donkaye

A few more thoughts: While getting my 25 hour (recommended by Lycoming) $350 oil change today, I was talking to Mark who said getting parts not made by Mooney, but required to go through Mooney, are becoming nearly impossible to get. This is because he says Mooney will not buy externally sourced parts any more. They even offered to prepay for the parts and Mooney said no. Nobody understands their reasoning. Mooney is still making parts, but that is all. Expect parts to become nearly impossible to get for our airplanes in the future --- and the future is now. Regarding Annuals; the Mooney Maintenance Manual for my airplane says it should take 31 hours to do a proper inspection, and that only includes the inspection and not the repairs. My inspection alone last year was over $4,100. Go to a none Mooney Specific shop? Cheap for a few years, and then "Pow!!! There was a plane in the shop whose owner had done just that and it had over 120 discrepancies. Neither Mark nor the Owner were happy campers. The repair estimate was jaw dropping. Not withstanding my comments above, I can't imagine NOT owning an airplane. And the only piston one I would want is a Mooney. I've have mine going on 32 years and the adventures I have had with it have been amazing. If you want to sleep well at night, my recommendation has been to have no more than 10% of your net worth in your "toys" including airplanes. With that allocation you should be able to handle any unexpected expense that might arise, and believe me they will arise. It may seem comforting to do a pretty analysis as was done above, but expect it to be blown out of the water in actual practice. Regarding flying for business, AOPA came out with a new Webinar that would be useful to the OP and everyone else. Here it is: https://bit.ly/alc-1093

See my website for my Battery Minder setup with battery switch box for initial conditioning of each battery. www.donkaye.com

My plane without TKS or air-conditioning has an empty weight of 2383. With a maximum gross takeoff weight of 3368 that means the useful load is 985 pounds. There is a maximum landing weight limitation of 3200 pounds.

I can and have flown a 10 hour day in the Bravo. Mooney somehow got the seat angle perfect for long term sitting. I did a 2.5 hour engine break-in in a C182 a couple of years ago and couldn't wait to get out of the airplane. The seat angle was just not good for long term sitting for me.

An elegant spreadsheet was developed a number of years ago by one of my students who was an engineer, and I have adapted it to every airplane in which I teach including the C310 Twin. You can easily play "what if" scenarios with it. It does require you have access to Excel. For the Bravo all you have to do is enter the empty weight and CG from the Weight and Balance section of the POH. Here's a screenshot. I've had my Bravo for 31 years. It's a 4 person airplane with 50 gallons of fuel and 50 lb total of baggage. It's a 3 person airplane with 60 gallons of fuel. It's a 2 person airplane with full fuel and full baggage. You can increase the useful load by close to 30 lb by removing the back seats (takes about 10 minutes). The above assumes no TKS. You'll have to email me for the file because Excel files can't be attached here. Email: donkaye@earthlink.net

I made a mistake. By now I should have learned, you can't flight instruct on the internet. There are too many variables that influence a particular flight. I knew I shouldn't have answered your last posting, but fell for it anyway. No more. You didn't get how I do it at all. Reduce the throttle to 20" at 17,000 feet 50 miles out? No way. I don't reduce the power at all. Just lower the nose to 500 ft/min, pick up speed that I lost in the climb, and wait to do any other configuration changes until the appropriate time on final. Coming into San Jose in instrument conditions once on final I fly 160 to 170 until 5 miles from touchdown, then use what I have at my disposal to slow the plane to 75 knots on touchdown. Take off 1" per minute and ATC will have you flying in circles until all the jets behind you come in. Fly your airplane the way you want to. I'm on my 3rd engine and with 31 years of experience with the Bravos, I'll be teaching my students the best way they should be flown and all the other models from that experience.

Adding either speed brakes or reducing the prop rpm (remember 300 rpm is approximately 10% power) when it's not necessary is inefficient. I want to go as fast as I can for as long as I can and reduce the speed in such a manner that the least amount of drag is added over time during the slow down. So my slow down method is, at the appropriate time from my experience of when to do it, I'll bring the MP back first to 25" then to 20" while watching the maximum cooling cylinder, then reduce the prop rpm from 2400 slowly to 2000, then bring the MP down to 15". At that point I'll be below 140 and put the gear down. Below 110 I'll add approach flaps to get me down to 90, add full flaps when turning base, slow to 80; turn final and slow to whatever approach speed is appropriate of the landing weight. I believe this method uses the least amount of fuel and provides the least amount of drag over time for a smooth transition to a landing. Drag is drag. A prop isn't any more efficient than the speed brakes. It's just how and when you use them.

Well, as the saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

That's a lot of unnecessary work. Both Lycoming and Continental both permit a 50°/min cooling rate on a cylinder. At cruise a cylinder will conservatively run at 350° at cruise and 250° at idle. So in a worst case scenario (of course you wouldn't go below 15"MP in descent) that would take 2 minutes. So what instructor recommended 1"/minute?

Also, not a very efficient way to do it, and landing with speed brakes, well, I just wouldn't. Better to use the prop first as a speed brake in such a descent.

Bad technique land with approach flaps, but you can get away with it on the C Model.

Sorry, but that's not the recommended way to land unless there is a strong crosswind. Consistently do that and you'll not be prepared to land on a 2,350' runway or be afraid to even go there.

