kortopates

Here is chart of glide ratios of several aircraft that I use in my class. But for comparison, the Mooney's have excellent glide ratios. Not sure what aircraft stand above others but I imagine a DA20 would do well too.

Yep, so true that and the 747 traffic pattern have always amazed me. I get why, but I feel much too vulnerable flying so low at a distance from the runway in a SEL plane that I regard as trying to kill me if I don't keep my guard up.

Same here, plus split lock washers continue to function after repeated use - since they don't loose their split. Unlike the internal tooth and star lock washers that after first torquing when you remove them you'll readily see their teeth have been totally flattened and no longer effective - at least not nearly as effective. Iam sure Lycoming picked them because they must have some very small advantage over split ring washers but its bad setup for people that don't realize their not resusable or ignoring that and don't replace them on re-torquing. But after hearing about mags fall off in flight well before I did my A&P training this is one area that's deserves the fullest attention to detail. As for safety wiring or cotter pins, every engine is different and I am always jealous of my big brother IO-550 which has the mags forward at top of engine - where as mine are buried in the middle of the back of the engine. As it is, I have to remove an alternator for access from the left or the intercooler for access from the right. Then I still need a magnetic pickup tool to get both washer on each stud all the while while I have the mag jury rigged in position to not fall off with some safety wire till I get the nuts on. Safety wiring the nuts would be near impossible.

Not sure I understand. With a large overspeed, often accompanied with significant vibration, all we can do is pull back throttle. In some cases that may even correct it, but the overspeed may also be due to a more serious lack of oil to the governor and just the first sign before a full engine failure. Sounds like that may have been the case here.

Not at all, the red box come about from detonation margin and maximum Internal Cylinder Pressure (ICP) and applies to our entire piston fleet. To put in in simpler terms it comes down to what is safe leaning which is relative to % power being operated. You may well see some debate on this between our engine manufactures in that manufacturer may say its entirely safe to lean the engine any way you want as well as at or below max cruise power. But the manufacturer is more concerned about selling engines with best performance numbers possible and does not warranty them long enough to care about engine longevity. So the redbox principle is to say at roughly power levels from about 65% and on up, we don't want to operate too close to peak causing ICPs and higher CHTs which can be harmful to the engines longevity.

I might be totally missing your point, but am confused since the best glide engine out on the J (and R) model rate of descent from the POH is very close to 1.9 nm/1000' which translates to 4.9 degrees a bit more than 1.5x the normal 3 degree rate of descent with Vg at max gross weight at 91 kts not that far from approach speed. So its not difficult to imagine, fully clean, you are going to need some power to reduce rate of descent from say near a 5.0 degree descent rate of just under 800'/min to a 3 degree descent rate of closer to just under 500'/min - and still way below 120 kts. I fear we may be getting into the weeds on an aspect that's lost touch with the original gear incident and believing one can't slow down without putting the gear down. I'll agree these must be really rare when we fly an ILS since we are in the habit of intercepting the final at near approach speed and the use the gear to come down on glide slope. A precision approach makes it a lot easier to remember the gear. But I believe the vast majority of these gear up incidents happen flying a pattern, not necessarily a normal pattern since its often a distraction from something out of the ordinary as well as the lack of a stabilized descent that leads to a gear up, but lost of pilots have unfortunately demonstrated one can descend for landing without the gear down.

The POH number on FF are usually low because they do have you running at or near peak ROP which is bad till below 65%. To understand your engines power curves its best to go by the manufacturers Operators manual for your engine. But you can get excellent approximations that are really close enough using a formula such as you reference - but its even easier than that since it really can be simplified down to MAP and RPM as follows %Hp= ( %Hp = (100-(((Max RPM-RPM)/100)*2.5+(Max MAP-MAP)*3.5))/100 Key numbers are good for ROP power settings but have no relevance for LOP power which is entirely determined by FF as you well know after doing the APS class. So to generate the equivalent power for the key number of 45, what we're really saying is to set at 65% power LOP which you can certainly do by just having enough air or altitude to have sufficient MAP in order to have all cylinders LOP at 10 GPH. But really to do this in practical terms, you'd keep MAP at WOT and after climbing to altitude, do the big mixture pull to entirely on the LOP side. Then you can enrich to 10 GPH, that will ensure 65% power as long as still LOP. Then to verify how LOP you are, you can safely enrich till your see the first cylinder go through peak. This will be be your richest cyl used to set LOP settings, then lean again till 10 GPH to see exactly how LOP you are. If not at least 15F LOP lean some more till you are or until ~60% power where it no longer matters (no limited red box).

@EricJ is right of course, according to the FAA report , the gear was "Sheared off", and unfortunately with wing damage too. https://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=100:96:5096540439126::::P96_ENTRY_DATE,P96_MAKE_NAME,P96_FATAL_FLG:14-MAY-20,MOONEY Did anyone get to talk to the pilot to learn about what the pilot had to deal with during the prop overspeed emergency event? I bet there is quite an informative story to learn from here. The flightaware track shows the plane make the 180 back more or less level and then airspeed rise from 130 kts to 170 kts during the first 2K of descent from 6 to 4K , then stabilize in the 120's till 3200' then slows down a bit mostly above 110 kts ground speeds. No idea what the winds aloft where no where in the sequence the engine power was lost.

