Urs_Wildermuth

Thanks guys. Very stupid question: Do the J/K type seats actually fit in the C model? And if so, is it legal to install them?

My seats are really not looking nice anymore. As a quick fix, I am wondering about putting some car seat covers over the bad looking parts, but I can't find the seat dimensions on the quick. Has anyone got the dimensions of the seat, seat back and the back bench ready? Thanks.

So wtf happened? And I hope @MooneyMitch is correct that the workers receive their salaries for the time it was closed. Wasn't their fault anyway.

I guess what makes this whole thing impossible to make money with is the deadly combination of low numbers / high overhead per airframe and huge manufacturing costs. That would obviously go for any renewed "J" and "K" as well. And I suppose this also has to do with the fact that they never went for that shute, it would mean a new certification which to this day in recent living history no company has survived without near or full bancruptcy. I guess the point has been reached where the M20 with it's construction is simply not viable from a manufacturing standpoint anymore. Ok, so at this stage, we have a factory which is fully geared up to produce 2 almost identical models of airplane but has amassed massive cost and possibly debt as well as it is questionable whether each airframe sold is actually making money. What would probably be the best way is to bancrupt the whole thing to zero value and then have someone take over the factory with fresh money and streamline production as well as the model line into something which can be sold at 500k and make money. If that is possible at all, I have my doubts. As for new clean sheet design, if one figure I have heard out of the grapevine in this discussion was $40-50 million to certify a new design, well, then the calculation is easy, at least on the surface. If one assumes that building one airframe costs north of 500k these days, then if you look at a series of maybe 500 sales, that is 100k overhead to pay for the cost of actually getting to the stage where you can produce and sell airplanes. Then add the overhead of maybe another 50k per airframe and you get to 650k, so pretty much the base price of an Ovation today. Only: They can't sell 500 Ovations, not nearly. So far they sell 10 per year approximately, so now make that calculation again and you get an airframe cost well north of a Citation! So in order to go white sheet to be able to actually sustain a certification and sales to recuperate that money, we are talking somewhere around $ 3 billion needed to do what Cirrus has done (and needed refinancing too). That is upfront money to design and certify plus build 500 units before you earn the first dollar on selling them. I guess even 500 units won't really drive down production cost to the extent we see in the automotive industry. where we are talking millions of sold cars per model. Looking at this, I'd have to basically say it is a totally hopeless business unless you get some Kazillionaire with enough dosh to up front finance it. And those would rather spend those on other things these days. So a new sheet design is basically impossible today unless you are part of some large corporation which has the ressources to see that through.

So they close down the factory, nobody answering the phones, no word at all from the ownership or management on what the heck is going on. Just silence. If there is a better way of destroying consumer confidence in a product, I have yet to hear it.

As far as I reckon it can't be an engine issue as it is a bog standard O360, so it must be airframe related. There are other airframes (PA28-180/Archer) which do have the STC.

As far as I know Petersen did, but with negative result. As far as I know they own most of the Mogas STC's. Not sure why it did not work out. I'd be more than happy if anyone could make that happen.

@steingar True and there is a huge market for so called "Mogas" capable engines and airframes. Unfortunately Mooneys are not, even if some engines would be capable of Mogas, such as the O360. However, Mogas has problems such as vapour lock which in the Mooneys never was eliminated, therefore there is no STC to run them thus. Apart, this does not eliminate the problem in southern Europe, where 90% of airports e.g. in Greece only have Jet fuel, nothing else.

For the US that may be true, it is totally the opposite in Europe. Jet A1 is massively cheaper and available almost everywhere whereas Avgas is hardly available in some countries at all and expensive where it is available. $ 10/15 per USG is the standard here for Avgas whereas Jet A1 is between $8 and 12 per USG for General Aviation (taxed fuel). Add to that the pretty low consumption of Diesels and you get a massive reduction in price per hour and much better availability. That is why e.g. Diamond made an Avgas version of the DA40 primarily for the American market. I don't think that there are many flying in Europe, as it makes no sense at all.

