donkaye

I let them know I'd be there around 10:00am.

I wasn't clear. It was the active servo control cable.

Unleaded fuel is inevitable. To minimize the entry cost I bought the STC today. Even though I am based at KSJC, the local airport pilots get 25 gallons free this Saturday. The discounts seems to vary depending on when you bought or buy the STCs and whether you are based at KRHV or E16. I've attached the program for those interested and near RHV. Your entry cost totals $620. Edit: STC Cost apparently varies with engine HP, so my cost is in the upper region. GAMI Reid Hillview 10 28 2024.pdf

I test flew the plane today and I have my AP back working. I WILL get a bill, since it took a lot more time than allocated. Garmin will hear from me about that!

It was finished yesterday late afternoon. I'm going test fly it this morning.

That was what they said was the problem; the longer reach on the YD servo especially, and yes it is the control cables.

I'm into the 3rd day and the installer says several of the servos are very difficult; not the servo removal but the cabling. I don't think they've done a Bravo replacement before. As good as the shop is supposed to be, I'm now thinking I should have spent the money and time going to the original installer in Minden. I expect this "no cost" replacement is going to cost me a lot--disappointingly.

This is the first I have heard that KRHV has the G100UL. No lead is supposed to mean a cleaner engine that implies better longevity. I would consider using it even if it cost more just for the engine benefit alone. Does anyone know how the fueler knows whether you have bought the STC from Gami or, if they check, can you get it from them? Or do you have to contact GAMI to buy it? OTOH, right now Reid Hillview is an absolute mess, as is it undergoing a massive improvement process. For a small airport, if you are not based there, just getting to the runway involves a clearance as long as one for a cross country. Even thought I asked them to read it slowly, the Controllers there just rattle it off so fast that I finally just told them that I wanted "Progressive" to the runway. I am base at San Jose, 5 miles from Reid Hillview, and the fuel price is higher than at Signature in San Diego, a Class B airport, by a significant amount. I haven't bought fuel there in years.

Per the Rogers Report the least error occurs when the two calibration points are close together. Phil Verghese and I calibrated ours with the high calibration point at the top of the white arc in the clean configuration, and the low calibration point at 1.3 Vso fully configured for landing.

I'll find out this week as mine are being changed out now. I was told by the shop that it was 2 hours reimbursement for each servo. If they charge me excess over 2 hours per servo, I'll call Garmin to see how much time they give to confirm the 2 hours. One of the techs said it takes him about an hour per servo, but I'm not sure they've done any Mooney exchanges.

My strobes have one choice; synchronized. My pulse lights alternate: left taxi/right recognition then right taxi/ left recognition. https://youtu.be/sw6ZScJkmmI

Before he retired, Tom Rouch from Top Gun, had the procedure down cold. I watched him do it. He could replace the back spring in a couple of hours--around $300. The back spring cost about $350 at the time. He used to refurbish gear actuators. I bought one from him in 2016 to eliminate the Plessey actuator and its associated back spring issues (you couldn't get them). The price at the time was a little less than $5,000. New they were $15,000. The good old days just 8 years ago...

My new hot start method: 1. Remove Left Mag 2. Replace with SureFly SIM 3. Start like a cold start.

Since the issue occurred on the last landing and it was a "slip to a landing" he passed his Wings Program, which qualified him for a flight review.

The tire looked almost new. We'll find out on Monday, when a new tire and tube arrive, what caused the problem.

I arrived at the airport (KSJC) today to give a Wings Program Flight Review. My student had recently gotten a hangar at the airport and by chance it was located right next to mine. It took all of 2 seconds to notice that the nose wheel tire seemed deflated down to about half full. I asked the student when he last flew and he said it had been about 6 weeks. I had previously had tires that lost air over a period of time, but never that much. Still, I thought maybe it was possible, but I still had that "feeling". It turns out I have a compressor so we moved his airplane out and moved my compressor to a place where we inflated his tire. It seemed to hold pressure so we proceeded to do the flight review. We did the air work and came back to San Jose to do the required landings. After the Tower had us circle for about 15 minutes, they informed us that there were 8 planes on final and it would be quite awhile before they could accommodate us. We decided to fly over the hill to Livermore. The Wings Program requires a long runway for some of the landings. We did 4 different kinds of landings and a simulated emergency to a full stop. We were about to take off to go back to San Jose when I asked him about fuel. We had plenty, but he was planning a long cross country over the week end and fuel at KSJC is over $11/gallon. So we went to the fuel island and loaded up. I looked at the front tire and it seemed to me that it had gone down some. Once again I was thinking that something just wasn't quite right, but the tire was nearly new and maybe it was my imagination. We flew back to San Jose and were cleared to land on 30R, the runway used for takeoff for the Commercial Airliners--and there were 3 waiting to takeoff. We touched down smoothly and within a second or 2 the nose wheel started shaking violently. Yes, I knew what had happened. The tire had failed. Luckily, we were close to a turnoff and we were able to roll onto an intersection and clear the runway. Still, the Airport ran a FOD check that delayed the Airliners a few minutes. It could have been sooo much worse if we hadn't cleared the runway, (or it had happened in Livermore away from home base and we had to deal with both a plane AOG and transportation back to San Jose). The runway would have had to have been shut down. As it was, it took about an hour for a tug from Atlantic to tow the plane from the intersection. While there were no violations involved, commercial traffic wasn't impacted more than a few minutes, and we were lucky enough to have facilities that could easily handle the situation, the fact remains that in hindsight I should have listened to that voice in the back of my head that said "something doesn't seem right" and postponed the flight review until the student had the tire checked.