When you opened the Ram air to get an additional 1" of MAP, and if your FF doesn't change you should be able to see a small rise in EGT if you were on the ROP side of the curve or a small decrease in EGT if you were on the LOP side. Depending on what kind of engine monitor you have, you may well have to look at the downloaded data to discern any difference. True in that in your E model, a 5% power change is only a difference of 1.5 off the key numbers, Key numbers being 45 for 65% meaning any combination of MAP + RPM/100 = 45 will have you in the ballpark of 65% power. The numbers I use for the E, both ROP and LOP are below. But anytime we're rich of peak, I'd go by the ROP numbers and only when all cylinders are Lean of Peak then switch to LOP numbers. ROP HP% KEY# GPH LOP %PWR GPH 75% 48 14 75 10.1 65% 45 10 65 8.7 55% 42 8 55 7.4

I wonder if maybe your throttle MAP sensor for the gear horn is a bit on the high side? Or maybe your approach speed is low too - I use 100 kts with no flaps till minimums (very stable that way) on an approach but lower at 90 kts level and less on the circle as well as in a VFR pattern.

Given the current small insurance market, rates going up and greater requirements etc, pilots of gear ups are getting non-renewals after a gear up. That mean unable to get in-motion insurance by many company's till the history of gear up is no longer in their look back history. For many that means three years. I personally send pilots I know in this position to Avemco since they only look back 1 year. They are expensive but to many pilots that lost their insurance after a big gear up claim at least they can get insurance again after just a 1 year sentence in the insurance hell penalty box. I am sure some leave aviation as well, but none of the ones I've known - thankfully! We're only human after all and hopefully always learning.

Bob is so right! But it doesn't take a strong head wind either. I wish we could dispel this myth for ever. But to even suggest this is a sign of a pilot that hasn't yet mastered his stead. Trust me, after hundreds of Mooney hours, certainly thousands, a Mooney pilot should have no problem slowing there bird down on approach such that they no longer need to get it slowed down to landing approach speed with the gear down. I personally think this myth is one, but just one, of the reasons we have so many gear ups. And as most will agree, its rarely just one, but usually multiple issues/mistakes that come together to result in a gear up.

Good points! and another great reason why dragging it in low and slow is just very poor technique. Unfortunately its how many private pilots learned to do short field landing because they could make up for poor precision in stabilized 3 degree approach by coming in low and just chopping the power to fall onto the numbers. In addition to risk of missing the gear, the plane is also much more susceptible to any downdrafts at short final where the pilot might incorrectly pull up and stall rather than push while adding power to get some speed first. The back side is not the place to be on approach. On the other hand, a bit steeper than 3 degree approach slope at idle power at the end followed by quicker than normal round out (because of higher descent rate) just above the runway will absorb more energy leaving less forward energy and easily enable beating POH landing distances. It will also ensure the gear horn goes off if need be because its uses even less engine power and one won't be nearly so vulnerable to a downdraft on short final. Good points on how that sets you up for a gear up. I had only associated the other bad issues I mentioned above and had not also realized how easily it can set the pilot up for gear up as well - valuable lesson!

Are you kidding, that's nothing!!! Some clear Gorilla tape (available at home depot/lowes etc) is great for these kind of injuries since its strong and should enable keeping full use of your lights while you ferry it home.

I was looking at these yesterday as I typically do after most weekends and was surprised to see 3 of them over this past weekend! An R, a J and an E model. The latter E model was reported as a collapse. I doubt anyone does these intentionally. In fact I hate to distract from the real problem IMO that as a community of pilot owners we don't do a good enough job at avoiding gear mishaps. Often new registrations make up a majority of these. But only the E model fits into this category - oddly it shows a registration date in the future but i suspect the month and day got transposed and it was just registered in March.

