Earl

When I start my takeoff roll and pick up enough speed I do a pre-rotate check: I've got oil pressure, oil temperature, airspeed indicator, fuel flow, manifold pressure and RPM. Takes a few seconds and if I forget the pitot cover I'll notice it before I rotate. Never have forgotten so far.....knock on wood. As for cowl plugs I drive a Mooney, there's no room for anything to get into the engine compartment so I don't use them.

I was taxiing badly at Charlotte Douglas one time and after about three wrong or missed turns I finally had the FBO in sight. Ground told a Baron behind me to follow the Mooney to the ramp to which he replied, "Only if he doesn't make another wrong turn". I was too chagrined to protest. Now have Safe Taxi on my 696 and it is magic!

Lets see, starter, wiring harness for the mags, vacuum pump (not in IMC thank goodness), #2 Nav/Comm. All in all pretty dependable.

Tailwinds?!?!? What the heck is that? As in my youth I had to walk ten miles to school every day, uphill both ways. :-) Actually I fly at 65% up and downwind and try to find the best altitude for winds, weather, turbulence, etc. My usual tactic is to fly in the 10-12k range west and 11-13K east unless there are some very good winds higher or lower. Also depends on the season. I like to fly higher in the summer for the cooler temps, above the haze layer and better t-storm visibility. Winter it depends on potential icing conditions.

I agree that the legal answer is B but I would likewise wait to cancel on the ground for safety reasons. That keeps other IFR traffic from occupying your airspace when you may need to go missed. Having said that, if others are waiting to fly the approach I would cancel ASAP on the ground.

If you take the advancedpilot course they will tell you they don't touch anything other than MP until you are on roll out after landing. If you have to go around you push everything forward. But I agree with Super Dave that with a Mooney it might make sense to push the mixture forward as part of the GUMP check. That's what I do but I don't fly LOP because my GAMI spread is a little too much to run LOP. At my next annual I am going to have GAMI injectors installed.

I need to get GAMI injectors installed on my next annual. I have tried LOP and it runs too rough. Did a GAMI check and sent the results off the advancedpilot and they said it wasn't awful but not good enough for LOP. As for the red box, my recollection from the AP course was below 65% power you are outside the red box. I run at 65% power, burn 11gph at ~165 kts (at 10,000 feet) and my hottest cylinder (#6) is usually at around 365 degF with a quarter to third of cowl flap extension. In the summer heat I sometimes need a bit more cowl flaps to stay below 370 degF which is my target for the hottest cylinder.

That sounds way too soon. I replaced mine that were OEM so they lasted over 20 years. No issues after 4 years with the new ones. Same shop that did the original replacement? If not, I would get another look at them to be sure. Just sounds way too early unless you have done a lot of flying and landings.

This just happened to me on Sunday coming back into McCollum when they asked me to slow 20 kts for spacing. In this case all I needed to do was drop the gear and no problem.

Mine is located at KRYY (Cobb County) which is a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. I would be willing to give a ride to prospective Mooney buyers.

This is a very valid point and one that is not lost on me and others that fly GA for business. If I absolutely must be there I will buy a commercial ticket just in case so I have an option if the weather or mechanical issues get in the way. I will say this, in the last 5 years I have had more delays or changed plans due to small mechanical issues rather than weather. Thunderstorms and icing are no go's for me. Can't say that I have ever been anything more than delayed by low minimums and usually that on departure as I don't leave an airport below approach minimums. I usually know in advance when thunderstorms will be an issue and can plan around them by leaving early or delaying my return. I think you would be surprised that if you have an instrument rating you get pretty decent utility out of GA for business.

My Mooney use is almost entirely for business and I bought the plane to meet my business travel needs and not to expand my reach. We have lots of offices in the southeast, midwest and Texas which are easily reachable for the Mooney. I simply got sick of all the wasted time on Delta....primarily getting into the airport, on the plane, off the plane, to the rental car, driving and then repeat to get home. I am willing to suffer fools for a trip to the west coast but not from Atlanta to Memphis. My pleasure travel is primarily an occasional flight with my wife for personal reasons and occasional ferrying of one of my kids to a college visit. I would say my use is 99% business.