The question in my mind in such situations is always the same one: What made the brand great at the time and what was changed? Mooney set out and succeeded in doing something then quite new: Build a fast, efficient and affordable airplane. All those things in one airframe. The M20 fulfilled all of this and did it well, to this day. So what got lost? First of all, it is no longer an affordable airplane. $800k plus is not affordable which ever way you turn it. Which models got the most numbers? Basically the C and the F/J. Why? Because they were the ones who were and are amongst the most efficient airplanes ever built and at the time, they were affordable too. Why am I flying a almost 60 year old airplane and still am faster and more efficient than everyone else, including newer offerings? Because not only Mooney went astray of this but everyone else as well. So at the time, Mooney was competing basically to the Bonanza and did what it did more affordable and more efficiently. They outclassed everyone else with regards of mph/kt, efficiency and were and are the best bang for buck. Today, the Acclaim and Ovation are airplanes which still have a lot of appeal, but competition in the market is much different. And the affordable tag definitly has been lost a long time ago. Today the only plane which ressembles the performance of the J model is the SR20. So what would I do, if I was put in the position to change that? Figure out how to turn the M20 into what it used to be, a fast, efficient and affordable plane and yes, it would most probably need to get a shute too. I did indeed think that the M10J would be that airplane but it was not. The question is: Can the current M20 airframe be turned into somthing like that? I would think that should be feasible, but it will take some effort. Like the transition between the F and the J, it would take some wiz guy like LoPresti but in terms of weight and structure. Would it be possible to return the cell to "J" kind weights, given the composite structure of the front? Return the interior to something more cost efficient and, first and foremost, produce that cell at a much lower work effort? Then use an efficient engine, either a diesel (for the European market) or the well known IO360 or 390? Get rid of the G1000 and use more cost efficient instrumentation such as Aspen/Avidyne or the certified Dynon sets? Turn out a 160 kt @ 8 gph airplane with 1000 NM range and space for 4 people plus a shute with a price cap 20% below the SR20. Would that sell? I think it would. And I also wonder if the basic idea of the M10 for a basic trainer could be revived and get certified, but again with cost efficiency in mind? Not a G1000 set up, but possibly Dynon or others? The general idea was great there but apparently the way it was built was not. So can that be corrected? Probably would need a complete redesign and while one is at that, it may well try to look a bit more like a Mooney. And with a BRS of course One thing keeps returning to my mind. In both cases, when the M10 was announced and the Ultras, the echo in this forum was close to zero. When I asked why at the time, people all answered the same thing: We are not in the market for new planes. Ok, fine, but not even interested in what the company is doing? Then how does anyone expect a company like Mooney to survive at all? Maybe we have even then identified the very reason why Mooney is at this situation today: For almost all of us the new planes are so far out of reach that we would never ever consider them. Well, if not us here at Mooneyspace, how would we sell them to others? Most who are in that market will fly either biz jets or ... well I won't say the word. In this time and age, new plane price is the biggest threat to certified GA I can identify. We have over years worked hard to get away from that image, yet with Singe piston planes costing up to 1 million dollars or above, that is not an easy thing to do. So in my mind, this is where a change is needed badly. How to bring it about? I don't know but I am sure that there are people who do.

