kortopates

Go around are pretty rare, but there is one I doubt I'll ever forget since I went around 3 times before landing. Coming in to Mulege, a dirt strip in Baja, for a whale petting trip. On short final we see a pair of dogs in the middle of the runway. We're hoping they'll move off, but of course they don't so we initiate the go around. As we get over them we see the dogs are mating - right on the runway! We announced on the radio we were going around for 2 dogs mating on runway. We come around for a second attempt and can't believe they are still going at! This time we announced another go around and asked for assistance to clear the dogs. A low pass didn't interrupt a thing. On third attempt someone from the hotel drove a truck onto the run way to chase them off, but we had to go around for a final third time before we had the runway to ourselves for landing. Could not believe the stamina of that dog, nor its determination to finish the deed!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Actually both of these landing incidents where before eclipse day. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Instrument runways are very rarely shorter than 3500', and the majority are 4000 or more. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Huge myth to think flying GA is 1000x safer than driving. It's not as safe as driving at all, but more on a par with motorcycle accident rates. Often you hear the big lie that driving to the airport was more dangerous than the (GA) flight. If only it was no more dangerous. Of course commercial airlines have a great safety record but GA is horrible. The company's are exercising very reasonable risk management or should I say their insurance companies are for them. Some companies will allow GA flights when the pilot is a commercial pilot. But they are really thinking part 135 taxi ops. But I did just as @gxrpilot when I was in the same situation - trying to stay under the radar. But they often seem to find out when taking a pax. But by the time I left I was too visible to get away with it anymore which really sucked. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for sharing. As we've discussed elsewhere, the vintage J bar Mooneys are no more immune to gear up landings than the electric gear. Not that long ago, I had an older J bar student that was having problems getting used to the J bar . He was really beat up manipulating the gear after just 3 or 4 landings. Personally I was trying to convince him he needed to get his gear checked out because I think the last person adjusted the pre-loads without re-adjusting the initial locked position and that last little bit to get it locked seems much too hard to me - but that is another story. Anyway, he really wanted to practice landings without raising and lowering the gear and I insisted that he needed to practice the entire takeoff & landing procedures properly to build the right habits; otherwise it was a setup for exactly what this poor pilot experienced. What do you others do with new J Bar pilots? But back to gear alert systems - I doubt there is any pilot that has ever geared up that didn't wish they had installed a gear alert or advisory system BEFORE the very bad day of gearing up! But as we read here, one needs to pick a system that does the job for them without being overly intrusive. Such as "STALL, STALL" on landing. (My P2 doesn't do that, it sounds a horn in the intercom instead).

what system did you have that you hated? I love my P2 Audio Advisory system - really no such thing as a false alarm. I would pull the breaker practicing slow flight with the gear up, otherwise never an issue.

Thanks for the call out Jeff! As Bob points out it is a bit of challenge. We have a combined F&J's cohort that have the same fuselage and same engine except mostly except for differences in magneto's (Dual or separate), magneto timing which goes both ways (20 or 25) - even in the J models alone - plus we have baffling differences. The short body E probably has more in common with the mid body F&J than differences. The M20S and R's are a challenge too, given the upgrade options that many have done. We have M20S in 3 different engine HP variants possible in the S and 2 in the Ovation and they are really all three different variants of the same -G model except the 310HP Screamin Eagle/O3 variant is really an -N (with also a different prop). I've passed on your comments to Chris at Savvy that manages the report card reporting software. We've discussed some time ago and our current s/w capabilities really prevent being able to segregate these based on more than Mooney model, but the option does exist to combine groups like S & R's just as done with F&J's now.

Good hear the real street price is very affordable. I hope your right though, but even without replacing crank rods I still worry somewhat after seeing many engines with the cylinders removed and the crankcase bolts not tightened back up under tension to keep a load on the crank bearings. Despite how Mike B has written and publicized accidents from the many improperly torqued cylinders it seems many still don't adopt the practice of torquing a cylinder base or washers on the through bolts to keep the bearing under some tension. Doing a top is exactly when the engine is at most risk from not doing so.

Only if the GTN is in VLOC mode. When not, it should show "GPS". Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Apparently, now saying 1 person dead instead of 2 because pilot departed from home base solo. Some eye witness accounts are now available. http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2017/08/accident-occurred-august-19-2017-near.html

That's my understanding as well, my final wiring harness was actually wired so that we could swap from frequency to resistance mode very easily. Only because we were having so much trouble with frequency mode with no one fessing up till JPI took ownership. Unless your firmware version is from this spring you will definitely need an update. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just like any other electrical accessory, you'll be making up your own harness. Besides you'll have to pull the wires through the wing to the outboard senders and you couldn't really do that with the connectors already crimped on the wires because of the clearance issues.

