Bennett

We'll have to make plans for next year. I have several friends who go every year, and I've been wanting to check it out. Not enough to commit to the 2 week or whatever trip they do though. Be careful about a "low pass". There is a specific pattern that aircraft fly around the playa and the "city". You could probably find the diagrams on the web. There are often quite a few aircraft landing and leaving the airstrip, along with more than a few pilots giving rides and sightseeing themselves.

When I flew to Burning Man (Piper Dakota), I taped every opening, door and cowl seams, and nose bowl areas (plastic sheeting), and still had dust and dirt inside the airplane. Man, the wind blows hard there - especially in the middle of the night - blew down my alpine tent, with me in it, and knocked down more conventional stand up tents all around me - camping near the airplanes. Tough to set tie down spikes. Rebar works fine if you can drive it into the ground. A sledge hammer is helpful. Bring bicycles - plain old cheap 3 speeds are fine. Give rides-make new friends for aviation. p>

I think genetics has some influence here. My great grandfather lived to 103, and I am told that he remained mentally sharp to the end. My grandfather died well into his 90s, and he stayed active, mentally (reading papers in three different languages every day, working on a dictionary he was compiling) and physically (long walks with younger friends), and then my father who died at 97, inquisitive and mentally strong until the very day he died. They were great examples of keeping heathy and always pursuing new knowledge. I like to think I am following their pathway, and that my various capabilities to fly, hold my own in business, race sail craft offshore, and the desire to keep learning all I can, are part of this pattern. Sure I do all the usual stuff : annual checkups, and I try to fly an hour or two with my crusty old flight instructor every year - a man who has no hesitation in pointing out bad habits or unusual sequencing of flight controls. These turn into interesting debates as to best practices and safety. These aren't BFRs-,just a couple of old pilots who have had our share of "interesting flight situations" trying to analyze the best way to treat similar situations. I find attending Wings seminars stimulating. We are lucky here at San Carlos in that the San Carlos Flight Center sponsors many seminars on a variety of aviation related topics - almost every Wednesday night, and some Saturdays. I always learn something at these seminars, and I have presented at least four myself, where the preparation and subsequent audience questions challenge assumptions. Goes to help me be a safer pilot -I am not a great pilot, but it does keep one sharp and questioning. One more point I keep considering: is flying still fun? Is it worth all the expense? I am beginning to think that I don't quite find the satisfaction I once felt in flying, and it bothers me a bit. It may be the reason that I will retire from flying; not because of physical or cognitive reasons.

Great topic. I can't speak for others, but I can relate what I have chosen to do. I'm 81 now, after more than 40 years of active flying. I've owned quite a few aircraft and flew long cross countries and to many trips outside the US. I feel good and recently passed my 3rd Clara medical with no problems or complications. But, I decided that I will now be a fair weather pilot -VFR only (keeping current for my Instrument rating is not what I want to do). I pick my days and times carefully, and if for any reason, I am hesitant about flying when I reach my hangar, I just putter about and find something else to do. At this stage in my life I fly for the pure pleasure of it. I generally fly for a few hours, stop, relax, and move on. All the wonderful Avionics are fun, but I make a point of hand flying when returning to my home base. I have no qualm about leaving my Mooney somewhere if the weather at either end goes bad, and renting a car, or flying commercial. After all my adventurous years of flying, I have nothing to prove to myself, or others. I almost always fly alone, because I prefer solo flight. So when will I hang up the keys, sell the J and move on? The first time I do not feel comfortable with flying. I am sure I will know when that is. I work full time in several business I own, and any slippage will be apparent if I can't do my work well. So I anticipate that the time is not too off, but for now I love greasing my landings, and constantly playing the "what if" game while flying.

