N201MKTurbo

The gear motor takes about 30 amps if everything is working well. A discharged battery will draw about 30 amps of charging current. With a dead battery the alternator is supplying all the current. The 30+30 amps is right at the current limit for the breaker. it sounds like everything is working correctly.

One thing to consider is returning from crosswind and downwind. Unless you always depart straight out until you get to 500 feet or so, there will be a different situation. If you are on crosswind do you do a 270 back to the runway or the 90? If on downwind do you do a 270 back to the end or dive for the runway and have none left to land on?

OK, I was a little snarky, but it always amazes me what people worry about. The chances of having an engine failure during the 30 minutes or so you are crossing the lake is about the same as winning the power ball. It reminds me of the discussion on AvWeb about traffic alert systems selling like hot cakes while you can hardly give away AOA sensors, yet for every midair there are 100 stall spin accidents. That being said, I have flown across Lake Michigan both IFR and VFR. IFR doesn’t bother me, because white nothing is white nothing no matter where you are, but when you can see the water and not the shore, it causes a bit of pucker. It is all psychological of course the plane doesn’t know the difference. If someone is worried about an engine failure the best thing to do is be sure there is enough fuel in the tank, that will take care of 95% of the engine failures. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable flying across the lake then go around. The risk of flying over the lake is probably less than flying at night anywhere west of the continental divide, yet people do it all the time. If it was dangerous to fly over the lake it would be illegal, but the FAA (Chicago approach) seems hell-bent on sending you 30 miles out to sea every time you go there.

There are plenty of boats out there, if you go down ditch next to one. Out here in the west there are many places where emergency landings would be nearly impossible because of terrain, yet nobody seems to mind flying over it. If you don't trust your airplane to make it 80 miles you shouldn't be flying it.

If you are really worried, pull off the two cylinders on one side and inspect it. it'll be about 8 hours of labor.

I have always wondered about how long these new glass cockpit systems can be maintained. I have been directly involved in the development of electronic devices for 30 years now and I can tell you that the components in state of the art display systems have a relatively short lifetime. By this I mean that the displays and the components to make the displays will probably be obsolete in five years or so. Unless the manufacturer stockpiles a great number of these components, they will not be available in the future, making the expensive hardware junk! I’m sure they will have a new box to sell you for a few more tens of thousands of dollars. My current instruments were designed in the sixties, still work as good as the day they were designed and I can get them repaired for relatively little money at hundreds of shops. I expect twenty years from now I’ll still be able to get them repaired. I'm just looking for peoples thoughts on the subject. Do any of the manufacturers guarantee a service life?

I can see using a rubber chicken on a Cessna, but on a Mooney????

On my plane the overnight drain works like a charm. I always start the drain with a hot engine. I hook the drain hose up to the quick drain and open her up. Sometimes it is a couple of days before I get back to the hanger to change the filter and fill her back up, but the filter is always empty and no mess.

I have a plane with the conversion, it was installed before I bought the plane.

There is an adjustment on the valve for how fast the flaps retract. If your flaps are coming up to slow, it can be fixed easily. If the flaps retract on their own, you can re-coin the seat where the ball bearing sits in the valve and that will stop the leak.

I think it is freezing cold here in Phoenix, it was 34 this morning and the windows on my truck were iced up. I don't think it will even get up to 60 today....

I put a Horizon tach in my old M20F and my problems were gone forever. In my current M20J I had the same tach problems and replaced it with a UMA electronic Tach and it has been trouble free as well. The only problem with the UMA is the hour meter is hard to read. The hardest part about both installs was removing the old tach cable.

SSV Class Designator Dimensions T (Terminal) From 1,000 feet above ground level (AGL) up to and including 12,000 feet AGL at radial distances out to 25 NM. L (Low Altitude) From 1,000 feet AGL up to and including 18,000 feet AGL at radial distances out to 40 NM. H (High Altitude) From 1,000 feet AGL up to and including 14,500 feet AGL at radial distances out to 40 NM. From 14,500 AGL up to and including 60,000 feet at radial distances out to 100 NM. From 18,000 feet AGL up to and including 45,000 feet AGL at radial distances out to 130 NM.

I have two stock lights with lenses if you still need them.

I don't have the wiring diagram here, I do in the hanger, but you might check the dimmer or the dimmer fuses.

Everything I've read says that camgagrd is helpfull in engines that are rarely flown. If you fly your plane at least once a week, it is a waste of money. I understand that Camgard provides corrosion prevention and startup lubrication.

Maybe it is just flying the airplane 250 hours in a year. Engines love that.