Correct, you will still have the extended tank without a sender. But with the CIES senders you will do much better than what you had with the OEM gauges. For starters, before CIES you only knew full main tank condition after filling the mains when there was no fuel in the outboards. Then, soon as the fuel settled into the extended tanks, your OEM gauges would read somweher around 2/3 full and your OEM gauges never correctly indicated the right amount of fuel till each side was down to about half way - which on mine was ~18gal. Now once you calibrate with the CIES, you will have no problem reading full main tanks properly, and since full main tank quantity isn't actually to the top of the mains after the fuel settles into the outboards, you can continue to add a substantial amount more of the extended tank volume and continue to accurately indicate these gallons above the main tank capacity. But somewhere between 1/2 to 2/3's of the extended tank capacity the main tanks do become full to the top and senders can no longer sense any added fuel to the extended tanks (sorry I don't recall the exact amount - its written down in the hangar). So although without a 3rd sender in the extended tank area we still don't get accurate fuel indications all the way to maximum capacity it's still a tremendous improvement in that we do get accurate fuel indications not only to full main capacity but quite a ways past it. I rarely ever fill the extended tanks anyway. But my big complaint has always been having no accurate indication till about half of main capacity; so the biggest issues IMO have been solved by these.

Its been too many months now to recall with certainty so I would recommend chatting with Scott, he was generally very available by phone. But what I recall is that the inboard was master and I thought I recalled both senders having 4 wires - that I don't recall them being different. But its been awhile. The proper term I was trying to recall is plastic bushings for the sleeves. I'll have to see if I can dig that part up. The rest of the hardware to my recollection was unchanged from the original removed hardware and thus whats in your Mooney IPC.

For frequency mode, it took JPI a few iterations to get the firmware to work properly. The last fix I am aware of that is working for me wasn't till this spring. I think that's why many went with the resistive mode installs because of the issues JPI was having with the frequency mode. Oddly JPI had it working on the 930 much sooner than the 900 and I have no idea why the 900 gave them so many problems with the freq interface but it did. But to me, the big benefits of this technology was greater accuracy in fuel level based on the frequency mode use; so I don't understand the comment there is not much difference other than that all the dissatisfied 900 users having problems as JPI worked to provide updates. But I haven't worked with both kinds of installations either to really quantify the difference between resistance and frequency modes. The screws for the senders, being smaller than the holes in the senders, require plastic tubular inserts to make up the size and seal. I'd recommend you build a test harness to ensure all works fine and you get stable outputs at the JPI - that could save a lot of trouble shooting time avoiding wiring issues after everything is installed. We had enough problems that in the end, my installer pulled the ground all way back to the cockpit as well as ground locally as shown in Scott's diagram; probably because Scott always would say make sure its adequately grounded when there was an issue. You'll notice the Mooney outboard sensors have a big bend in them so as to not hit the front of the tank. The CIES outboard senders did not clear the front of the tank. To make sure exactly why we opened the tank from above (right above the sender) and bent the arm to clear the tank with about an inch of clearance. You can probably do that in the blind just repeatedly bending a little at a time - but we wanted to be sure. But also note our senders were installed upside down relative the CIES labeling. Maybe some of these things are no longer relevant if Scott has made changes to make the install more straightforward. Mine were installed in what Scott's instructions referred to as a master-slave wiring. I recommend using smaller gauge Deutch 20G connectors, here is 4 pin example off amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CUCA9GA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Calibrating just takes a little time and JPI limit of 5 readings pretty much narrows down what you need to do. We started with the plane leveled and added the same amount of fuel to each side to keep it level. What I didn't quite expect is that it tool 2-3 minutes for the frequency output to stop changing - not in truly fluctuating way, but it would change by a number or 2 even after the first minute or so; so suggest giving it a couple minutes to stabilize before you record the value.