I just had a top overhaul to replace the prior owner's chrome cylinders (about 400 hours SMOH). He did the "break-in", except the cylinders glazed, and oil consumption was outrageous (1 qt at every 1 and 1/2 hours). When the cylinders were disassembled, all the parts were in great shape except for the cylinder walls. The engine had to be flushed, as did the oil cooler, to get rid of all the black gunk from blow-by. New basic steel cylinder blanks from Lycoming, and reassembly with virtually all my old parts (piston rings and piston pins excepted), ground valves and valve seats, and now the engine runs well, with minimal oil consumption and cool temps. I'm at about half way through break-in now, running mineral oil, and all looks good. Over the years I've had quite a few engines (3 in my 261), and to my knowledge only one had chrome cylinders, and this was the one with the high oil consumption. By the way, compression tests were always good. Perhaps this might have been due to cylinder choke, and measuring compression at TDC. Having everything open for the top revealed that the cam was perfect (whew!).

A thought: My 261 conversion came with a hat shelf, as did all the 201, 231, 252 series. I had LASAR build a door, hinged at its lower edge, latch at the top, to enclose that area. Worked great, and kept the interior looking neat. I kept a couple of hats on the shelf, along with the CD player and extra 6 CD cartridges. As I recall, I had the door painted to match the rest of the interior plastic. I wish I had a photo. When I had the interior done on my J, I probably should have added a door at that time, but I forgot about that option.

Locating a AERA 796 (a truly useful device as Bob says) is a matter of preference and how you ultimately set up your panel. I have mine located on the right side adjacent to the GTN 750. I tried the AirGizmo angled panel mout, but it blocked a clear view of the right side instruments (2"). The flat presentation requires the pilot to lean to the right to see the data clearly. I did not want to mount the unit on the windscreen, as I want to keep the windscreen as clear as possible. Some folks mount the 796s on the pilot yoke, but I don't want the weight there, or the attendant antenna and power wires to be under the yoke. I prefer to mount the much lighter iPad mini 4 on the yoke in battery mode.

I rather like my CYA 100 AOA. I have had it mounted alongside my vertical compass (no discernible effect on the compass) where it is in my constant line of sight. I find it most useful on take-off where I want to make certain that my initial climb is between Vx and Vy. At Vx I am in the orange zone, and green at Vy. I don't want to see the red zone at anytime on takeoff. My J's rate of climb is initially less than after about a minute of WOT/2690 RPM/takeoff flaps. I usually retract the gear as I pass 2/3s of my home field 2600' runway, and retract flaps at about 500'. With the AOA constantly in my sight, I can deal with the other aspects of take-off. In landing I still see the AOA, but I do glance at the ASI to make sure touchdown speed is where I want it to be.. The AOA is a useful tool that I use with the many other tools in our panels, and on our heads.

The experimental versions are exactly what I want. Presumably I could use the Garmin servos in place of the finicky and troublesome Honeywell units. I suppose the KAP box could be removed. Of course the FAA would have to approve.

I disagree that it doesn't do much. I think that those of us have have this excellently developed cowl have an appreciation for its features. The Ram Air box alone is a worthwhile feature, and I see a bit over 1 and a quarter inch increase in MP at 8000'.

Thanks for the quick reply.

You should be able to find current pricing on the LoPresti website. I think list was about 17K.

Glad to hear about the STC. Does anyone know if this unit has autopilot outputs? I didn't see anything about that. The Bendix/king replacement for their vacuum AI is supposed to have the ability to drive the KAP autopilots. Any word if this unit will actually be on the market this year?

For the last few days LoPresti has had one of their cowls for sale at a 25% discount.

I believe we were down to about $3.90 a few weeks ago, but when I topped off my tanks this morning the price was $4.05/gal. I don't begrudge the local fuel service here at KSQL. All fueling is done by truck at the aircraft's location, and there are at least four fueling trucks pumping fuel all day. A quick radio call, or phone call via smartphone, and they are there. I like the idea that they do so much fueling, as they always have fresh fuel. I know from conversations with their owner that they test for contaminants and water daily. It's an impressive operation, and we are lucky to have them.

I was gong to have my GTN software upgraded next week. Looks like I should wait until August (and let Don find the bugs).