It's probably appropriate that the AeroCruz discussion has digressed because it will never compete with the Garmin autopilots. Regarding Turbotax, I don't do the guided return, but instead flip to the forms and enter all that is applicable to me. I have all the above, but do have an accountant do the Corporate tax return. I then review the flow from data entry to 1040. The complexity of some of the flow is amazing to me. I personally would never have been able to figure it out. This year due to the significant tax increase, I have set up an appointment with my corporate accountant to review on a macro basis my personal return to see if I missed something. I expect him to find nothing, but it's worth the time and money to confirm what I think I already know--it's time to move to Florida.

Marc, when you decide to retire from being an ER Doctor, you should go into sales. You are a lot more tactful than I am.

First off, you are the younger generation compared to me. If your Aera mount was the Garmin mount, I would agree that it's not very good. It blocks part of the panel and vibrates too much. The Ram mount attached below the yoke doesn't do any of that. I've had students be perfectly happy with the iPad mini on the yoke. I just don't think it provides all of the types of information in the best way possible from a pilot's point of view, and may have a reliability issue, For the benefit of others, because I'm never going to convince you, on a number of cross country flights with students I've seen their iPads fail due to heat and it was minutes before it got cool enough to work again. Not good if you were depending on it on an approach in IFR conditions.

Was it a computational error the accountant found or an unknown to you deduction?

Thanks, Sue. Sometimes the responses to my posts are so frustrating, I wonder why I stick around. I've specialized in teaching extensively over the past 30 years (CFI and CFII in 2/1994) in every model Mooney except the D and G of which there were so few. I've done the work over 22 years to earn the designation "Master Flight Instructor" 11 times (needs to be renewed ever 2 years). With a degree in Electrical Engineer and working quite a few years as a display engineer, I spent several months extensively researching the market before I did my upgrade. I've read all the manuals a number of times on not only my equipment, but those of many of my students. My experience says that many people spend over $100,000 on their upgrade and never read a manual. I guess that keeps me in business. I've flown most of the equipment available today (still like mine the best). So I cringe at some of the feedback I get. I think some people out there just don't know what they don't know. So I go back to saying it's very frustrating trying to move immovable people to another position.

That's the one to get with the "Medium" extension. While it can be mounted from the top of the yoke, it is best mounted from the bottom. It will be obvious, but each configuration requires the Garmin cradle to be bolted on differently.

I, too, have written an article on speed brakes that can be found on my website at https://donkaye.com/useful-aviation-articles. That article pretty well describes how to use speed brakes. I do automatically "pop" them on touchdown. I have found them be effective from touchdown speed to about 75% of touchdown speed. Below 200 feet, if you are too fast for the runway length, I'd recommend going around rather than applying the speed brakes. You will get an immediate 200 ft/min increase in descent rate that could slam you into the ground at that altitude.

As a flight instructor, FF gives you ⅓ off, so I do have it in addition to Garmin Pilot. It does some things that GP won't, like give you 3D pictures of any airport and a 3D view of your planned flight. Having said that, its interface is quite a bit different that GP, enough so that Brian Schiff has devoted many hours online to describe how it works. I started the series, but just didn't have the time to see it all the way through. Since most of my avionics are Garmin, I have used GP primarily since it came out. Before Garmin screwed it up again, when it worked, database concierge made it easy to upload databases. A couple of months ago Garmin changed something and it hasn't worked right since. Many on BT confirmed the same thing. When I did my upgrade, EIS wasn't available. Having said that, I wouldn't want it. It takes up too much screen real estate and with the exception of iPad compatibility doesn't have some of the functionality that I have and want with the MVP-50. I have found the 60/40 PFD/MFD screen sizes with the ability to reverse them to be especially useful on the TXi. Enroute, I change to 40/60 for bigger map functionality. This is especially useful on the flight plan page where several more columns become available. At least for me, after 10 years of use, and with several replacement upgrades like the G500 TXi from the G500, I wouldn't change a thing on my upgrade. "What if" flight plan diversion scenarios can and have been done extremely rapidly with a switch to disconnect the 760 from the 750 so I can examine weather alternatives without altering the current flight plan. If I wanted to, I could then push the new diversion plan back to the 750.

That won't work well. It will place the 760 too low and give you less flexibility. You need the attachment like I have for best placement.

Here's a better picture of the 796 mount in the plane, but the mount is the same except for the 760 adaptor.

Here are a couple of pictures:

I can see, if you use the Garmin mount, how there could be an imbalance. I use a RAM mount that mounts underneath the control column, not on top and away from the yoke (creating a possible 760 CG issue), as the Garmin mount does. I went with the RAM mount because the Garmin mount had no flexibility and was unstable (vibrated). I've attached a picture showing how the 760 adaptor allows the 760 to be in the center of the yoke and up against the yoke creating no imbalance with yoke movement, since you're turning around the CG of the yoke.

Have you ever done it? There's absolutely not difference in balance that I have been able to notice in my 32 years and 10,650 hours of Mooney time. I'd say more, but it's just not worth the effort any more. Clearly, my experience is getting through to no one. As with other valuable contributors, I'm close to leaving Mooneyspace...