kortopates

What kind of scenario would that be of value for? I can only think of one - a VFR Mooney without a panel GPS hooked up to the GFC500 where the 760 is being used as VFR GPS. Is that the intent? That makes sense for a VFR only Mooney. Otherwise I don't see any value in driving the GFC-500 when you already can drive it from a IFR GPS. Just curious since I haven't read up on this or much on the 760. Certainly pluses it has AHRS and Synthetic vision but so does my iPad setup, but the 760 is integrated while my iPad requires a second device.

Truth is I put very little value in any portable as a backup. My iPad with GP and portable GDL-39D is my 4th in line doomsday backup. I really tried to ensure I'll never need to go beyond certified backups but we all want some thing for the worst case failures.

Sounds like you guys have a really thorough LLC agreement. Did it evolve over time or where you able to find one you liked through AOPA or similar? It sounds like your agreement helps to keep everyone happy by using the equity to diverge from equal shares when it benefits all - which you show a great example for doing so. When somebody sells their share or ownership, do you at that time get the next purchaser to pay a more fare share split of the equity so that you don't need to maintain a majority equity ownership - that is if you wanted to recoup some your additional investment then - and if you actually wanted too?

Actually when it comes to avionics, owner vintage Mooney's are at the bottom of the barrel. Rental planes without some form of WAAS GPS are nearly non-existent since most renters won't rent without them since the majority are in doing some kind of training. Even the C-152 has dual 430W's! But outside of avionics its very much a mixed bag. There are rentals I tell my clients I won't fly in either because of a lack of trust in the owner's maintenance, i.e. the "rent-a-wrecks" and the occasional one without shoulder belts. I still can't believe a rental owner could value the need for shoulder belts less than some panel toy. But I've yet to see an owner flown plane where the maintenance was worrisome like a few of the rentals I've seen. I know they exist amongst the owner flown fleet too because I've seen a few, but I am safe since such owners can't afford instruction any more than they can afford proper maintenance Luckily they're more rare than the rent-a-wrecks I won't fly in.

Bob, IMO you're a lucky guy. But honestly, I tend to suspect your partners are probably the luckier ones. You go out of your way to help you're fellow pilots here on Mooneyspace as well as frequent BT, so I can only imagine you're a very understanding and helpful guy to your Mooney partnership. I know several pilots in partnerships, they all seem to be in them for different reasons. You have the pilots, that I suspect are more like myself and yourself that are very serious about the their aviation hobby and are in it to get a lot of use out of their shared Mooney and then you have pilots that share aviation among many interest and are more in it for casual use of the aircraft and aren't really flying that much for various reasons. I see the more serious pilots have to work hard to sell the need for upgrades and spend more than the minimum to keep the plane flying. I've assumed that makes sense for many since it was the lower cost that attracted many to the partnership to begin with. But that's another freedom I really enjoy. You've spoken about many upgrades to your plane despite that antique KNS80 you're still find of (forgive my weak attempt at humor!) so I do get the impression your group probably is more positive about upgrades than many. Bottom line though, your partnership sounds a lot better with a happier bunch or like minded partners than what I typically hear about locally. But you have to be a big part of the success behind your partnership.