Actually, in thinking about the warranty, maybe I should just replace the one that failed. OTOH, having a failure when on a long trip would not be pleasant. I think I'll continue to have them all replaced.

Thanks.

I had one of the first installations of the GFC 500 in the Bravo in June of 2019. After some initial issues, it has been rock solid and I thought I would get away with waiting the 5 years Garmin gave us before replacing the servos, some of which were defective in their early models. So it was very disappointing to turn on the avionics a couple of days ago and be alerted to a "Roll servo hardware fault". Out of curiosity has anyone had a hardware fault and been able to fix it without servo replacement?

On January 29, 1992 the Mooney Salesman for Northern California asked me if I wanted to accompany him to Kerrville in a TLS. We would come back in a J Demo. What fun that would be I thought, so I said yes. I asked him to make sure he topped off the O2. I flew up to Auburn, where he had his office and we took off late in the afternoon. The plane did not have a stormscope and ADS-B wouldn't come along for many years. I didn't do the flight planning and I had very little true cross country time. I think our navigation consisted of a KLN 88 Loran or maybe a KLN90B. Based on my logged time I think we went direct over the Sierras. I cringe as I think about it now. He also didn't top off the O2, so I think we had maybe 400 lb if even that much. I think we started off VFR, maybe IFR, but somewhere about an hour into the flight we came upon some weather and I think picked up a popup clearance and got news of thunderstorms along the route. That got my attention. Soon we were in the clouds and shortly thereafter I started seeing flashes of electrical charges dancing across the windshield (St. Elmos Fire). That was the first time I had ever seen that. A few minutes later the sky lit up all around us and Mike asked me why I wasn't holding altitude. We were obviously in a thunderstorm and Mike said to climb. Since we were low on O2 and I was flying the plane, Mike said I should use it. We kept climbing and I kept looking up hoping to see stars, letting me know we where on top. I personally thought we might be done for--and it was a Customer's plane. I asked myself how could I have gotten myself in such a situation? To my utter relief we broke out at 21,000 feet. We must have shared the O2 at that point, I don't remember. We did an approach into Tucson, at which time I told Mike that because we didn't have any O2 I'd stay there and he could on to Kerrvile. Between you an me, there was no way I was going on after that. I found a hotel and called Shirley to tell her what happened. Later, I found out that Mike had to shoot an approach to minimums into Kerrville at 3:00 in the morning. There's more to the story, but the memory still sends chills down my spine. The reason for the story is that the TLS had full static wicks, our comms were not interfered with, and we still got St. Elmos Fire on the windshield.

32 Years and never a regret.

Yes, which is why I asked Tom in the first place.

No. Any and all flaps only below the white arc. I just said that you may not harm the flaps if you accidentally had approach flaps below gear speed. It's not something you should deliberately do. I just gave a little background. A number of high performance airplanes and jets permit approach flaps above gear speed. Mooney doesn't permit it until below the white arc.

Alsolutely---NOT! ANY flap extension should be below the White Arc. A number of years ago I had the same question so had a long discussion with Tom Bowen, Chief Engineer at the time. While I can't remember everything he told me, the basic issue was torsion and loads throughout the CG range of the plane. They did do tests showing that approach flaps could be extended below gear speed in the long body, but never got it approved. So, if you forget to retract the flaps on takeoff you are not likely to do damage to the flaps if you're below gear speed, but they are not approved for extension above the white arc, notwithstanding apparently some J models.