Exactly what I was trying to say put more eloquently, thanks for that. I know that there are quite a few ladies flying Mooneys, such as Jolie and Pia, but they are hardly the marketing reference for any airplane. And while initiatives such as Jolie and Jan's seminars are helping a great deal, in the big picture things look very different today than they did 30-40 years ago, when the decisions about what to buy in terms of cars and airplanes was left to the then head of the family. Stepford is long gone and we are much better of for it too. You do describe the situation I keep seeing very well. Most of the time spouses at very best accept their significant others flying passion as a necessery evil, not as something they enjoy. Often enough, we pilots do not pay enough attention to this and still believe, being a pilot or owner, albeit of a small airplane, is something which is attractive to them. Even the car market has seen this development. Sports cars and roadsters are rather low in demand these days but SUV's are booming as family cars. Perceived safety is quite an issue. The scenario I keep seeing is that the reaction of most wifes to a husbands ambition to buy a plane (most of the time in their 50ties or so having finally gotten around to get that license) is rather "if you must" then "oh great." And if you must, it better be one which is the safest around and for people who know aviation only from the outside and are wary up to scared of it, a parashute is the very synonym of safety. So yes, while there still are people who don't have to aks their spouses consent to buy planes, their number is going south fast. And those who do get the permission to do so are well advised to heed their wifes concerns rather than poh-poh them. Driving that Porsche with a terrified woman sitting to your right is also not much fun. No, it is probably not the only reason that the M20 was never really competitive anymore after Cirrus came out but it is the reason Cirrus outsells everyone else. Piper, Beech and Cessna all have larger airplanes to cross finance their SEP's and flight schools behind them too, which go the old fashioned way rather trying new. Also that is something which will change eventually. Those who are ready then with products the market need will still be around, others won't.

From an European point of view, I thought the M10 a fantastic proposition. Most of us Mooney owners fly 2 - 3 up, rarely 4 for the simple fact that most Mooneys are not capable of carrying four over the range they are bought for. Now here comes an airplane which has the range, speed and 3 seats of a J model. The M10J would have been perfect for Europe, where jet fuel is masively cheaper, where there are whole countries with virtually no Avgas (Greece) and where it had a good chance of taking the market in storm as there was (and is) no Diesel powered plane even close to that performance. When I talked to Mooney at Friedrichshafen while they were developing that plane I did ask the usual "J" question. What is your entry model? Cirrus has the SR20, you have nothing. Answer: the M10J is that plane. Well, as we know now it was a pipe dream destroyed by incompetence and infighting as much as with the G1000 cockpit as the only option it would have been way too expensive for a 3 seater to sell. So a missed chance. Yes, there would have been a market, a huge market. But then it has to be a top airplane, not what it became. I only learnt some of the full extent of this as a consequence of the shutdown and now it makes sense that this project was stopped. Generally I thought the Ultras were a great proposition, 2 doors finally and a great cockpit and cabin, combined with range and performance. But heavens, the price. And if what I hear now is correct that they can not make any profit even at that price, then what is the REAL price that plane would have to have? Not enough people buy it now, how many will if it's priced to make a profit? We all have ideas how to change the company to make it work, but none of us has ever designed, let alone certified an airplane. IMHO, what would put Mooney firmly back in the market would be a mid body sized plane with either 180 hp Avgas or a diesel variant (the former for the US market, the latter for Europe) which can be produced for max 300 k. That won't happen unless someone can pull an Elon Musk type of ops and gear up a serial production of many thousands of them to divide the cost in. So with the US market going mostly experimental and the European Market going UL or LSA, it is difficult to find a proper solution to this problem.

Has she flown along in any of them? If not, I suggest to do that. Not only in the C series but also other competitors. I've sat in an Ultra and heavens if it's not a nice cabin. Whether it will compete is up to your wive to decide though. The important thing will be that she feels comfortable and safe in the airplane. Otherwise many of your flights will be solo and discussions not pleasant.

