N201MKTurbo

I've been adjusting fine wire plugs with a pair of needle nose pliers for 30 years and I've never broken an electrode. Has anyone actually broken one, or is this an old wives tail? Maybe I'm just lucky...

I think racing fuel is about $25/gal

100 octane aviation fuel (Green) has 6gm/Gal TEL 100LL aviation fuel (Blue) has 4gm/Gal TEL The last premium mogas with lead had 0.1gm/Gal TEL Anything they do to make unleaded AvGas will make it more expensive! I would be willing to detune my engine by retarding the timing so it would work with a lower octane aviation fuel. This fuel would be 100LL without the lead which is about 95 octane (not exactly sure). On another blog I stated this and everyone thought loosing some engine power was worse then death. I would consider the continued economical operation of my airplane to be more important. Plus it would spur the development and acceptance of electronic ignition and fuel injection systems that would restore the performance with the lower octane fuel.

The environmentalists think we are all going to die from lead poisoning and kill all the children too.

I once was checking the fuel and the sample was clear.... I went into the FBO office with the sample cup and asked the guy at the counter "what is this"? He looked at it and said "I don't know, where did you get it" I said "out of your 100LL pump" It turns out that the gas company had delivered 89 octane mogas instead of 100LL. The funny thing is that 10 airplanes had topped off and I was the first one to notice... I had a trip to make so i drained out all but 10 gallons and flew to the next airport... The plane flew like it always did.

Wow, flying is boring enough, all I have to do up there is control altitude, I would fall asleep if I didn't have that to do. I flew most of my IFR in my M20F with just a wing leveler. When I got my J with the CIIB I thought I had died and gone to heven! If you cannot fly hard IFR without an autopilot, you should not be flying IFR....

I've read a discussion somewhere about weather the clock in the transponder meets the IFR requirement for a clock. There wasn't agreement on that, but there never is or forums like this would be boring.

When you do a go around in a Mooney (or touch and go) I bring the power up to about 15 inches to arrest the decent, then start adding down trim to take pressure off the yoke, raise the gear and then go to climb power. You can do all this in about 5 seconds. Don't be in a hurry...

A greasy Mooney is a happy Mooney

I've only been to HPN once and I parked at Panorama. They treated me very well and the prices were very good considering how close to NYC you are.

I've been meaning to get one of those, annual is comming up, maybe I'll do it this year.

I don't think welding is the best repair method for a few reasons, but it has to be better then it has been for a long time. I have to say that a seat back attach failure would be more of an annoyance then a safety issue. I had the bolt fall out of mine once while flying. The previous owner had put in the wrong hardware. It was no big deal, you just have to cuss under your breath and shift your weight to the other side till you get home.

Wow, two replies during the time it took me to type a response.....

I try to make the engine fit the cowl, which usually means biasing it to point up. The cowls tend to ride up, so pull it down so it is in its nominal position and then arrange the spacers so the spinner sits straight in the cowl.

If I recall the mooney parts are 5/16-24 I looked in the parts manual and they don't give any clue to the thread size.

I have to look at things a little differently. I bought my first Mooney in Denver and flew the first 2000 hours around the rockies. I didn't know any better, the performance I saw at Denver was normal performance, and of coures the performance would be degraded at high elevation airports like Telluride and Leadville, but that was to be expected. The real performance surprise was when I would fly to sea level airports and see the awsome amount of power the plane would make on takeoff. I never considered APA to be a high elevation airport after all it is on the flat lands.

A mechanic friend of mine asked me to ferry a rocket one day. I flew it from Stellar Air Park to Flagstaff. It took 40 min. to get there. The airline flight back to PHX (shorter distance) took 1 Hr 15 min. To be fair, I flew up VFR direct except for the class B and it was pretty straight, and the airline went IFR and they flew him all over the place. That plane climbed at almost 2000 FPM and at 12500 it was trueing at 200 KTS and I had a bunch of power left.

When I was flying all over Colorado, I considered APA to be a low elevation airport

It sounds like you saw a Porsche Mooney. They came from the factory with a single lever power control. They have a Porsche Engine not an IO550

Don't operate your engine in the yellow arc of your tach. This is the RPM range which causes high levels of torsional vibration in the prop/crankshaft, and I believe the crankcase.

You might check if the intake riser is loose.

You can get to APA any time you want baring IFR. It is out on the plains, quite a ways from the mountains. Even in severe wind conditions the effects diminish for the most part by about downtown Denver. I flew over the rocks almost daily out of 01V (RIP) for six years. I remember one day I just got back from Aspen and this old guy at the airport asked how the weather was. I replied " oh, it was OK" he then asked "then why do you look so green?" 26 years old with a Mooney and a job that had me flying almost daily, I was bullet proof!

Your E will do 12,000 without breaking a sweat. The winds and bumps going through the pass can be severe if not just annoying. If you try to get V388 they will try to get you higher than 12,000 because of airline traffic (MEAs be damned). L.A, SoCAL and SNA seem happiest with you on V64. Just slow down to approach speed over Santiago Peak, because they will keep you at 8000 until passing it and then clear you for the approach, which you will not be able to make without speed brakes, so just plan on flying through the final approach course and circling back to the approach, which is what they will do after they figure out that you cannot drop like a brick. I always fly IFR into SoCal, the airspace is very complex and IFR makes it all go away.

I looked at the picture of the plane, it is the same conversion I have. M20Turbos turbo normalizer. You can tell by the shark gill vents on the cowl. It was never offered by Mooney. Maintenance is a bit harder because the already crowded cowl is way more crowded. I’ve had the exhaust crack which I welded myself, and mounting brackets crack which I sent out for repair ~ $100 per weld repair. Burned up the turbo once (no fault of the system) it cost $2400.00 to repair (never stopped working, I found the damage through inspection). I have had to repair the air box twice because it chafes on everything; it is in there so tight it is impossible to keep it from hitting something. The pressure controller went south it cost $200 to repair (Approved Turbo Components is approved to repair it). Other than that it works great!

I agree I landed there twice in my F. It can be a handful. The wind and turbulence through that valley can get to be severe. I had a ski trip there year before last and I was staying at a condo across the street from the Angle Fire airport, but I elected to land at Taos and drive to Angle Fire because of the winds. I’m sure I could have made it, but lately I’ve become a bit of a turbulence wimp.