This relates to another thread where a poster made a comment about hating to use speed brakes because it meant he didn't plan his descent well. My point there and I will repeat it here is that those of us that fly IFR into a busy class B airspace like Atlanta find ourselves all too often being asked to descend several thousand feet over a short distance. Speed brakes come in very handy. I've had several instances where ATC has asked me at what seems like the last minute while cruising at 10,000 feet to be at or below 6,000 feet by some nearby fix on the STAR. I could drop the power to slow down, extend my gear, drop like a rock, reach my target altitude, push back in the power and then raise the gear or I can deploy the speed brakes and leave everything alone. Which would you choose? I take the latter approach and then when I am at my target altitude all I have to do is dump the speed brakes. When flying SPIFR adding five steps when two can do the trick is not a good idea. I think these people that go off about the use of speed brakes must spend most of their time flying VFR in class G airspace. As I mentioned in another thread, my not thinking to use the speed brakes on a slam dunk ILS resulted in me starting down the glideslope at 130 kts versus my usual 90 kts and chasing the needle. As the CFII sitting next to me watching me struggle said, "Hey dummy, how about using the speed brakes and slow down a little?" Doh!!

Have had my Mooney for over five years and 500 hours with the 150 and not a single problem. Only issue I have is when you are flying a coupled approach you need to hit the APR button before you capture the localizer, otherwise it is hit or miss as to whether it will fly the approach properly. Not sure why but it works better when you let it fly into the localizer. Would not agree that it is a piece of junk in the least. Do wish I had altitude pre-select though.

I wasn't holding at 130kts. I was cleared for the ILS and had to make a quick descent over a short distance so I was fast when I started down the glideslope. My CFII would have whacked me as well but this was one of those days when everyone and their brother was flying instrument approaches and so I was forced to hold 3,000' above at a VOR fairly close to the airport. So I had to lose that altitude in a short distance while getting configured for the approach. Caused me to pick up a lot of airspeed as Mooneys love to do. Simple solution would have been to use the speed brakes and drop the gear early but I just didn't do it for some reason and found myself starting down the GS at 130 kts. Big difference than the 90kts I shoot for and the reason my 500fpm wasn't working.

I don't know why it would make me nervous to have a washer in between the baffle and the cylinder for two reasons: 1) chafing; and 2) with all the vibration coming loose and ending up somewhere I would not want it to be. I could be all wrong on this but I like the idea of silicone baffle seal if that would work. I like the idea of a simple solution but this one makes me wonder whether it could create other problems. I have the advantage of cowl flaps and never see temps on climb above the mid-300's even in the hot Atlanta summertime.

Really good point about being established on an ILS at high speeds. During one of my IFR refresher flights with a CFII I was cleared for the ILS from a hold 3'000 feet above the min altitude of the IAF and didn't handle it very well. Suffice it to say I started down the GS at around 130kts ground speed and was wondering why I could not stay established at my usual 500 fpm descent rate. After chasing the GS for a while my friendly helper said, "Hey dummy, how about using your speed brakes to slow down a little". Just one of those experiences where you learn a lot by not managing a situation very well. In actual conditions I was clearly headed for a missed approach. It is indeed a funny thing about flying that we can get ourselves into a place where we have all the tools to get it sorted out and just don't do it. As a final note, I wasn't particularly trying to slam the post that mentioned disliking having to use speed brakes. I only use them once in a while and more often than not when I am being dumped into an airport by Atlanta approach. That happens to me on a fairly regular basis and is life inside class B airspace. I have just noticed over the years quite a few posts that implied that speed brakes were for weenies. Just defending my manhood....so to speak. No intent to offend.