This happened on My 77J, I cleaned and replaced all the o rings and it has been fine sense.

In 2004 on a trip from Oakland, Ca to Phoenix at 17500 I maintained a GS of 270 - 275 KTS for about 100 miles and it was smooth as silk. Glad I wasn't going the other way. On the flip side, on a trip across New Mexico at 16500 ( there was forcast and reported severe turbulance below), I had a GS of 80 KTS

I have had luck stopping the leak using locktite ( I forget which number I used). Clean the area around the leak with MEK and then Alcohol. Apply the locktite it will be drawn into the crack and it sets without air. In my case it eventually turned out to be a cracked case

DonMuncy, For whatever it is worth, I've crossed those mountains more times then I can count. It is almost always rough. If you cross on V64 it is a lot smoother then the pass or V16.

I have a Haskel gas booster I bought on EBAY for $300.00 that looked brand new (they are $6000 new) . With it I can fill my portable cylinders to 2000 pounds, well 2300 for one and 2100 for the other, with my supply cylinder as low as 400 PSI I own my own supply cylinder and don't trade it out. I take it to the gas place and have them fill it from the manifold. The same pipe as the Aviators breathing oxygen comes out of. The guys tell me that some times their cascade can get contanimated when a trade in bottle that is accidentally backfilled with another gas. If you trade in your bottle it is most likely filled from their cascade. I asked the foreman at the gas works what the difference was between Aviators breathing oxygen and any other oxygen that they have. He said that the only difference is that the ABO gets tested. I asked if it has ever failed the test. He said not in 35 years.

With a century servo, the electro magnetic clutch pulls a gear aganst another gear. If the mechanism is jammed or the gear teeth are really warn it will jump teeth whrn it tries to run. This kind of sounds like what you describe.

Just think about it as automatic external corrosion protection

In May I needed to fly from Phoenix to Portland, OR to do some work at the silicon works. I had been checking the weather for a week or so before the trip. My plane was IFR ready, but I wasn’t current. I had IFR charts for emergencies. The weather looked iffy for a direct VFR flight up there, but looked OK to fly up the eastern side of the cascades and then take a run down the Columbia River from the Dalls to Portland. I have done this a few times in the past with success. I have flown down the gorge with the tops of the canyon completely obscured. It is kind of weird to fly through a 60 mile long tunnel. Anyway I flew up to Yerington, NV for fuel and food and checked the weather. It was still reporting and forecasting 8000 foot ceilings P6SM with widely scattered rain showers throughout eastern Oregon. The radar confirmed that when I left Yerington. By the time I crossed into southern Oregon the weather had deteriorated quite a bit. The ceilings were solid overcast at about 2000 feet and the mixed rain/snow showers were wide spread. I Have done more of my fair share of scud running in the mountains, and I thought I would keep going to see if it cleared out further north. I was flying through north south running valleys with the sides completely obscured. The ceilings dropped down to about 1500 feet but there was still pretty good visibility outside of the showers. I finally got to a point about 30 miles north of the Lakeview VOR where I could not find good visibility anywhere in the valley, I could only see the ground straight down, about 3 miles of visibility. I knew it was time to throw in the towel. My GPS showed a small airport about 3 miles from me so I flew over to it, it was just a duster strip with no facilities and no town. I flew back to Lakeview OR and landed. The man at the airport was very nice and helped me out as much as he could. I checked the weather and it was bad, there was no way to get to Portland VFR and too much icing for an IFR flight, besides I wasn’t current. I asked about a rent a car and he said the Ford dealership in town will sometimes rent their used cars. He called an they said they would rent me a car. They came out and picked me up and took me into town (about 3 miles) and I got a fine 2001 Torus with 120000 miles on it for $60.00/day. I drove back to the airport to get my driving GPS out of the airplane and as I was leaving the airport I saw a Grumman landing. I thought to myself “That guy is crazier than me” I got to Portland about midnight after driving six hours through heavy rain and blizzard conditions. Two days later when I returned to the airport to get the plane and fly home, the airport was full of CAP people. When I went into the office to pay my parking I was told the Grumman was missing. The Sheriff called me the next day to ask me about the weather and if I might have any idea where they might look. I told him it was unlikely that he could have made past the higher terrain in the next valley to the east. He was going to Idaho. Unfortunately they found the wreckage two days later on the mountain I suggested. They had been looking there anyway and I didn’t change that. The NTSB called about a week later for a statement. I followed the search on line after I got back home and the outcome really tore me up. http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/Meridian-pilot-found-dead-in-Oregon-crash-155838375.html