There is no way you can justify buying an aircraft to save money on rental costs. We buy a plane, and pay much more per hour than rental cost, for sole exclusive 24x7 access to use whenever and where ever. I never thought the “mission requirements” for matching your mission to your plane ever made sense. It makes far more sense to me as to how much you really love aviation and how much of your recreational $’s are you willing to devote to aviation. After all, I am pretty certain that if I had unlimited funds I’d have no problem finding great destinations beyond my range in a TBM or Eclipse. Like most, I poured over spread sheets before I bought my first plane. It was largely a waste of time because I really wasn’t focusing on the big picture - which was simply how much money I was willing to devote to my annual aviation budget. I belong to the country’s largest club. Rental prices are extremely competitive with planes ranging from C-150 to A36 and SR22’s etc. But renters have to book weekend dates well in advance and can’t take them anywhere. But if reducing cost where a priority I’d still be renting. I can’t really tell you the minimum annual budget you’d need to own your own plane because everyone maintains and operates them differently. But I’d think few can do it for under $20k year repeatedly and I budget twice that. Plane ownership is not inexpensive, buts it’s a bargain for the satisfaction and enjoyment it provides both myself and my pilot wife. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Benton, As Anthony described above, what you describe is not the "Monroy Extended Fuel Tanks" option that adds 30 more gallons with an additional fuel bay, but instead you should have a filler neck modification per the attached AFMS below (which should be in your POH). And from what you describe, it sounds like the modification is complete in that G1000 allows you to set Remaining fuel to 102 Gal. But before we go further, recognize you have two independent measurements of fuel: i) Fuel remaining which is merely calculated by subtracting your indicated GPH FF from your starting Remaining fuel which you can reset or add fuel to each time you start. Entirely separate from this is your tank fuel levels being sensed from your fuel tank senders. These were calibrated originally for 89 gal tanks by the factory and a G1000 Calibration config file was loaded at the time of G1000 s/w installation. You're not the first G1000 Mooney to report your tanks still only show 44.5 Gal or 45 at full, so I suspect the filler neck mod did not also provide a different fuel tank calibration. Garmin provides a calibration procedure calibrating the fuel tank senders. But its unclear to me whether only Mooney can create or modify your 89 gal config file into a 102 gal config file of if any Garmin dealer can do it for you. You would have to ask Mooney or any Garmin authorized dealer if they can re-calibrate your fuel tanks. You also have the option of installing much more accurate CIES fuel senders that Anthony mentioned above. However what you state here "the tanks both show "full" at 45 gallons and they start down from there when you start the engine" - that really shouldn't be entirely true. The fuel level gauges should remain at 45 gallons, and continue to indicate full, until the fuel level actually drops down to below 45 gals. In other words you shouldn't really see any decrease in flight till you have burned off 6 gallons on any given tank if they indeed where filled all the way upto 51 gallons. As far as your fuel senders are concerned, you overfilled the tanks and after you burn off 6 gallons the fuel senders will be at precisely the same location they were before with only 45 gal before your filler neck mod that allowed putting in the extra 6 gallons. You might want to confirm how much you're really carrying by starting out with a completely drained tank, adding in unusable fuel and then filling to verify how many gallons you can actually add to the tank to verify true full capacity. That will give you the confidence of how much fuel your carrying. Remember the fuel tank levels on the G1000 are calibrated only for "in flight" while level - not on the ground. And the Wing tank gauges are only calibrated for on the ground (where is nose is 3-5 degrees up). 51_GALLON.pdf

Sorry, cowling is on till hopefully end of August for annual. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nice and clean bundling and support. But personally I would want it spiral wrapped over the top and rear where it's just JPI harness to avoid chaffing. Those wires chafe easily. Check out your rear silicone baffling - a lot of air cooling lost there where it's bent over and not making even contact with the upper cowling. There is a proper way to make slits to prevent that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@OHAEDO Sorry to see you go, but you'll always be a part of the Mooney family!

I responded to the other thread before I saw this one - with the Rest of the Story. "Many months" was actually more like 2 years - so unfortunate! I guess its a shame it didn't go the Greg at Advanced (maybe it did at the end). I hope you're in a new Mooney soon. Did you buy it back as salvage? I assume when your insurance wrote you a check for the insured value they took possession of your project including engine to sell as salvage?

Wow, just WOW!! If I remember correctly, your engine was damaged during delivery in a vehicle accident which really delayed things. And now after all that time (many months I presume) of no plane and then it gets totaled. What a terrible experience to go through for all that time. But glad to hear its over and you can get a new Mooney!

What you describe has nothing to do with the airspeed safety which prevents gear retraction when airspeed is too slow. That safety switch merely over-rides a pilot action to move the gear switch to retract by accident while still on the ground. Assuming no one touched the gear switch, and you didn't exit the runway at too high a speed to side load the gear, what you describe sounded like is a maintenance issue with insufficient pre-load on the left main allowing it left main gear over center latch to fold over with with very little side loading just as @Jerry 5TJ described above. So with those caveats, this would have nothing to do with the pilot(s) nor the air safety switch. Plus if it was from the pilot moving the switch and failure of the air speed safety switch all 3 gears would have likely folded - not just the left.

ouch! I was hoping just the main center left and right pushrod tubes would bent - about $600 each - they're the weakest point and bend if the motor is overpowering the gear but I haven't yet seen a case of what your E and Cej airplane did - that would get expensive fast.

Makes no sense!! sounds like whom ever the underwriter is that they really don't want GA clients.

no change this year for me and I renewed in Feb. I hope its not an age based increase!