Very sad news. Every time I take off I literally say to myself, "If the engine quits look a little left and right and find the best place to put it down. I am not turning back to the airport". I even tell passengers that during the pre-flight briefing. I tell them not to even ask and plan to crack the door open so we can get out quickly. I've seen the video of the guy making that turn, heard the stall horn when he did and all I can say is when you look at the stats he was very lucky and the odds of making it work are very much against you. As someone said above, its the insurance company's plane now. I just want to get myself and my passengers out alive.

I wonder why all the speed brake bashing on Mooneyspace. I fly in and out of the Atlanta Class B and I can tell you they are an invaluable tool. Just today they came in very handy. As often happens, for traffic they kept me high until I was pretty close to KRYY. I just started descending out of 11K ATC came back and said I needed to be at 8,000 in less than 3 minutes. So I needed to drop down at 1,000 fpm at a time I was trying to slow down for the RNAV approach. I could have said unable and who knows what would have happened but someone would have had to be moved around to maintain separation and it would have just as likely been me. Because of speed brakes I was able to accommodate ATC and had no turns or delays in shooting the approach. Sometimes things happen and they are a tool in the box that should be used and aren't always or in my case they are almost never a result of poor planning or piloting.

Have done likewise many times but it is usually a combination of XM, Stormscope, ATC and my eyeballs. Of all this when it comes to convective activity, the eyes are the most reliable, real time avoidance tool. I know people do it all the time but I would not feel comfortable picking my way through embedded storms unless they were widely scattered. I know a number of pilots that will actually fly lower in this kind of weather as they can see and avoid the shafts of heavy precip coming out of the storm. Makes sense to me if you can't stay visual at higher altitudes. From the looks of the weather my trip back will be mostly in the clear with an instrument approach to 1,500 foot ceilings and rain. My kind of easy IFR......

That was why I asked for 14,000 feet instead of trying to climb over the top so I would avoid icing conditions. Also, I had cannulas and my O2 mask was all the way in the back. Could have gotten it but at 14K I was in between layers for the most part so it seemed like a good choice. Was also running low on O2 so I didn't want to get stuck on top of an icing layer at 20K or so and then run out of oxygen. XM, Stormscope and helpful ATC make this kind of flying possible but my mantra with convective weather is if you can't see it stay away.

In looking back at my track log I would say I transitioned that area around 11:15 to 11:30. No idea why they picked that particular picture as it was definitely a little older than what it looked like when I made my turn to the south toward KDWH.

Sorry I didn't mention it but I have one. That's how I knew there was no lightning associated with those areas (besides no seeing any and none showing up on XM).

Flew from the Memphis area to Houston yesterday and it was a fine example of flying in the IFR system using all the various weather tools and getting excellent service from ATC. As I got in the northern Louisiana area I got into the weather. Tried to climb to 16,000' to stay above the cloud deck with no luck. Ended up moving down to 14,000' because the temps were too close to icing conditions. Ended up deviating to the west to miss the worst of the weather and there was very little to no lightning in the high precip areas. Tops looked to be around 18,000' and did not have that much energy but lots of rain and would have been very turbulent. Kudos to ATC for their help. They were very accommodating and let me take some pretty significant deviations. Kuods also to XM Weather because it matched very nicely what I saw outside the window and what ATC saw as well on their screens. Works great strategically but I did not try to slip though the two major areas because I would have been in IMC. Attached the Flightaware track. I would note that while it shows me transitioning through some heavy precip just north of Houston. I actually worked around the western side of that weather and did not experience anything more than some rain and some occasional bumps. Then shot the localizer approach into Hooks through a layer around 4,000' with bases around 2,000'.

Wow, I am sorry I missed all the drama. Maybe the best thing to do is end this thread and have the other deleted. Let's face it, sometimes people get hot under the collar and a forum debate gets out of hand. Let's just move on because this really is pretty rare on Mooneyspace and the information and exchange of experiences with Mooney aircraft is really valuable. Let's all just move on.....nothing more to see here......or as Rodney King said, "Can't we all just get along?!?!?".