jelswick

I'll admit Parker I had to look that up, but seeing what it is, I'd have to agree. Engineering/experimentation with our economy like this is not helping any of this. Maybe we're supposed to convert our Lycomings to wind or solar power?

Very sorry to hear they are not going to be there and about Trey's fall. This situation is very frustrating, but understandable from MAPA's perspective. Hearing $5/gal auto gas promises for this spring/summer makes it scary to think where our 100LL prices are going to have to go. The quote "Under my plan, energy prices will necessarily skyrocket" just keeps going through my head. Very frustrated at this point as this feels rather engineered...

I'd love to take the family there for Giordano's deep dish pizza and a weekend, but still a bit too bitter about what they did with Meigs. That close to the aquarium, planetarium, museums, etc. and closed to make a park. Still pi#$es me off. Hopefully I'll get over it at some point as I can smell that pizza just thinking about it! Midway would be our landing point at that time.

A couple of samples using Muvee Reveal software for editing are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnnIgrlVa1A, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JevlYA2YiQk. Really pretty easy to put together and while not exactly looking like it's done by a pro, it does a pretty nice job without much effort.

I've done a few that are on youtube and for editing, Muvee Reveal is a pretty good bargain for editing software. I'm no camera buff, but have used that one and it's pretty easy. You basically just pick the pictures and the video files you want to include, arrange them in the order you want, pick music from your itunes library and it will put together a pretty nice clip fitting timing to he song(s) you've selected. It also in it's basic mode does slight zom in or out or panning by default with the photos which adds some semblance of motion to the still photos. Nice for us that are not that into spending a lot of time on video/picture editing and if I remember correctly it was ballpark around 40-50 bucks.

I'll echo that on the quality of the yokes and the Zulu headsets. I love our Zulus and the work Aero Comfort did on my yokes. They were an eye sore when I purchased 45T and now they're a classy looking touch to the interior while being very functional and comfortable. Glad to promote those with great products or doing great work as these two companies are!

That's how mine went too Dave. I brought her back from the avionics upgrade earlier this year, had a few weeks with it and then the boost pump went out which waited due to time required to get it overhauled until it went into annual. Just got her back this week and can't wait to get her up in the air again this weekend!

Great, sounds like I have my answer and I appreciate everyone's quick helpful thoughts on this!

My Mooney just completed it's annual, but someone slipped taking out a screw and there's a pretty good sized scratch in the paint on the spinner. My wonderful mechanic said he'd strip and repaint it to make it right, but I'm thinking of going polished aluminum or chrome if it's going to be stripped anyway and told him I'd pay for that part. I found a helpful 2009 post thread on stripping and polishing the aluminum. Is chroming the spinner an option and if so, any opinions on whether chrome or polished aluminum is the way to go? Cost or options for having it chromed? Pluses/minuses to either approach? Thanks in advance for any opinions out there.

I had 12 hrs in a C152 before buying my Mooney and would offer that it does take longer to learn in a Mooney and the insurance was prohibitive, but not impossible. I think they were trying to tell me it's not the best training aircraft and just a little over 10 yrs ago, that was close to $4K in my '63C model. That cut in 1/2 the next yr and again substantiallly in yr 3 with the instrument rating. Great aircraft, but it can get frustrating/discouraging when it's taking longer wondering if that was the right call (my instructor would joke that if I didn't learn to land that day because it was taking so long that he was going to put a for sale sign in it's window), but looking back at it, I wouldn't have done it any differently. It was the aircraft I knew I wanted and would want to fly longer term, so it worked for me.

Comatose, who are you using in Northeast Ohio? There are a few in Columbus area, but the good and reasonable ones are very slow and the others have jet money style quotes.

I brokered aircraft for 6 years until this market tanked and it amazed me why people said it was so refreshing dealing with us and the horror stories they had from other brokers. I just never understood how those types could sleep at night. Really not hard at all, just treat people the same way you'd want to be treated and that business grew without having to advertise it until about 2007-2008. I only ended up burned by two customers using that philosophy and for the many, many friends I made from it (not that much money in that business!), it was worth the experience with the two bums.

Squirrel's comment on a certain normal level and variance by aircraft as well as Kwixdraw's comment on starting oil analysis to monitor what's happening both line up with what I was told by Lycoming and A&Ps when I was selling used aircraft. I honestly haven't done the consistent oil analysis on my aircraft, but for those who do, I've been told a normal amount of metal is expected and that the engines should deteriorate from freshly overhauled to when overhaul is needed again in a fairly consistent manner; that changes in that trend are cause for research and need to understand why the change to address potential issues. If you don't regularly do oil analysis, then when it's noticed, you need to do a thorough analysis to understand it because you don't have the reference trend to compare it against. I don't regularly, so not trying to sound preachy at all, but this might be reason I'll start. I too think Jim you've made right decision on it. And BTW, great to see another Mooney driver here in Columbus, Ohio!