True, but the wire attached to the hitch pin could have got caught and pulled during the door separation event or when it when the door was attached to the elevator horn. I don't think we can be certain its the cause of the door opening but certainly possible if the cover wasn't in place.

I saw this one in the daily ASIAS report and wondered if the owner was on MS - Welcome to MS! Sorry it had to be a sad first post. I would think with the gear failing on the taxiway that damage would be significantly less than a Gear UP landing and more likely just engine and prop. I suspect they won't pay for the actual gear failing issue but all the damage as a result of it except for the betterment on the prop and if you choose to buy the engine parts to turn your engine inspection tear down into an overhaul. But I would expect you'll have enough hull insurance that they won't just write you a check and total it - which they do when the total repairs hit 60-70% of the hull insurance value since they get back about 30-40% by selling your hull to the salvage folks; thus its only cost effective to repair if the cost is within the ~60-70% of hull insured value. Luckily you also don't have expensive cost to retrieve the aircraft. Thus most vintage gear up mooneys these days just get a check with repairs at around ~60K.

I saw this one in the mornings ASIAS daily stats. Although not always reliable, the report listed both pilot and pax as having minor injuries. News reports indicated they were taken away in ambulance and picture implied the plane came to a sudden stop hitting the trees and with the tail elevated as well. Hope they had and were both using their shoulder belts!

I can't disagree with you there! Redundant AHRS would be nice. But most of the G1000 fleet has access to a backup AHRS from their GTX-345. Far from ideal since it's not integrated with the G1000 and only usable with an iPad. But its my third backup after my ESI-500 with at least an hour of battery time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not my favorite placement either, but to be fair, lets be realistic. The backup instruments for the G1000 are not your first line of backup. Its critical for G1000 users (as I know those of you participating in his thread already well know) to understand the failure modes of their equipment and thus the G1000 and their AP. Consequently, those back up instruments will not be the first back up but more like a second level backup. The first failure a G1000 pilot can expect is a PFD failure before needing to alter their procedures. One of the nice things about the Mooney G1000 installation is that when the systems senses a PFD failure, there is no manual reversion mode enablement needed by the pilot as we had in earlier ones used for example in the C172's. Its automatic and as the PFD goes offline the MFD comes right up as a PFD in mere seconds. Now its important for the pilot to recognize that with the loss of PFD or MFD, they also loose the GIA-63W associated with that display, and that includes both NAV/COM and GPS. So when the MFD comes up in PFD mode, we only have access to a single #2 Nav/Com and its GPS. But we can still do everything with the MFD as a PFD except for using the #1 Nav/Com. Thus we're really in good shape. Its pretty going to take a complete electrical failure of some kind before we're flying off the standby's and with a standby alternator and two batteries that's pretty remote. But then that's what the portable battery operated backups are for - my iPad and GDL 39D. Otherwise we can talk about smaller failures like the loss of ADC which won't take out the entire PFD like it would for the first generation Aspen. FWIW, I've experienced the failure while IMC instructing in a G1000 Ovation and had no problem getting the plane back to home base and flying a GPS LPV approach - I just needed the controllers help with getting wx.

I believe that's because the GI-275 isn't certified for the pitot-static instruments like it is for attitude. IIRC the G5 has similar limitations. But a L3 ESI-500, which is designed to be a glass backup would replace all 3; plus it can add navigation too. Also in a small footprint. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The website says or implies that they are building if you order one - I wondered but perhaps that's what we're seeing and it's already sold. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

that is a real problem because the 730 is not a replacement for your primary oil temp and technically your primary is required for flight. The front part of the engine is where oil gets the hottest - at the end of it journey from the rear to the front. Still what you describe doesn't sound normal. If it's real, then oil pressure has to be dropping with the increasing oil temp, otherwise it's an indication issue. Nobody wants to spend lots of $ on old OEM guages - perhaps instead it makes more sense to instead install a modern TSO'd engine monitor like the 900. Lots of benefits for the cost and it adds resale value to your R. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree with you that its really hard to imagine how they can open in flight if fully latched shut, but we continue to see these incidents in cruise where the pilots swears it was shut and I believe them since a non-latched door usually opens up on the takeoff run or right after liftoff. On locking the door - see step 5 below from the AFMS for the baggage door from SB 239-A - that's a pic of the required decal that's suppose to go on the baggage door.