Jeff_S

Yes, I assume they were overhauled because they came with yellow tags which are in the log books. The engine core is at 940 hours SMOH so I figure with the proper care I've got 1000 hours on this set-up, and as we get closer to TBO I'll be able to decide my next step. The IO-390 has me drooling a bit, but I'm many years away from that decision (hopefully). I will be at the PDK fly-in tomorrow although I may not "fly in" per se. I caught a bad head cold this week so unless it clears up considerably I won't want to risk my ears on the pressure changes. I may just taxi over and join the crowd...although I hate to start up an engine for such a short cycle so perhaps I'll just drive over to Atlantic and walk in. One way or the other, I'll be there.

I don't have a wealth of experience on this but I'll tell you the story I have so far. The prior owner had the ECi chrome cylinders on the J but was having trouble with oil consumption (no compression loss, just using a lot of oil) which he attributed to not flying it that much. So at annual last July he put on the Cerminil cylinders and broke them in (which only takes about 5 hours). I had an oil change done as part of the pre-buy in early January, and since then the plane has flown ~20 hours and each time I check the oil and get ready to add more, the mark stays solid at 6 quarts. So that result seems to have satisfied its objective.

This is definitely not related to the landing gear. The wires from the airswitch go directly to a Hobbs that is on the back bulkhead. I saw some log entries from many years ago about the installation of the "maintenance Hobbs meter" so I'm sure that's what it is. The plane started life as a trainer with Flight Safety so I'm sure that had something to do with it. I haven't bothered to check to see if the Hobbs is still running after an actual flight.

Hmm...one wonders what aerial activities could be accomplished with a stable autopilot and a willing partner...

Sounds like you've got a good handle on the analysis. King definitely lost their mojo to Garmin for all the core avionics, although they're trying to make a comeback with their new PFD. Time will tell on that one. And yes, if you're shopping for a plane that has good avionics already installed, you want at least a G430W or other WAAS equipped device (of which your only two other options are the G530W or the GNS480). King A/Ps are still pretty standard in most Js, and they get high marks overall although if you need to do repairs on the attitude indicator it will set you back several AUs. (In case you hadn't heard that term, an Aviation Unit is a cool thousand bucks.) As to the 696, I personally think it's too large for a Mooney cockpit. I was looking at an MSE in Georgia that had a 696 installed, and the only place he could put it was on the right-side yoke. I thought it would be awkward to make any effective use of it over there (but would give my wife something to do for sure!). And while the features of the 696 are good, they are not groundbreaking and come at a very high price...both for the device itself and even moreso for the database updates. If you're looking for a backup, check out the Flight Cheetah from TrueFlight: http://www.aviationsafety.com. I had one of those in my Warrior and loved it. My J has the 480/MX-20 combo so for now I'm going to see if I can get used to that and make it work, but I do miss the completely independent backup of the Flight Cheetah.

Having just completed my shopping with the purchase of my J last month, I had also looked at all three of those birds at All American. I've heard nothing but good things about All American in general, and I did talk to them briefly, but I also felt their planes were priced slightly higher than I wanted to pay and frankly not as well equipped as others that are for sale by owner in similar price ranges. I hadn't seen that fourth one you listed, on ASO, and of the four it would be my first choice to look at. I also know there were a couple of very nice J's in Colorado--one in Pueblo and one in Durango--that were on my short list if necessary. They were both on Controller at one point...not sure if they're still there or not. How you value and decide on what to buy will be a personal decision based on your criteria. For me, I put an emphasis on having a solid avionics stack because I wanted to step right into some more serious IFR flying. As a new pilot, you may not need that right away so you could focus more on airframe and engine condition and then add avionics as your needs change. It's really going to be a personal decision.

Well, I just got my J so that's the plane I've been dreaming about for awhile now. Of course, as I work through the growing pains of learning the idiosyncrasies of this new bird, I sometimes dream about the Warrior I sold which I knew like the back of my hand. But it's only a matter of time...

Answer to my previous question: the airswitch doesn't seem to be activating much of anything at the moment. We tried it with both Master on and off and it didn't do a thing. Admittedly I don't know much about this type of Hobbs, so it could be wired into something else that requires the engine to also be operating, but at least I know that by itself this probably didn't cause a battery drain.

I have a follow up question about this that may tie a bunch of things together. Is this airspeed switch tied directly into the battery, i.e. would it activate without the Master switch being on, and cause a drain on the battery? If so, then I wonder if in my naïveté I accidentally triggered it by putting on the canvas cover and having the strap pushing the lever back. That could explain why an otherwise good battery may have been dead after 10 days of inactivity. I guess if that were the case then this meter would show a sudden increase of 240 hours, but since it hasn't been in my normal routine to record this I have no idea what the numbers have been. All the logbook entries just use tach time. But if it is tied directly into the battery I may be further to solving another mystery. Just curious...

Jolie, it's really not that hard. Here's the current header block for your website: <HTML xmlns:lxslt="http://xml.apache.org/xslt"><HEAD><META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"><!--#set var="__path_prefix__" value="." --><SCRIPT>var __path_prefix__ = '.';</SCRIPT><meta name="GENERATOR" content="www.cm4all.com"><TITLE>Make Your Life Wonderful! Professional counseling, coaching and consulting. San Luis Obispo, CA Hood River, OR White Salmon, Wa.</TITLE><STYLE type="text/css" cm:escaping="no"> BODY { Simply replace the text between the <TITLE>...</TITLE> tags and voila, you're done. Cheers.

