DaV8or

Not only that, but he actually knows something about them. He is screwed on two accounts.

From what I've read of it so far, it offers little change for those of us with existing certified aircraft. The only improvements are likely to be easier STCs or use of logbook entries for cockpit informational systems, not primary systems. So things like AoA indicators, traffic systems, onboard weather systems and back up instruments may be cheaper to buy and install. Airframe and power plant modifications will likely be the same as now. So will primary instrumentation, navigation and communication systems. Don't expect much change there. For those that buy brand new airplanes, there may be some relief there. New designs should in theory make it to market faster and a little cheaper due to easier certification. Kind of like the 3rd class medical reform, in the end it's good for a few but for most it's same ol' same ol'. Please somebody tell me I'm wrong! I want to be wrong about this!

Oh, it was just a photo posting problem! I thought he had picked up his new plane in China. That's how it looks down under there, right?

I always forget... it's the pinky that sticks out when you drink tea, right?

Take a small piece of safety wire of whatever gauge fits so that there is still free motion and put it into the gap between the upper and lower hinge. Twist it tight around the hinge pin and trim all but maybe 3/8" off. Problem solved. The forward and backward motion is stopped. Because it is stainless steel wire, it is harder than the aluminum, so it will last a long time. When it gets loose again, do it over in a different place. It will take years between. That's what I did.

Some of those failures are part of the cascade effect. As the plane starts to fall, the weight and momentum puts loads of stress on the components on down the line many of which will break until there is equilibrium. I don't know where the failure began, but a study of the way the systems works and the broken parts will tell the tale.

Oh brother. There is not a Mooney made that can recover from a spin at pattern altitude. Most high performance planes cannot. Sure, a 152, or Cherokee 140, or a Skyhawk, maybe a Pitts, you might have a good chance of recovering an accidental spin at pattern altitude, but most else, not so much. With each successful deployment of the Chute in the real world, it turns out the lowest altitude for deployment keeps going down. I believe it was pulled at 800ft and people survived. The airplane did not need the chute to be certified. They did not ever say- "Holy crap! This plane can't recover from a spin! We better put a parachute on it!!" I explained the reasoning above. Cirrus spun the plane before certification and knew it would recover. Many out in the real world since certification have spun a Cirrus. It has always predictably recovered. To your point- Yes the Cirrus was certified with a parachute and if you remove that parachute, it is no longer a certified airplane because it no longer conforms to it's type certificate. So in this sense the Cirrus needs the parachute to maintain it's certification status. Hate Cirrus, fine. I'm not here to sell Cirrus. You shouldn't buy one. It's a death trap. But to the OP who was considering one, I strongly suggest he do some research before discarding the Cirrus option due to OWTs and the usual pilot speculation.

Of course. Different airplanes appeal to different people of different reasons. I was in no way trying to say that the Cirrus is the greatest plane out there. I just wanted the OP to know that the folk lore that the Cirrus needed the chute to get certified is patently false.

Best to future proof as they say these days, just go strait to the TBM-950.

Seriously, in all fairness even on a Mooney site, you need to do more research. Cirrus did not need the parachute to pass certification. The company argued that because the plane had a parachute that there was no reason to do the whole stall regimen that is very costly. It was a strategy to lower the cost of the plane. The parachute was designed into the plane from day one. One of the co founders of Cirrus survived a mid air collision and vowed that the airplane that he was to sell would have this feature. Never was it a band aid for poor stall characteristics. Since the plane already had the chute, they argued that the spin testing wasn't necessary and so they could save their customers some cash as that can be very expensive. The FAA bought it and the rest is history. The Cirrus then and since has been tested by many in spin recovery and it recovers quite well. It recovers better than a Mooney in the real world. The Mooney loves to dive for a spin and if allowed to spin can take as much as 3000 ft to recover. This is why all the test pilots that did spins in the Mooney as well as the factory itself, say never spin a Mooney. Basically the CAA, the precursor to the FAA back when the Mooney M20 was awarded it's type certificate, the same certificate all Mooneys share, was not so strict on stall performance. Basically they said that the plane had to demonstrate the plane could recover from various stalls and it did. I don't think there was too much mention of how easy that was to be, or how much altitude was lost in the process. If the modern Mooney were forced to re-certify from scratch under Part 23 regs, it would likely fail the spin testing IMO. Ironically, if the Cirrus were to try to pass the CAA Part 3 spin test, I'm sure it would pass with flying colors from what I've read. People have spun the Cirrus and have been pleased with the result. Before you discard the Cirrus as a choice, you should read up on it. I personally would take the chute over marginal spin recovery any day.

Me too. If one can afford a Cirrus, it's a great choice. One can do much, much worse.

To the OP, if you still give a crap about this silly thread- Go to the Cessna forum and ask the exact same questions. Compare and contrast the answers here and there. Then when your choice is clear as mud, go with your gut instinct... OR, ask your wife to decide. You'll be fine either way.

This is very true. If you are making a lot of long cross countries like that, the IR can really help sometimes. On the other hand, the IR can sometimes lull pilots into thinking they are now an all weather, any time, on time airline captain. Even with the IR you had better be ready to deviate, or stay on the ground an extra day. Our Mooneys can't even come close to competing with a B-737, or A-320 for on time trip reliability and sadly, some forget this, then over promise and get trapped in got-to-get-there-itis scenarios.