Hey I certainly did not want to hack people off here, last thing on my mind. I have a strong interest in the factory remaining open and continuing support and I do want the good work at Kerrville to continue hopefully for many years to come. All I said is what I get from my people I coach (free of charge btw and in my spare time) who ask me about airplane ownership. I fly my C model with pride and I have helped several prospective first time buyers to go the Mooney way, as for their budget and their mission profile the Mooneys were and are the best there is. I have yet to own anything brand new in terms of cars or planes: I currently drive my 3rd only car (since 18 and I am 57 now) and my 2nd plane. With my income, I will never buy a new plane in my life, but I know people who have done that. The guy who sold me my plane in 2009 went onto a SR22 and now a Vision jet. But having been involved in aviation since 1983, I have seen the concerns and difficulties faced by buyers. And having the wife and family on board before they write a check is something which I regard as of paramount importance, lest either their stint with ownership is rather short before they are forced to resell or even break up of relationships. Seen both. And I know quite a few people who ended up going the BRS way in order to alleviate those fears successfully. Are they all whimps? Maybe in the view of some, similar to those who cave in and buy "boring" cars rather than fun vehicles or who give up riding motorcycles after the upteenth domestic dispute over it's dangers. I have also seen how people change dramatically once they have children, folks with a previously merry go happy attitude turn into ultra conservative and over protective parents who hardly want their kids to ride in a car, let alone in a plane. Again, I know quite a few pilots who stopped flying for this reason. I stand by what I said, if Mooney wants to compete in this market, and not only Mooney for that matter, they will need to address these concerns. While the M20 is undoubtedly one of the best airplanes ever developped, the design is aged and they will not be able to hang onto this one product forever. One concern I've had for long is also the lack of a entry level model equivalent to the SR20/22 line up. The M10 could have done that but apparently that design was very badly flawed. I am glad however to hear that the figures circulating on the net are false and the produced number is higher with sales pending. I hope they really will be back to work on Monday. (And yes, but hardly to the point, English is not my first language... my 2nd actually. I grew up and am based in Switzerland, so German is my mothertongue (both German and Swiss German) followed by English, which I speak in my daily life and French and Bulgarian. Thankfully I don't post in the latter two... there would have to be a lot more issues with my spelling then )

Guys, please take a step back and look at it from the point of view that there is a reason Mooney only sold only a small number of airplanes this year whereas Cirrus sells 200. And not only Mooney, also Piper and Cessna don't sell anywhere in that class. The reason is so obvious, it is not worth discussing anymore. Lots of us have parnters and possibly kids. Many of them do not like to fly in small planes and do it just to please us. Many do not fly in small planes at all, marriages have broken over this, lots of them. People generally are afraid of flying, this includes a fair share of low time pilots too. Now comes along a company which makes airplanes which have the one solution every 3 year old "knows" is the rescue from any plane in trouble. That company soars to become the only manufacturer turning out any reasonable number. What more do you need to be clear on the why? Yes, it is the "anxious wife" effect but not only. Safety conciousnes has massively changed over the last decades or so. Daredevils were yesterday. Today, people don't look at private pilots, motorcycle riders and high mountain climbers as heros but quite few as stupid people who do not know what is good for them. In this climate, a parashute equipped plane is the only answer many anxious pilots, wifes and companies will ALLOW to be brought into their household. Believe me, I have coached quite a few first time owners in recent years. 80% of those who ask me about an airplane are 40-50 year old family people. My first question ALWAYS is, does your wife approve? 90% of those I meet will grow red faced and say "she does not know I am here". Of those, maybe 1 in 50 buys a plane afterwards, but if there is cash available for a Cirrus, I'd say the chances a reluctant wife will agree is maybe 1 in 10 instead. Those are facts of life. The time when a Lamborghini parked in the front yard got girls interested is long gone, at least here. It's responsible driving in a massive safe car by now. For a long time, people with kids bought even cars with crash worthiness in mind, that is what Volvo used to make a living of. It's the time of airbags, fines for not wearing seat belts and insurances which include broken nails. So it is also the time for single engine planes with parashutes. Mooney had the chance with the M10, it had the chance to get into a really good market with the Mooney 301 but it missed out on both, even tough the 301 lives on in the TBM. This has nothing to do with my own love for my C-Model, which is unchanged, even though I have to admit that with the prospect of having my 3 year old fly in it, I wish I could afford that shute. Call me a whimp, but that is just what it is. Most probably my family will not fly with me ever again, as too many accidents in recent years, too many people lost and too much confidence particularly in our engines shattered by mounting numbers of reports of SEP's which come to grief because those WW2 relics up front, many 30 years old or more, will stop in flight and leave those without a shute left to find that flat piece of ground. My own prediction will be that while the market has decided already, the FAA and EASA will eventually follow and mandate BRS on SEP airplanes which need to carry passengers. Those companies who by then have not gotten their act together, will simply be relegated to history. Similarily, either the aviation industry finally makes a leap in technology and brings up up to date engines and finally stops living in the 1950ties, only because it is no longer financially viable to certify new planes. And either that changes or certified aviation will simply die out.

Well, the fact of the matter is, that in the current market it will be VERY difficult to sell any airplane without a shute. Rationalizing or not, it is a very sad fact that with huge probability several of the Mooney friends we lost to engine failures recently, including the loss of the Ultra, would have been perfectly survivable. So SEP's without a shute will become a no go for most people who are looking to buy new and quite a few flying partners or wives will insist on it. Hell, even single jets get it these days. As much as I love my Mooney and as much as I like the performance of the current line (the Ovation in particular including the range), if I were in the new market or in the market for a comparable plane, I could not justify to my family NOT going for a BRS equipped plane. As much as nobody buys cars without airbags these days or safety belts for that matter. When I was small, nobody heard of children seats either (never had one myself). Times have changed in that regard. And I am afraid to say, Mooney missed the bus badly on this, not that they are the only ones though. The training market is different, that is why Piper and Cessna still can sell basic airframes as they are. Mooneys however are the Ferrari/Lamborghini class of GA and it that class, you can't really be second best in anything, least of all in the public's perception of safety. If I bought a plane for myself with a goal in mind such as a long range travel trip, such as some single travel, I would still look very favorably at my personal dream plane of the Ovation with LR tanks (and I would have to fly it alone too due to it's payload) but for family travel, family guys also rather buy a crash proof Volvo to a sports car.

Am I the only one to wonder if this sudden shut down has anything to do with the Acclaim Accident we were following in another thread? This was a brand new Acclaim Ultra. Has anyone got any insights of what the investigation in this horrible event targets into? It has looked like an engine problem but possibly there is something else which would prompt this kind of abrupt action?

Thanks. Found it in the mean time. My tanks are fine so far but I'll keep that in mind. Actually, I think the 64 USG bladder option is a better thing for a C Model than a full Monroy LR as the latter a) does not address the problem discussed here but makes it worse by quantity and b) the instances where you can use a full 88 USG with Monroy tanks on a C is limited due to weight, whereas 64 even with the weight increase are managable. With the bladders and full 64 USG compared to 52 standard, it's 100 lb approximate difference.

I was not aware that the bladders are still / again available. Would be an option for me to increase my fuel to 64 USG... 50 is just a bit too few for my liking. And yes, I think that would do the trick in terms of fire resistance or at least improve it. That is also what they did to Concorde after that catastrophic fuel tank failure at Paris.

I would not think that this is valid, but if you do, make sure it is not some modification which may turn up problems eventually. I would think however that it is up to the shop who rebuilt it to sort this out, as they have rendered the airplane not airworthy. So they should come up with a compatible tail assembly and cover your costs. Letting an airframe fly "illegally" on paper at least is not a very nice thing to discover, so maybe you should explore a route whereby the shop has to sort this out or this may well go legal. Once that is done, your Garmin AP will also be legal. Possibly Garmin had a point refusing this as they see a non-standard tail and are asking themselfs whether that tail is actually suitable.

Recently I have seen quite a few Mooneys catch fire after a survivable landing. Do we have a problem with this airframe? Steel cage is nice, but does preciously little if you get fire right under the cabin. This accident, the Acclaim Ultra, I recall a Swiss Mooney Eagle which overran, hit a wall and burst in flames, all 4 killed due to that, e.t.c. It does look indeed like a go around, if I interpret the pictures correctly, the crash site is northwest of the short runway.

