donkaye, MCFI

I always "condition" new brakes. 73 hours also surprised me, but that's what it was. Remember, with nearly 25% more mass than the J model a lot more energy needs to be dissipated in the Bravo as opposed to the J. J brakes on a Bravo didn't work so the brake system was improved from 27-107 onward. The new braking system was worth it to me. I should have done it sooner.

The original Bravo brakes thru serial number 27-106 were 2 puck just like the 201. My serial number is the 27-106 so I had the 2 puck system. The plane at gross weighs 623 pounds more than the 201. The 2 puck system was really inadequate. In the beginning of ownership, even treating the brakes gently, I had to replace the pucks every 73 hours. I still thought it was cheaper than buying the 4 puck brake kit at about $4,500. By 2016 labor rates and fuel prices had gone up so much that I revisited doing the brake update. The kit cost had increased to $8,000. I decided to do it anyway. Lead time from Mooney at the time was 6 weeks and they required upfront payment at time of shipping. Included in the kit were new axels and gear doors that needed to be fit. Labor was 20 hours. Total cost in May of 2016 was $10,353.81 and that include a 10% discount on the parts. The new brake pucks now need to be replaced about once a year. One other VERY IMPORTANT thing; you need the gear door stops discussed above. Failure to have them installed will result in multiple broken costly rods over time. They were NOT included in the kit and I spent an untold amount of money replacing rods over the next couple of years. My maintenance facility tried their best to figure out why the rods kept breaking. Finally with their approval last year, I flew down to Kerville and had Mike Knesse look at it. They found the problem in a couple of minutes because they still had a mechanic working there from 30 years before. The issue arose when Mooney went to the 4 puck system on the Ovation and were having many broken rods. The fix was adding the door stops to prevent the inner gear door from extending past vertical and thereby being exposed to excessive loads on retraction. They even had a Service Bulletin about it, but being 30 years old, it wasn't obvious to my service center that it existed. Luckily, Mooney still had a couple of them, and since being installed I've never had an issue with broken rods.

Example of how I manage the supplements in my airplane. This PDF is on my iPad and is updated as necessary. Using Adobe Acrobat for each item, bookmarks are automatically added to the combined PDF for easy access to an individual item. If I had to print it out and change it for every update, I'd have to change the printer ink a number of times and have pounds of paper to carry around, as the whole package is 481 pages. The actual hard copy POH is manageable with the original supplements that were not included in the panel update. In separate files, I have all of the latest Pilot Guides on the iPad for easy reference of all equipment in the plane. In a recent MFT with the FAA to renew my 2nd Class Medical due to the left eye not quite making the 20/20 requirement, the examiner reviewed ALL aircraft documentation and logs, including the below, and was quite happy with it. N9148W Airplane Flight Manual Supplements for Avionics Upgrade 4:5:2023.pdf

Since that was issued 4 years ago, that's not very promising. Of course an undesirable alternative is to remove the airconditioner. I did a transition training in an Ovation in Canada where the air conditioner was removed.

I went to the plane today and tested the lights as asked above. With the pulse lights on I turned on the split switch taxi lights. The pulsing did stop, the taxi lights remained on steady, and the recognition lights turned off. I then turned off the taxi lights and turned on the recognition lights. The recognition lights turned steady, but the taxi lights continued pulsing alone. The above is nice to know, but I'll continue to use my lights as I have in the past, as I don't see any benefit of using those configurations as opposed to the original methods.

I don't think mine work that way, but I'll try that the next time I'm at the airport.

The landing light in my system in not connected the pulse light system. The pulse lights can be pulsing and the landing light on solidly at the same time.

I've had this setup for so long, I can't remember all the combinations I tried a number of years ago. Bottom line it is really simple, with the top row of switches off, turning on the bottom Pulselight switch will pulse the lights as shown in the video. The pulse lights only work in the way shown. On final I can keep the pulse lights pulsing and additionally turn on the landing lights from the top row. If I want the landing lights, taxi lights and recognition lights on together (non pulsing of the taxi and recognition lights), I turn off the pulse lights and switch on the taxi and recognition lights from the upper row. This is the way the lights worked before the addition of the pulse lights. It's pretty versatile. I couldn't get back far enough to really show in the video how bright the new recognition lights are. I should have gone down to the airport at night to do the video. One thing I know is that they are too bright to look at head on and they really run cool.