I sure don't. Even though as I posted above, I haven't been current since 2006 and no longer fly IFR, I think the experience and knowledge is valuable. I do not believe that an IR is required to enjoy flying, nor do I think it is necessary to be a "real" pilot, but you do learn a lot and if nothing else, you learn the instrument scan and that is a useful skill even for a VFR pilot. If you have the time and the money, I would urge any PPL holder to pursue the IR even if you never use it. I'm glad I went through it.

I think I'll skip it. It's another sunny beautiful day here. Not likely to fly though. Today is all about Christmas decorating.

It can be a bitch for some. Very few actually meet the requirements by just flying unless they have a day job where they get paid to fly. I sure couldn't. I got my PPL in '98 and my IR in 2000. I flew pretty much nothing but IFR until 2006. In 2006 I nearly quit flying altogether. My wife doesn't like to fly. I never really go anywhere far away and the IR currency became the whole focus of flying. Every flight was IFR and if there was actually any IMC out there, I felt obligated to go out there and fly as many approaches as possible. I felt like if I let currency lapse, I would be crippled, or less of a pilot. Instead of quitting, I decided to let the currency lapse and just fly VFR. Flying has been fine ever since. Sure, I couldn't punch in and out of the marine layer when I was based in Oakland anymore, It wasn't that big of a deal. I found VFR after all those years kind of liberating. You can just go... When I decided to buy an airplane, the Mooney I have now, I assumed I would get current again and even set it up to be a decent IFR machine. I did go to a couple of sessions to get an IPC, but the more I screwed around with the 430 GPS the more I realized it was going to take a lot more than a couple of sessions to get anywhere near proficient with that death trap. Until I bought my Mooney, I never flew IFR with a 430, only the usual VORs and DME. I gave it up as I felt I was falling back into the trap of regs and IPCs and obligations, and for what? Still don't really need it. I might still someday get current fro the hell of it ( Wish it could count as a BFR! ), but now that I live out in the valley with 300+ days of VMC, not sure when I'll do that. To those that say it is foolish to buy a Mooney and not fly it IFR, well... they really don't understand all the reasons one might fly. They only understand the way they fly. Had my Mooney five and half years now and all of it VFR. No regrets and it works fine for me. As a VFR pilot, I'm not sure what type of plane I'm supposed to get? I guess I missed that lesson. Please someone fill me in on the correct plane for VFR and the reasoning why.

If you come and get my plane painted with a fancy new paint job, I promise to keep it so clean I can see myself in it. I could clean and polish the bottom of my plane all day and still would never see myself in there.

We don't have a "don't like" button, but that's pretty lame. A guy wants to fly an airplane and be safe as he can and you call him what? Screw this macho crap.

This is of course misleading. The M20D carried a lot of it's future retractable equipment with it in fixed gear mode. It is unique in that it is the only retractable gear airplane I can think of that was modified to be fixed gear with the option to be retractable in the future. The retractable gear kit's weight listed above no doubt accounts for the stuff removed from the plane as well. The difference being 20 lbs. However, the M20D is a poor example to study in the case of fixed gear vs. retractable. It was never optimized to be an ideal fixed gear airplane. The M20D could have been a much lighter airplane if it weren't for the need to be an eventual retractable airplane. It was nothing more than a step up marketing scheme to the standard M20 line up. A great and novel idea on paper, but in practice it wasn't that great.

And the M20 is a 60 year old design and still being made. Most of the current Boeing offerings are 40-50 year old designs. Look up and damn near everything you see flying in the sky is geriatric. Don't like the Caravan as an example? How about the Quest Kodiak, or the GA8 Airman, or the PAC P-750? Anyhow the Caravan is still in production because it still does the job.

I don't know if you've checked out medical expenses these days, but a badly broken leg can cost as much as my plane is worth. I hope your limits aren't small if you fly strangers people other then yourself and family in your plane. Throw in some lawsuits for loss of life and the Cirrus is a much safer bet for insurance companies. It will take time for them to adjust their premiums downward for the Cirrus as they will need several consecutive years of data to do that. Of course insurance companies are in it of the profit, so they may just leave the premiums high and pocket the money.

You have to remember that a whole lot of traditional airplanes that don't have a parachute end up wrecked too when landing off field and some wrecked even when they do manage to make it to an airport. I have also heard that many of the Cirrus that landed under chute have been repaired and returned to service. I think it's wash as far as the insurance companies have to pay out to cover aircraft. It's the human occupants where the insurance companies save big time.

It depends on the mission and type of aircraft. In general, most commercial passenger and cargo planes do retract their gear, but there are some that do not. The Cessna 208 Caravan, the Britin Norman Islander, The Dehaviland Twin Otter, etc come to mind. Remember the new thinking is planes under 200kts, so there is no question that the typical airliner, or corporate plane should tuck it's gear by anybody as they cruise well over 200.

The general "wisdom" amongst GA pilots and enthusiasts is that retractable landing gear has become pretty much obsolete for any airplane flying at speeds less than 200kts. The reasoning being that the magic of computers and the wind tunnel has made modern fixed gear design nearly invisible to the wind and modern construction and materials has made it very light. Combined, airplanes like the Cirrus and the Columbia as well as several kit planes go just as fast as the old retracts if not faster. This makes me ask two things- Is retractable gear for four seat piston planes like the Mooney truly obsolete? If there were an STC to convert your Mooney to modern fixed gear that would result in an increased Gross Weight, lower maintenance costs, lower insurance costs, the peace of mind that you would never do a gear up and all at a penalty of 5-10kts, would you do it? Assume the STC, hardware and labor were free. I was going to photoshop an image of a Mooney with Lancair gear on it, but screw it. It's late and you guys can close your eyes and imagine.