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Jeff_S

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Jeff_S last won the day on October 13 2016

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    Fernandina Beach, FL (FHB)
  • Reg #
    N1034S
  • Model
    M20R - Ovation 3

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  1. Except, a few Ovation 3s came out late in 2006 and still had the S-TEC A/P. I know because mine is one of them. But it's got the factory-painted Ovation 3 so it was considered as such. I sure wish I had the GFC700, but the S-TEC still gets me where I'm going.
  2. Thanks all. I wondered about a welding repair but wasn't sure if there was enough metal to work with. I may look into this. And yes, there is definitely some friction between the arms and it doesn't slide freely, but it was never anything that seemed unusual. Anyway, I have some things to work with now so I appreciate the thoughts. Cheers!
  3. Hey all. The end of the baggage door retention arm (not sure what it's officially called) broke on me yesterday so I need to replace it. From what I can tell, it seems like I should be able to do this myself. It screws into the door frame under the trim on one side, and into the door behind the plastic panel on the other. Does anyone know the official name and part number for this part, and where to procure one? Is the Factory the best source? Picture below of where it broke off right at the tip on the door side. I appreciate all the help, as always. Thanks!
  4. Just a quick follow-up to thank everyone for their input to this thread...I learned a lot of good info. I believe that my and Rich Junkin's choice of MLW (his with reductions for some fuel weight) were designed to meet the same general goal of giving a basic foundation for all future calculations. I'm also glad to see I'm not the only one who really likes to have 10 gallons per side on landing! But I also like the idea of just nullifying it in FF by using Max Weight, although I don't know what this looks like in the graphic. I didn't know it was possible to go back to the legacy W&B system but I may look that up. Certainly FF has gotten more and more sophisticated with their attention to larger carrier and business planes, but so much of what they've added in the last few years is lost on us little guys. Cheers!
  5. Hey all, I had cause to dip back into ForeFlight’s W&B module recently to determine if I could take an Angel Flight that was requested. It presented with a fairly robust husband, wife and toddler child plus 50 lbs of their luggage, enough mass that I knew my normal mental W&B calculation would not suffice. And FF confirmed my suspicion, as it would require takeoff with barely enough fuel to meet my personal minimums for fuel on landing. But the W&B calculations in FF showed a metric I didn’t recognize: Max Zero Fuel Weight. I scoured my POH and found no such limitation. So perhaps this happened with a FF update and my infrequent use of that module kept it hidden from me. But it got me thinking…how would I determine such a number? I haven’t found a way to remove it from FF, so I put my thinking cap back on to see what logic I could apply. I settled on the Max Landing Weight of 3200 lbs, figuring that a worst case scenario would have me touching down with just enough gas to taxi to the ramp. That may be fairly okay, or wildly stupid, which leads to my question. In planes like ours, what would be the rationale for a Max Zero Fuel Weight and if there is any, how should it be determined? To finish the story, I rejected the flight. I do know that the first leg of the trip was completed by another Mooney pilot, so if s/he is here on MS my hats off to you for squeezing that load into your plane. I admit that the factory A/C in my system has significantly reduced my useful load, but here in Florida that’s an easy tradeoff to make!
  6. I once heard some advice that seems to be fairly useful. Break the inspection into two parts. Aft of the firewall is mostly just cosmetic perspective except for one thing: open all inspection panels and make sure the aluminum is "beer can shiny." In other words, check carefully for corrosion throughout the body and frame. Everything else is pretty easy to repair/replace as your budget allows. (On a Mooney, I would add that a good check of the gear pucks should also be done.) Firewall forward is where the fun begins, and that's too much to put into a single post. Ask for recent flying history, oil inspection reports, review the logs, etc. Compression checks will only tell you so much. If possible, get results from an engine monitor. Seeing the 10 most recent logs, and even paying to have them analyzed by Savvy, will give you a LOT of detail that wasn't available to buyers in a previous area. Lot's more to consider beyond just these things so this is where you should spend the money on a pre-buy with a mechanic you know and trust. Good luck!
