare. Note that I specified, "when you put down the flaps."

Those of you having issues with back pressure might want to considered adding a bit more nose up trim, and I mean just a little more, when you put down the flaps. I'm talking about just a smidge more than you think you need to counter the nose down action that occrurs when you add flaps. Even if it seems you have a touch more than you want (i.e. it requires you to add a touch of forward pressure against the yoke, just before flair), you will find that it will help you from setting the nose down. Caution: Too much nose up trim is also bad and will cause you to sink, float, etc. Hope that helps.

Hello, campers. On my recent trip to Northern California I tried out a couple new gadgets that might be of interest. The first was a new Rubbermaid 14 Can Briefcase cooler. The advantage is that it is slim enough to sit on the floor behind either you or a shortish passenger, without having to sit on the seats. It is also easier to get into the plane, if you are bringing it in through the door, as the pilot seat doesn't take as much messing with to get it into the back seats. The negative, however, was I found myself moving it onto my seats anyway, as I couldn't put my seats back enough when in cruise. For takeoff and small flights, where I don't need to move my seats back, it would probably work. I also think that it could be a candidate for making it into a custom air conditioning unit due to the cupholder indents, which could be cut out, and the option of just having it behind your seats until you level off. The second new gadget was the Coleman 6 person Instant Tent. Positives: This thing really is instant. It took my wife and I about 30 seconds to put it up. Here's a video of people doing just that: Taking it down is just as fast, and putting in and removing stakes takes additional time. Negatives: I had to remove the back seats to have the space to lay it down. You could probaly get it in by having it partially in the hat rack over over the back seats, but results would vary by model of plane. I have the easily removable back seats, so it wasn't much of an issue. The tent is also about five pounds heavier than my old one, but I can now stand up. Hope that helps!

I just replaced all my seatbelts, which leads me to a related question. What do people do with their old seatbelts? Should I try to sell them?

Congrats. Add me to the list of people who recommend you start the instrument rating immediately. You never know when you might need it...

Yup that's what I was talking about. Thanks.

The other day, after priming fuel pressure with the fuel pump, prior to startup, I noticed something dripping from possibly the larger of these tubes. It made a very small puddle, which appeared to be fuel, but I thought this was where oil escapes, but I've only got 7 qts. in there right now. Will fuel drip from this area if you over prime?

Hector had not been previously offering that style headrest and the idea came from my interest in sports cars. I have a feeling he'll be doing a lot of them soon, as many people came by during installation with questions.

I will probably have the plastic Ultraleathered eventually, but the pieces weren't in rough enough shape to justify it.

Well, the back-up plan was to go with an avocado-green plaid with a crushed velvet headliner. Kind of a tribute to the interior plane designs of the 70's. You know, just to avoid doing the cool, modern look everyone goes for.

My yokes were done previously by AeroComfort. I ended up losing a few pounds as I took the opportunity to get rid of the ADF anchor on the belly of my plane (and another Loran antenna). With less drag I am hoping for an extra knot or two... Oh, and that's Ultraleather which is much softer/buttery than the leather in our Mercedes. I wanted it to look as good in ten years as it does today, even though the price is a wash.

Many thanks to AeroComfort for putting up with all my notes and ideas. We finished up today and the results are exactly as imagined. The main goal was to avoid the dreaded rear-seat issue that plagues early 80 Mooneys. I'll post more pics tomorrow.

I paid $80 for a new one a couple years ago, but I got lucky.

My prayers go out to his family. Godspeed Patrick.

Thanks! I have an '83 so I'm hoping it is the one that is threaded.

I am planning on removing my seat belts to have them re-webbed. We removed the belts from the seats, but now we need to take the shoulder harness belts off. Question. Is the bolt for the shoulder harness simply going into a thread in the frame or do we need to remove the interior plastics to catch a nut that might fall down into something? Thanks for any advise.

I've heard you could camp at Big Bear, but I've never met anyone who's actually done it. I'll never get to do it. There's too many B&Bs in the area to get the wife to agree to that.

I'm going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume that some people simply didn't have access to the internet or Google, 'cause it took me about forty seconds to figure out that CalPilots hadn't updated their website. Maybe we have a rare, and secret, cabal of Amish-Mooney pilots (the "Moonish" if you will), who fly non-electric planes (i.e. hydraulic flaps and, of course, Johnson bar for their landing gear), whose homes do not yet even have dial-up. One possible hint that such a group exists here, is the high ratio of hangar raising threads. If you're wondering how they post on MooneySpace, well...I assume that they send carrier-pigeon messages to their "English" friends who have access to such machines.

This is a serious issue because it is possible that a charity that benefits veterans, children, and general aviation, might be impacted by inferences that appear to be personally motivated. There is an easy way to settle whether or not the charges are personal...if Friends of Oceano is, in fact, a 501c3, will those who questioned the charity not only apologize, but also make a personal donation? This would seem a fair way of proving that personal motivations were not involved.