Agree with Brian on flying in the yellow frequently as I did in cruise in my old Mooney (a '63C) and just slowed out of it if other than light turbulence encountered. I checked photos of it and it had the TAS wheel with knots on the inside/MPH on the outside and mine like the one questioned on here also had the yellow well in the TAS wheel. The TAS wheel ended at 175 mph, so the last 15 mph and the red line were above it. I'd never thought about it flying it like that and it wasn't any issue for me (it did have smaller numbering for the mph between the TAS wheel and the kts on the inner circle, so you could still see very clearly your IAS in mph).

I watched the AvWeb video and not sure how well it works, but they did in fact consider turbulence as a possible factor and designed the edges in a way to give you a stable place to place your hands when hitting the displayed buttons. There was a little movement in the flight test video and the co-pilot didn't seem to have any issue hitting the correct numbers.

Quote: LFOD What is your set up and how do you receive weather?

Amen Bob! People ask if I golf, I say "No!, can't afford any other hobbies", but would gladly hock a kidney to keep at it if it ever came to that.

Am I alone in preferring the tactile feel of my 430W's buttons and knobs? My biggest hope out of this is that it brings 530 prices down so that I can afford to add one of those to the 430 in my current stack. Touch screen is a nice idea in my car, but I've been in enough turbulence that I'd rather have the click of the knob vs trying to hit the right spot on a touch screen to tune a frequency when getting bounced around. I'm even happy they couldn't flush mount my Aspens now since I can steady my hand against it's rim while hitting the right button. Afraid I might be becoming a bit antiquated if I'm not excited about this move, but I personally would prefer the 530 to what I saw them roll out and am not looking forward to everything going to touch screen.

I've only called mine that once, but it was recently when all set to go and the boost pump wouldn't pump. I apologized to her and we're getting that fixed now.

Welcome Paul! I'm a happy customer. The prior owner had your work done on N1145T's tanks about a year before I bought her and the care I know it was receiving from Willmar and the fact you'd recently done this were some of the key things that made me feel comfortable buying my current Mooney. That work would have been roughly about 5 yrs ago and no stains observed during the 4 years I've owner her. Welcome to the site!

I've had no issues with the PFD yet, but the MFD500 keeps giving me a database failure and is unable then to pull up charts or paint terrain out ahead of the aircraft. It's done this on two cards so far and Aspen has been very responsive sending new cards to see if that addresses it. Works fine until about 10 minutes into the flight and then the database failure message. They've sent another replacement card and promised that if this one isn't the fix for it, then they'll replace the unit. Unfortunately my bird is now in for annual, so likely won't be able to test the new card for a few weeks.

Very good last point Charlie! Right after I'd completed my PPL, I decided to fly myself to Florida for a work assignment with a stop in Atlanta for refuel. It was night and I was very pleased with myself for my descent rate planning when I asked the controller to start down until he reminded me of the terrain height in the area north of Atlanta. I decided to stay high a little longer, chastised myself for what stupid move I'd almost have made and so far have not made that simple, but critical mistake again. Glad to have terrain alerting in the aircraft now too, but don't even want to bank on just that.

My first annual (at a Mooney service center) on my C model I started with was just a little over $5K. I let the local mechanic do it the next year thinking I'd alternate each year local then service center and his on my 2nd annual was about $11K. The items made sense and he'd caught things the service center hadn't and while it took months to quit stinging from that amount, I was glad he'd done it since my families lives depend on it when we go on vacations. After that one, the airplane was whipped into shape from some neglect from the prior owner's lower maitenance (I was not a smart buyer on that first one) and future annuals were all in the $2-3.5K range. I love that mechanic because he loses sleep worrying about what he might have missed and spends my money like it was his, so I never question when he says something should be addressed. If he says it's getting close to requiring replacement or rework, I just tell him to go ahead and do it. My current Mooney, an '81 J has been a dream from a maintenance perspective (I say as it goes into its 4th annual with me owning it, so knock on wood) and typically runs $2,500-3,500 per annual with almost no maintenance required between them. I bought it from Wilmar trusting a little better their reputation and it's proven to be a good place to place my trust, a serious joy to own this aircraft.

Not sure why the double post, but sorry about that...

Mine is similar to Jesse's and I find it easy to remember. I just look at how many thousands of feet I need to lose and multiply that by 2 for a 500 fpm descent rate. I use 500 fpm with any passengers on board, but much prefer about 1,000 fpm and manage the manifold pressure to maintain acceptable airspeeds by myself for the fun feeling of flying. Love the Mooney too because if at a typical longer range cruise altitude, by the time you cross the Ohio state line, it's about time to start descending to come into Columbus at the center of the state.