How much it saves you will depend on how well you learn how to use it. But it could easily save your life if not at least save you from a risky off airport landing. With the monitor there is rarely an excuse to continue flying an engine till it seizes. Almost always there are plenty of signs to warn you that failure may be eminent if you don't take immediate action. And with knowledge of how to use it, you have a very good chance of saving your engine before it gets to that point. For example, I was flying across the country about mid-way at 10:30pm over the middle of Texas while we watched a slowly declining oil pressure; still in the green. Oil temperature was still normal, but as we were debating what to do about it and when, as it got closer to the top of the yellow arc we began to see fluctuations in the oil pressure. I recognized this as the oil pump cavitating from too little oil in the sump. That was it, the reality of the situation was setting in (remember the CARE checklist?). Cruising at 17K, I had already surveyed towered airports with approaches and services within glide range of about 30nm and told ATC we were diverting to San Angelo because of a oil pressure issue. My wife was the pilot flying on this leg and she was the first to notice the issue. As the pilot not flying, I was working the radios and was talking to ATC. We had already pulled the power to near idle and gliding to the FAF for the approach I loaded and was asking ATC to clear us for our selected approach. With 2 pilots, and the marvels of modern GPS technology we were gliding into San Angelo on idle power and landing without incident. The following morning we diagnosed issue. Our turbo had been pumping oil over board and we were down to just a bit more than 2 quarts of oil; plenty sufficient that we have evaded any engine damage. If we had ignored all the signs with still 1.5 hrs to go to our planed destination we likely would have at least lost the engine and who know what our options would have been if we had not been monitoring our engine analyzer. As a CFI, I work with Mooney owners and with rental pilots at a flying club. Its interesting to me at least that most of the rental aircraft these days have a JPI engine analyzer so their owners can monitor their investments and virtually all have either a new GTN GPS or GNS W GPS. Because of the engine monitor, more and more new pilots are learning the importance using an engine analyzer to do a more thorough mag test before taking off. Of course it takes a CFI that understands this technology to teach to his/her students and what percentage do this I don't know. But just yesterday, we taxied back from the run-up area because the engine monitor showed the left mags #1 plug was cold, or not firing and we were unable to clear it after multiple attempts. For an owner, that save a lot of time which saves money knowing exactly which plug to go clean and test. And the light bulb goes on for the pilot in training on the usefulness of the monitor. Consequently, as analyzers become more universal in training aircraft I doubt many future pilots coming out of ab initio training will even have a question on the value or need for the analyzer; given a choice they won't want to go without it.

Indeed, and I've heard it cost $3700 for the tool. Which should keep most all but the engine shops from performing these inspections which isn't such a bad thing when connecting rods need to be replaced given the specialized nature of torquing the rod bolts to a precise measurable stretch. Its way too soon to tell, but surely some percentage of the rods replaced under this AD will eventually suffer failure from the fix due to improperly torqued rod bolts; likely performed by tech's that lack experience with the procedure.

Lycoming's FAQs on the the AD and 632A explain what cost they are covering for Lycoming connecting rods installed in field overhauls - see FAQ item 12. They aren't quite so forthcoming about when its just their bushings that were installed but say they are working with with engine rebuilders - see FAQ item 13.

Although it's not the only starter adapter friendly option, it has been TCM's preferred starter for awhile now: http://www.tcmlink.com/pdf2/SIL16-1.pdf Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This thread has much more written about the topic including a letter from Mike B But keep in mind the vast majority of engines affected by this AD are not going to referenced by engine serial #. Lycoming rebuilt and overhauled engines are a small fraction of the engines field overhauled and then it will depend if they used Lycoming versus Superior PMA's parts.

Interesting product, but I notice it runs a volt low for an aviation 28V buss. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'll have to read the report. But IMO, rather than focus on what we/they as pilots could do to make their improper decisions making more survivable is kinda missing the point. My thoughts are on how to break the accident chain and here it seems a lack of pre-flight planning for a very low altitude flight with all of the added intrinsic hazard to low flight. Lack of planning was apparently due to complacency from having flown in the area very frequently. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Agreed they should not be charging extra labor, just their retail price for their fair profit for new mounts. The old mounts came off with the engine and thus no extra labor to use new mounts when reinstalling. I would also ask them to install with new hardware as well. But before they do that, if it was me, I would get the engine mount removed from the firewall (it's only 4 more bolts), carefully inspected for corrosion damage, chaffing etc and have it repaired (if need be) and refinished (either painted or powder coated). Now is the time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

True there are no FAA regulations on the tanks, just when 02 is required and how it needs to be dispensed in the cockpit. But this is simply because pressurized gas cylinders are already regulated by DOT. DOT does not allow filling the tank after the hydro has expired and they require removing the tank after its life time has expired. So nobody is going to fill it without being in violation. The 115cf Kevlar tank is huge - no way could this one be considered portable, much less carried on board through the front door and secured in the cockpit when full. All that said, portable O2 is a great supplement to any Mooney and I am sure you can find some used portable systems out there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Very nice!!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk