David_S

Just to update everyone on this, Fritz and I met up yesterday at Regensburg. He spent a lot of time showing me around the aircraft and talking about his experiences running and maintaining it compared to his previous F-model. We then went for a flight in the local area so I could experience the handling and control forces and see how the view over the cowling worked out in flight and landing. It was very kind of Fritz to spend so much of his time helping me out. It has helped a great deal in my choice of aircraft. As I discovered, the instrument panel is higher than the J, but it's not really a problem. So it looks like the Ovation is on the shopping list. Many thanks to Fritz for his help and generosity. Despite my best efforts, he steadfastly refused to let me pay towards the flight and to my shame he even paid for the beers afterwards!

Excellent, thank you for all the replies everyone. Fritz - that's very kind of you, I'd love to take you up on your offer. I can easily drive down to Regensburg to meet you there. A flight would be wonderful, that's a very generous offer, but I must insist on reinbursing you for the cost. I'll send you a message with my contact details and availability. Thanks again to all, David

Having sold my M20J when I left the US a few years ago, I'm now trying to buy another Mooney. I've narrowed the selection down to either another M20J or possibly a steam-gauge Ovation. However, I've never even sat in an Ovation I'm worried that the high instrument panel may be too high for me to comfortably see over. It has a reputation for feeling a little claustrophobic with the restricted view ahead. Here's the problem - all the Ovations currently for sale are really difficult for me to reach. It seems stupid to take a commercial flight to Italy and hire a car to drive to the airfield where the aircraft is, just so I can sit in it and discover it's not a good fit for me. So I was wondering if there were any Ovation owners within a few hours' drive of Frankfurt who may be willing to let me take a look at their aircraft. At the same time, any advice on owning and running the aircraft would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, David

Just as another point of reference, I've been up to FL180 (Europe) a couple of times, but not without incident. The last time I went up that high, I did have an encounter with fuel icing. It was probably an unusual flight for two reasons - firstly it was from Alta up in the Norwegian Arctic Circle down to Helsinki in Finland, so the ambient temperature was pretty cold - about -20C all the way. Secondly, we were avoiding poor weather and were at that level for about four hours before we had any problem. The symptoms of the encounter were that the fuel flow simply dropped to almost zero and the engine power just disappeared. Fortunately from that height you can glide for miles, so we could have easily reached an airport. Turning on the fuel pump made no difference, but shortly after passing through the freezing level at 10,000' or so, everything returned to normal. We landed and ran tests, but everything seemed fine and I haven't had a similar problem in the 300 or so hours since in that aircraft. Reading up about it afterwards, this does seem to be quite rare. The turbocharged Mooneys go up to those levels and temperatures regularly without a problem. The only other occurrence I found had similar factors - it was an M20J, in the cold Canadian North, with prolonged exposure. The conclusion I came to was that the icing was probably small water crystals building up in the fuel pipes, which took a while to block them. The reason you might see them in the M20Js but not the Ks is that, being normally aspirated they're producing very little power - and thus excess heat - up at those levels. The fuel pipes above the engine are quite fine bore and exposed to the full blast of the icy airflow, so possibly the most likely place to encounter the problem.