I never had a rotating beacon. The upper row of lights from left to right: Landing lights, Taxi light, Recognition lights. The bottom row of lights: NAV lights, Strobe lights, Pulse lights.

I think when I got {won) my Pulselight System they cost $450. It seems like it has more flexibility, but at a lot more cost. It allows me to do everything I wanted in regards to lights, though. I'm glad I don't have to make the decision now because I think I'd be out the extra money.

From the image below all my lights are located in a group below the G500 TXi. The top row operates independently from the bottom row. That means all the split switches in the top row operate independently. The bottom row from left to right are the Nav lights for night flight, the strobes, and the Pulse lights. When cleared for takeoff, on the runway I use the neumonic "lights, camera, action". Lights mean Strobes and Pulse Lights On, camera mean Transponder to Alt (not needed anymore with Garmin Transponder), Action means add Power. With the LEDs I feel comfortable keeping the strobes and pulse lights on all the time except in the clouds. At night when on approach I also turn on the landing light. When off the runway, strobes and pulse lights go to Off, the landing lights stay on, and I turn on the taxi lights. With the new LED recognition lights, I would now feel comfortable turning on the recognition lights at night while taxiing. In the past that was not possible, since the old incandescent lights would burn a hole in the plastic covers. Not so with the LEDs.

After taking the in person APS Course, I thought with the fuel savings over 2,000 hours, I would get a free engine by running LOP. I bought the GAMIs and got the differential fuel difference down to below 0.3 gallons. Then I couldn't get the TIT to get to a reasonable temperature at any combination of LOP power settings. Instead of going down LOP, it would go up. So, maybe some people can get their Bravo to run nicely LOP, but the majority cannot. The engine runs differently LOP. If the injectors aren't balance perfectly, there will be occasional misbalances that appear as "misses" that are discomforting to both me and my passengers. OTOH I have flown with students who have the Continental Engine and they seem to run well LOP. WRT the exhaust system, it is probably the weakest part of the engine. Yes, I had exhaust work done on the first 2 engines. The cost was about $7,000 each time. Welding properly is expensive. The 3rd engine doesn't have enough time on it to have those problems surface, but I'm sure they will past mid time on the engine.

Personally, I bought the TLS because of its speed. That means flying it ROP. I have a student who spent a lot of money getting his TLS to fly LOP. He is constantly having issues with the engine. A couple of people on this list have gotten their Bravo to fly LOP. I'm not one of them. As I've mentioned previously, I'm on my 3rd engine. I don't like the TIT to go over 1600. I think 1650 is too high. Plan on early overhauls of your waste gate and controllers and turbocharger. That sort of nullifies the financial benefit of flying LOP. The 1750 limit in the POH is out of the question. Never fly it anywhere near that temperature. Just the musings of a Bravo pilot of 31 years.

I just got my plane back from Annual. I had the LED recognition lights installed at the time. I have them wired to pulse one taxi light and the opposite recognition light. I can turn the pulse light off and turn the recognitions lights on separately. I'm using the Pulselight system we won one year at Homecoming. Link to video showing the Pulse Lights in action. https://youtu.be/sw6ZScJkmmI

Alaska Airlines I guess partners with Allianz, so there wasn't a choice. While I thought this time we were covered, a few years ago we were denied coverage in a different situation. We were headed to the Kona airport a couple of hours early on the Big Island when traffic was stopped by an accident ahead. There was only one other route to the airport and it consisted of going a much longer way. Of course everybody needed to go that way on a 2 lane road. Of course, again, that road was being worked on so traffic moved at a snails pace. When we finally got to the airport, the plane was still there, but Alaska told us we needed to be there 45 minutes early. We missed that deadline by 10 minutes. Even though we were 1st Class, they denied us boarding along with a whole bunch of other people I complained that we had made our reservations months ahead of time based on when we coupled get 1st Class and there was no way we could get that again on a day's notice. I don't know how they did it but they got us that 1st Class for the next day. Meanwhile we had the terrible experience () of having to stay in Hawaii an extra day. Even trying to get to Kona was an experience, since no Uber and only taxis were available when planes came in. No planes, no taxis. Ultimately, someone going to Kona took pity on us and drove us to a hotel that actually had a room. It was expensive and with a lot of conditions because of Covid. I thought that experience should be considered "trip interruption" and be covered. The insurance company thought otherwise, and in reading their policy after the fact, they were probably right. This time we fell right into the reason for having insurance and all was covered---without any argument.