A few facts here.... The F5's are equipped with IRS systems so they don't actually need to be updated with GPS. Apart, Switzerland is small enough and I know some of the SAF pilots, they know every place by heart normally. Langenbruck, the birth - and burialplace of aviation legend Oskar Bider, is a rather small town in the Jura. The place of the Jodel Festival is 4 km away, barely. See the pics attached. From what has been reported, the Langenbruck event was on a cementary near the gravesite, the festival had a huge tent in position so it really stuck out of the landscape. While approaching, the leader was distracted by a traffic information about a helicopter near their flight path, then spotted the tent and falsely assumed this is where they were headed. This was not a full display but a fly by. The attendees at Langenbruck saw the planes assemble and then fly past 4 km away and expected them to turn back to them. Instead they overflew the Jodel Festival (whose visitors were extremely thrilled and happy about the unexpected visit) once again. They only learnt about their mistake after landing back at Emmen. In the mean time they apologized and paid back the insurance premium which Langenbruck had to take out for the fly by.... Yea, this is a mistake and a one-off for this iconic team. But looking at the place, I'd have to say it could have happened to me as well at 150 kts, not 300 kts like them. Overview. The red marker shows the intended fly by location, Mümliswil is labled 4km to the West. The 2nd picture shows Langenbruck in the foreground and Mümliswil in the background. The third pic is Mümliswil where the Yodel Festival was. Both lie in a parallel valley, both have crossing main streets which cut into the hills to the south and north, Mümliswil is slightly bigger.

I had trouble locating parts for fuel cap replacement and sourced them all through Don. Everything worked perfectly. Later on he was instrumental in sorting out my starting problem. All that from several thousand miles away

They are not that unlimted, the first airfield, if you land from the east there is a water canal at the runway end. But in all the time I've flown my Mooney there I never needed more than up to the first taxiway, that is about 300m. Helgoland, the lowest one, has earth walls and soft ground on the respective sides. Almost no runway in Switzerland for small aviation is above 3000 ft, most are between 1500 and 2000 ft. We grow up with those so we don't consider them particular. Even on large airports we are expected to land short and get the heck out of the runway to make space for the big guys.... Consequently at ZRH many years ago a crew took the landing clearance to leave at the first taxiway to the left too literally and did a 300 ft ground roll with smoking brakes, turned into the very first taxiway directly into the face of the airliner waiting to line up. That crew on that DC9 had a great laugh until the GA plane lost pressure on both tires and had to be recovered. The actual taxiway they were supposed to use was about 500m down the runway.

In Europe you will find tons of Mooneys on 1500 ft runways or less, primarily because lots of airfields are that small yet Mooneys are popular and operate in and out of there without any problems. Wangen Lachen (LSPV) has a 500x18m runway, which translates into 1640 ft. I've been there many times, no problem either in or out. There are quite a few Mooneys based there including a M22 Mustang and an Eagle which belongs to the local flying group. I've seen J, K's and others there. The original Mooney dealership in Switzerland was based in Bad Ragaz LSZE. Its runway is 1624 m long and 33 ft wide. For many years all Mooneys coming into Switzerland for sale (quite a few) passed through there. Shortest I know of that my airplane has operated in and out of was Helgoland in Germany, whose longest runway is 1570 ft long. It did operate out of there with 3 POB. The simple thing is: Open the POH and see what it can do. Take Off is rarely the problem, landing on short runways you have to get it right of course. But I would not hesitate to take my C model into 1600 ft provided there are no other factors like obstacles or else which make it a problem. I could not really make out the differences in those pictures due to quality. But there must be a quite fundamental change between the two which I am convinced has to do with a change in conditions or in the way calcs were done unless really a massive change in the construction has occurred which I believe it has not. Unfortunately Mike Miles is no longer with us, he would have known for sure. Maybe Bob Kromer can be found somewhere? He might have an idea.