Jolie, you may want to take a look at the "header" information in your home page. This is the text that shows up in the tab of a Windows Internet Explorer browser. It doesn't always show up in other browsers, though, so it's easy to overlook. I suspect the Mooney Ambassador website may be have started life as something else, and then was morphed into it's current form. Why else would the header talk about professional marriage counseling and the like? Although, my wife might argue that my love for the Mooney threatens other aspects of our otherwise very healthy relationship. But that's only because she hasn't flown in it yet!

Mystery solved. This is definitely an airspeed-driven switch for that Hobbs meter. I had the access panel open today to look for any potential grounding problems that may be creating my pulsing whine, and I was able to trace the wires from this right up to that Hobbs meter. So I've got that one figured out...one down, who knows how many to go!

My wife would argue that the Mooney IS my new valentine...good thing she's very understanding. We had a nice day in Atlanta so I was able to get up for a fuel run and to keep familiarizing myself with the plane. Tonight is filet mignon and crab cakes with grilled asparagus and southern-style creamy cheese grits, accompanied by a Napa merlot. And after that, well...it IS Valentine's Day, after all!

Ah, interesting. The plane does have a "maintenance Hobbs meter" which is installed on the back bulkhead of the baggage compartment. Something to check into.

Good points all...the usual suspects always apply. The tip from Don Maxwell about the Master switch corrosion seems like the easiest and cheapest way to start.

Hello all. Still going through the shake-down period on this J. I'm working with my A/P on this and also discussing with the prior owner and his A/P, but sometimes I know the wisdom of the multitudes can help. Here's the deal: 1) Plane comes down from Nebraska to ATL two weeks ago. It gets flown heavily for 15 hours over two days, and then sits in ATL for 10 days until I can get back to it. 2) On Sunday I get in for my first solo, battery is dead. But jump start from the FBO gets it going, ammeter/voltmeter seems normal, no annunciater voltage lights, everything seems fine in flight, and battery has charge after shut down. Next day, my A/P checks the battery and it's already down to <10volts so we suspect it's just gone bad...three years old after all. 3) Newly charged battery goes in yesterday, and now there is a definite pulse on the ammeter and a pulsing whine through the headset that both increase with RPM. (Prior to the new battery, there was a constant whine through the intercom that increased in pitch with RPM...so that's been there, but now it pulses instead of whines.) But still, no annunciator lights, and the JPI gauge shows the battery at 14.3-14.6 with the engine running. I know electrical system issues can sometimes be quixotic. With my general understanding of things, I would say this sounds like an alternator or voltage regulator problem. There is a log entry for work done on both two years ago, with a new voltage regulator put in. But what would cause a drain on the battery in a dormant state? (Yes, double checked that both dome lights are off.) Anyway, thoughts are welcome. I went through something similar on my Warrior once and we tried everything else first, and then put in a new alternator and that solved the problem. But the hunt is on again for a cause...

Thanks all. I did go through the FAA Wings course and it was informative and nicely done. More than likely if/when we take this trip we'll go IFR since my wife likes the added safety, so I don't expect any problems. But it's good to get feedback from others who have gone before.

Directions? Who needs directions when you've got two different GPS units and an MX-20 moving map?!

Ah, videos...thanks George! I'll head over to them right now. I'd been on the JPI website but didn't see these.

Okay, slightly tangential to the topic but I'm wondering if anyone can give me quick pointers on how to get the most out of my 700 w/FF. I have poured over the manual (very tiny print!) numerous times and it has about the worst user interface I have ever seen. But I'm sure once I get the hange of it I'll find it quite nice. Can anybody give me the Cliff's notes, or point me to something of this nature? Tips like when to use Percentage vs. Normalize view, etc?

Nor do I have anything to compare it to since this is the first CS prop I've ever owned. But when I was doing my sign-off work with the CFI, which as you can imagine included more Touch n' Gos than I can remember, there was a noticeable lag between when I added power and the prop bit in. And during runup, I'd say it takes about 2-3 seconds before the prop cycles. But it's always passed annual so I assume it's fine.

Ah, good to know there's a sense of humor! As I suspected, this is probably something so particular to my plane I'll have to dig into the avionics area and see what it could be. But if it really is a Flux capacitor then I got more than I bargained for with this plane!

This was very timely, as one of my fuel sight gauges has become flooded with water and hard to see. Glad to know there's an easy fix!

Well, today the learning began in earnest as I did my first solo in the J, 10 days after getting signed off. It turns out flying it was the easiest part. I was met with a dead battery on start so we're definitely still in the shakedown phase for this plane. On my first real thorough, unsupervised preflight I was going over all the systems, pushing all the drain buttons, etc., and found this other thingamajig on the belly of the plane. It's in the right-center of the attached photo, surrounded by the three screws. I couldn't find any reference to this in the POH, and I checked on a few neighboring J's and they didn't have the same thing. Anybody have ideas on what this is? It may be related to any of the various avionics or other components that have been added to this plane, but if you can help me ID it I'd appreciate that. Thanks!

I did a big OSH event last summer so I may not be able to take the time away again this year. Of course, this year I have a Mooney instead of a Warrior, so it makes an out-and-back overnight a bit more doable. We shall see.