I wasn't going to post about this, but in the interest of possibly helping others in unexpected situations I will. I was supposed to teach at the PPP in Henderson last month and was looking forward to it. Shirley likes to travel with me so we were all ready to go with bags loaded into the plane. Then the unthinkable happened. I had gotten into the plane as usual and set up both headsets. At this time I told Shirley that it was OK to come aboard. There has never been a problem with this in over 30 years. This time there was. She slipped off the wing, fell backwards, and hit her head on the ground--hard. Additionally, somehow (maybe on the flaps) she sustained a severe leg wound requiring many stitches. I don't want to go into any more detail other than to say thank goodness the SJC Airport fire department was only a few hundred feet away. I rushed to them with horn blaring. They were there in a couple of minutes and performed miraculously including calling for an ambulance. Shirley was in the hospital 4 days and is now, 4 weeks later, well on the road to recovery. So what does this have to do with travel insurance. Well, 4 months ago we made plans to go to Hawaii the 1st week of May. Up to a week before I thought that was a possibility. Knowing what I know now, it was never a possibility. The tickets were expensive (in the thousands of dollars) and not refundable. However, over the past several years I have always purchased travel insurance. While there were reasonable hoops to jump through, Allianz, the insurance company, came through with full coverage for the tickets. You can be sure I will always buy travel insurance for future commercial travel. You never know when you might need it.

If you get "Flying", he has completed the sale of his CJ1. This was discussed in the May issue of Flying. Sobering to say the least.

My plane is in Annual right now. I didn't like the blue lights. I had Mark replace them with the white LEDs that should work like the old bulbs. I thought about red, but didn't want to have to replace them a second time if I didn't like them either. Mark said the combination red or white were problematic, so white it was.

Actually, I think there was something to be gained from that interaction and different points of view, however, I should have been more general in my comment, and for that I apologize to @bluehighwayflyer.

Of course I don't have the capacity to understand. I've only been flying 55 years and over 12,000 GA hours all over the country at all times throughout a year, so don't have a baseline for judging turbulence or making comments from my "little" experience. Also, I said "prudent" meaning acting with or showing care and thought for the future. My mentor instructor once said the difference between the Private Pilot and ATP Pilot is flying for the comfort of the passenger---even if the passenger is you. I try to honor that comment.

If you're bouncing around to such an extent that you can't get your hand on even a knob of your GPS, then it doesn't make much difference whether it's a touch screen or a GPS with knobs. First off, I would have had a pretty good idea from my briefing the type of air I would be facing and postpone the flight, or, if surprised in the air, I would hit nearest icon or button, touch direct to, and land. That kind of turbulence can't be good for not only you, but also the airplane. I don't care whether you are flying at maneuvering or below, the airplane is being stressed; plan on an early resealing if flown in that much turbulence often and also not many people wanting to fly with you. Bottom line, the prudent pilot will be flying in smooth air most of the time, and some light turbulence occasionally. In that case touch screens are not an issue in my opinion.

I don't appreciate being deliberately misquoted by "cut and paste", Mark. You are the first to be added to my "Ignored Users" list. donkaye never said: "mine is great, yours sucks". You did. Disgusting!

If you have touble in turbulence with the Garmin touch screen, then you haven't learned how to use the side and top rails or the knobs. In the 10 years that I've had Garmin GTNs, I've never had an issue in turbulence, and although I try to preflight or time the flight to avoid it, I've experienced a couple of rough rides.

The title of this thread was which should I buy, Garmin or Avidyne. The OP said, "Let me know your thoughts." I gave my opinion. That's all.

And there in lies the problem. With the GTN's you ARE able to easily leverage its capabilities to better manage a flight.