Really high charging rates are essentially "cooking the battery" which is very harmful to it, which is exactly what you're doing when you jump start a dead aircraft battery. You could literally boil the electrolyte out of the battery doing that to the old non-sealed battery's. Real early in my aviation career I didn't think twice about it myself. But I was a slow learner and did some stupid things. One of them included even pulling my dead battery at an FBO and getting a fast charge to get me going x-country - literally across the country from NJ to CA. Problem was the battery didn't take much of charge at all and wasn't airworthy just like our OP's battery. But this was not a very bright choice on my part as I was very inexperienced pilot departing into less than VFR weather that went front from day to night time. After dark, I had most everything on including the pitot heat and even a an old Weatherscout radar. The battery was so far gone that the electrical load between both my panel load and the battery that was sucking up juice since it wouldn't really take a charge was exceeding the alternator output. So shortly after dark with the higher load, the cockpit went dark at night with some layers of clouds below me. Not the kind of an excitement I want to repeat. Then there were future events I should have known better - but I was a slow learner. But later I took off with a very weak battery at night (very stupid!) that wasn't holding a charge only to get airborne and then went to raise the gear. Before the gear finished coming up, the cockpit , lights and panel all went dark. It was pitch black out there in the desolate area, no moon, no city lights to light up the area, and I could barely make my way back to find the airport and land by just the beacon. No longer had a radio to re-activate the runway lights. The worse part on that one is I really scared my passenger wife. So after repeated stupidity on my part I have finally learned. I will never takeoff with a dead battery again, jump started or otherwise. And I'll do every thing I can to avoid killing it completely by attempting to start it up an engine with a near dead battery. Perhaps some one might learn from my mistakes without need to repeat. So fast forward to many years later for how I deal with these circumstances now in a similar situation. We were down in Mexico at an airport with no services other than fuel and we arrived back at the airplane to find the battery was very weak. After my wife turned on the master we quickly discovered why - the overhead lights had been bumped on over night. Getting a jump start wasn't possible with a 24V system and no APU on the airport, so being an A&P I went to plan B and went over the hand prop procedures I was about to do with my pilot wife at the controls. Within a couple of try's I had our Continental started up (our engines are easy compared to the big DC-3 P&W Radial engines I learned to hand prop in A&P school). So as much as I hated charging up my battery using my planes alternators, we sat their on the ramp with the engine running and most everything off while the battery charged and I could see the load on the load meter come down from about 45 amps to start to a more reasonable 15 amps with avionics back on. We were lucky, because the battery was in excellent condition, about a year old, and we didn't entirely kill it trying to start up on a weak battery. In about 20 minutes the charging rate had come down to a near normal rate showing that the battery was taking the charge. If it hadn't we would have spent the night and probably another night before I could have gotten a new battery down there. But since we would be flying through IMC conditions the second half of the trip and landing back in San Diego in rain with low ceilings and we sure didn't need to depart without seeing the battery charge back up. As it turned out that battery lasted just a bit over 5 years - not bad. I've had other experiences where I wasn't so lucky in that 20 minutes on the ramp didn't show the battery was charging so we did shutdown and spent the night to properly correct before departing. But in addition to frying the battery, the other thing I personally hate to do is to run the alternator that hard to charge a dead battery. As every aircraft owner knows, they're very expensive to replace and service. I have no direct data to prove it, but I can't help imagine I am at much greater risk of taking out an alternator prematurely running it at 3 times its normal output to charge a dead battery.

Exactly what my wife is telling me! And of course I don't want to be the one to bring it home either. But thanks!

See your Concorde ICA, it states the battery should be replaced when it falls below 85% of its rated capacity. Secondly it calls for 14.4 or 28.8V Constant Potential charging - so you could try that if you haven't yet. But unless you had a large load on it for those 3 minutes its not anywhere near close. Remember starting the engine is just one purpose of your battery while its more important purpose to keep you out of trouble is to give you 30-45 minutes of time to get down and land after a electrical charging failure. ICA http://concordebattery.com/otherpdf/IFCA3.pdf MM http://batterymanagement.aircraft-battery.com/BatteryDocs/5-0171.pdf

I am facing this dillemma as well. But despite things beginning to ease, nothing regarding our personal risk has changed since we started to shelter in place. We're still in a state of exponential infection growth and deaths. Nor do I expect that will change anytime soon. But I don't relish taking a year or two off either. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Very cool! Fly over frequently enroute to Bishop/Mammothn area during ski season. Getting pretty hot out there now but as word gets out I am sure it won't last long - it's only minutes north of LA and an hour from San Diego. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, approaches with RF or Radius Fix segments - in the GA world, only the GTN's can fly them. Not really, I don't think you'll find the approach in your database - I don't think you'll ever see a partial approach in the database for all the obvious reasons. But you should see another approach that has the same final approach guidance just with different IAF and no RF segments - at CRQ this is the RNAV Y 24 approach. So from that standpoint it's not like there is any airport that you can't get into without RF leg capability - not yet anyway. Its just a nice capability and fun to fly. You "are approved if you’re appropriately equipped to fly them" -- very true and another important detail, since to fly these you need both a RF Leg capable Navigator (GTN) and an auto-slewing HSI or CDI. But a simple G5 qualifies there. Thanks for playing along. The GTN does have some awesome capabilities including VNAV which I especially appreciate and use on every flight.

I did my mains when I did my Encore conversion. I avoided all that tedious stripping, priming and painting by dropping my parts off at the Powder Coat shop. Still had a minor tedious task to mask off the sections not to powder coat but I think the finish will last much longer than paint. Suggest planing on having mostly new hardware available when you do it; at least nuts, bushings washers and perhaps some bolts depending. You'll need to budget a few days for the powder coating shop time.

Ok, I'll give you gentlemen a hint, check out approaches at KCRQ, and no, we're of course not talking about AR approaches here.

Not true, there is an approach capability unique to only the GTN's. But you have to be a fellow IFR nerd to know the difference and even appreciate it, but even the IFDs can't do them. Nor are they that common, but one of my local GA airports has one!

It does need to be calibrated in pitch. The airplane is not level when on the ground, unless its been leveled per the leveling screws on the fuselage. The easy way to do this is to measure the aircraft pitch attitude on the ground with reference to the leveling reference screws on the fuselage and then set the G5 pitch to what you measured. This is what your installer should have done so you should see them to get it corrected.