I too have the MC Lifesaver with the battery backup. Yes, the battery is expensive, and I replace it at every other annual, but the presentation is clear and familiar. I have the "inclinometer" option for the "ball". All in all I am very pleased with unit. With all my other backups I see no reason to replace it with an EFIS variant (at least not now). Fly long enough and you will have some instrument or avionics failures - vacuum or electric. Redundancy can save your life, and in my opinion, a panel mounted unit that becomes part of your regular scan is easiest to transition to in an emergency.

Several thoughts: Scandia EFIS, MidContinent LifeSaver backup electric AI with backup battery (Conventional AI presentation), Dynon D2 "portable EFIS" with optional "snap in" mounting, at least one other company states that their units can "legally" be plumbed into the pitot static system for a non-GPS based EFIS, and if your new panel allows for the use of Garmin's FlightStream 210, an iPad or iPad Mini running ForeFlight can present an EFIS view (especially nice in split view with SV. I wonder if there will be announcements at Oshkosh about using Garmin's backup EFIS in certified aircraft, or if the EAA's STC for Dynon's EFIS will be expanded to Mooneys.

Yeah, why listen to the folks who actually know what they're talking about when there are guys like Peter and Byron around to pontificate? Hey Bennett, Aaron, Philip, youse guys getting paid by PFS to shill for them? I don't need to shill for anybody. I freely admit I buy all sorts of "go fasts" for my Mooney, and I'm a bit of an avionics junky, but I don't think anyone else should follow my crazy pathway. I do so for my own pleasure. Fortunately I can just about afford to indulge myself. I am not taking away anything from from kids, nor my grown up grandkids. Flying, sailing, classic cars are all passions. I still work full time, owning a couple of businesses, and how I spend the money I earn is my own business.

I generally use my autopilot for out bound flights, and hand fly most of the return flight. I really enjoy both modes, and using the autopilot to fly complex flight plans is something that gives me great pleasure, but then again to hold altitude to Commercial standards is also pleasurable. I know that I would get very rusty if I didn't do a good deal of hand flying. You never know when an autopilot will fail. I've had autopilot failures over the years, and switching to hand flying in those circumstances were more of an inconvenience than a problem.

I have had two Mooneys because I want to fly fast. Both have had many speed mods to that purpose. I've had 4 Cessnas, (120, 150, 2 -172s), an LSA DOVA, and a two Pipers, and none of them provided the satisfaction of cruising at Mooney speeds. Sure my Mooneys burn (burned) more fuel, but economy is not my first priority. I can run LOP, and I will sacrifice speed for certain long distance flights to avoid a fuel stop, but generally I set up the aircraft for speed. I understand why some pilots prefer to operate at lower fuel burns, but living in Northern California with $750/month hangar fees, $1,500 annual Personal Property taxes, and our outrageous labor and sales tax for parts for aircraft maintenance, fuel prices are a lesser percentage of overall costs as compared to other parts of the country.

I believe LASAR did a same day "before and after" test of the PF system. You might want to contact Paul.

I have both the LoPresti cowl and the PowerFlow Exhaust system. For what it is worth, LoPresti has one of their cowls available at a 25% discount (built for an owner who for unknown reasons didn't pick it up). The fit is a bit tight, but they do work together.

Consider adult Depends (or competing brands) for long flights. Not as crazy as it sounds, nor are they bulky or uncomfortable. After landing a small discrete "clean up" kit with an extra set of underwear to bring to the bathroom makes this work. And if you didn't need to use it, all the better. Sure, not very macho, but takes away bladder anxiety.

George, I've called several old pilot friends who have had their Medicals lapse within the last 10 years for fear of being declined, or jumping through the sometimes daunting SI process. If my tiny sample is worth anything, the active pilot population should increase. You know I have been critical of some AOPA activities (Wine Club, scheduling AOPA events on Jewish holidays - at least twice), but I am impressed with the lobbying efforts made by AOPA to push through this legislation. I'll renew my membership through the rest of my flying days.