  7. Agreed with what everyone else says. Each plane is a little different, and the engine can also have an effect on power and airspeeds. I would say that what you're seeing is a bit slower than my experience, but TKS is a real "drag" on the wing (ha ha!). Clean airfare and wax really does help. I have the A/C which carries a weight penalty for overall useful load, but the extra weight in the back actually helps reduce horizontal stab drag so that increases speed. I always throw an extra 50 lbs in the baggage compartment when I'm racing for this same reason. But the other thing you haven't mentioned is what the atmospheric conditions were for your test. The book values are (I believe) based on a standard day, but heat and higher/lower altimeter settings will also affect the results. I get the fastest TAS in the winter, and then slower in the summer. So it could also be that your test conditions didn't match what the book was showing.
  8. Rudder trim? Isn't that what feet are for? Just kidding...sort of. I have to admit I don't touch the rudder trim in my Ovation, except when it comes back from annual and somebody ELSE touched it to test it out. Then I get it back to center while in-flight and leave it there. I realize it can be helpful especially on take-off, but it was never part of my checklist in any other plane so I just didn't add it to this one. There are enough gizmos to play with already! Of course my Acclaim buddy David never stops reminding me about the SB for runaway rudder trim that I'm supposed to have done, otherwise I'm going to DIE DIE DIE (or so he says in his texts). What can I say...living on the edge!
  9. So are you saying that you're not holding off the nose wheel until the mains have both landed and started tracking? Quel horreur! I know from experience it's hard to hold the Ovation nose wheel off as much as you should...that dang IO-550 is heavy. And I've swerved a time or two in heavy crosswinds but I never felt it was because of the nose wheel being catawampus. I'm not diagnosing your situation at all, but in my case it's usually because I don't hold aileron cross controls long enough, or one of my favorites...with my big feet, I sometimes get a touch up onto the brake on one side by mistake. I've got to consciously work to keep my toes lower on the rudder pedals and "dance" like I would in a taildragger.
  10. I sure learned a lot about insurance and aging pilots while trying to figure out what's happening at the Mooney factory! But I guess I'm closing in on the "aging pilot" category so the content was useful. Now, why did I come into room again? ha!
  11. So, for fun, I asked ChapGPT to write me a limerick about the Mooney Ovation. Here's the result: There once was a plane, Ovation named, In the skies, its beauty proclaimed. With wings made of carbon, It soared, like a star on, Its engine, a symphony untamed. I gotta' say...not half-bad. That IO-550 is definitely a "symphony untamed" when hauling out in beast-mode!
  12. Many thanks…I’ll check them all out!
  13. Hey all. I may need to be at the Gaylord in Grapevine in late June. What’s the best Mooney-friendly airport in the vicinity? Thx!
  14. I hesitate to post this because...you know...karma. But it appears (he says knocking on his skull, the closest thing to wood in the immediate vicinity) that the oil temperature dropout situation has been resolved. I put the plane in with the avionics shop and they reseated the GEA 71 engine interface that all the probes go to. Ran through a full suite of diagnostics with Garmin, and came back with the expected NTF (no trouble found). Except that I suspect simply re-seating the GEA 71 was the answer. I live on the Atlantic coast, and corrosion creeps up in all sorts of places. Since that maintenance, the oil temp has behaved perfectly (oh shoot, there I go...don't jinx it!) so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I just wanted to add to this thread in case people find it in the future with a similar problem. Hopefully I will not have any reason to revisit this thread again!
  15. So I've read the latest news about some mysterious cloud that "shot up like a smoke plume" out of clear skies and caused the major turbulence on a jetliner in Hawaii. But I've not been able to find any reasonable analysis of what this actually was. Unless it was just some extreme convective event growing at incredible speeds, which would seem a bit odd. Has anyone else seen any meaningful explanation of what this "shooting cloud" could be?
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