kortopates

But the only way to remove the moron factor is to say you'll never make a dumb mistake. But its well proven that very very smart people do make dumb mistakes at times. None of us are infallible. Thus our best defense is to admit we are fallible and try to recognize things are changing, the consequences of our actions and take corrective actions before we're in a position of having no outs. If we don't recognize how easily we can be a moron from time to to time, we're much more likely to get into trouble.

The truth is I'd wager Bob is exactly right. And that is exactly why you would expect Mooney added the outboard sender - to give better fuel quantity range at near full. But to get approval I seriously doubt your FSDO will approve it as a field approval and would expect you to hire a DAR to engineer a one time STC. Even if he can pull it off, showing the outboard doesn't add anything because of bladders, I'd expect its going to cost you more in the end.

Do you recognize the error message from one of these: https://www.jpinstruments.com/FAQCategory/edm-930-error-messages/ Although some of those have accompanying values but that might be enough for you to match it to one and if so JPI tech support should be able to helpful. I personally have not seen one where logged data was lost except for over writing old data.

With only two senders you shouldn't have any problems - lots of 2 sender installs already out there. And as far as I know, without all the hardship and delay I went through.

Since you bring that up, I should add its possible the senders did change before they were installed. That picture was taken at the time of the what I could refer to as the first install. After that we had one sensor replaced by Scott but it didn't fix our issue and Scott didn't confirm it was faulty. In retrospect it probably wasn't and was a JPI issue. After that they went on a lengthy tour, first to CIES with a Demo JPI 900 unit where Scott had problems with the JPI 900 trying to apply one of many JPI firmware fixs provided to the 900 when he was testing, so they then came back unresolved. Next my JPI 900 and the 4 senders all went to JPI for sometime where they tested and finally were convinced they had a solution but also believed one of the senders was bad. This was when the latest, as far as I know, firmware (and apparently hardware) fix was engineered and tested on my setup at JPI. From JPI they went directly back to Scott, but Scott indicated he only replaced one sender that he believed got accidentally fried during testing saying someone probably accidentally put power to the frequency wire. He had said he had 4 new sensors ready to go when he got all of my stuff for the last time to test, but as far as I know only one of the senders was swapped out. Before they were installed for the final time they were re-wired with new connectors and ground was pulled back from the senders to the JPI. It turned out there was still a glitch in our wiring, suspected to be a grounding issue. So that last re-install made sure we had a good ground and finally resolved it. The main thing I would have done differently now with all the hindsight would have been to rig a full test harness wired to the JPI before ever installing the units for the first time. That would have resolved the biggest issues at much less effort; except for the outboard senders arm fit issue that initially threw us for a loop since Scott's believed his outboard senders supposedly were already accounting for this. Unfortunately though for you, I can only easily verify the number of wires on the outboard senders. To verify the inboard senders number of wires I would need to pull interior and big side wall panel out. So to be sure on the number of wires I'd check with Scott, these have been evolving quite a bit since I started the process around last thanksgiving during a full new panel install. But I am confident they are working properly. Our original problem was that we got a very unstable reading when the 4 sensor was connected - oddly any 3 connected provided a stable readings, but not 4. JPI's fix addressed that. Plus its very clear from calibrating the tanks that the frequency values between inboard and outboard are additive since when fuel is added, initially only the inboard rises with reading changes and towards the end only the outboard continues to rise with reading changes.

Yes, the two senders in yellow look like my outboard senders. Your 4 inner senders labeled in green all look like inboard senders compared to mine. Here are some Picts of my senders. This shows a pair of senders with the outboard sender next to the Mooney outboard sender on top - before bending it to fit. Inboard is on bottom as has straight arm without bend, whereas outboard has bend. But notice how the OEM Mooney sender is angled to go further aft in the tank in order to fit yet the CIES outboard senders goes forward and therefore hits the front of the tank without adding a bend. This picture shows the outboard sender installed looking down through the removed inspection cover. But with the bend moving it closer to the front of the tank rather than away, you can see why we needed to bend it aft (to the right in this picture of the left tank). It has about an 1/2 to 1" (from memory) clearance from the front wall of the tank. You can see from the picture why we removed the inspection panel to make sure it wouldn't hang up. At first I thought we had wrong senders since the arm on the outboard seemed to be in the opposite direction of what we needed. But Scott said they just needed to be bent aft a bit and you can see the small bend in the sender. The last picture shows the installed outboard sensor and shows how it's installed upside down from the CIES labeling. But you can see with the 5 screw hole pattern its impossible to install them any other way. I believe all 4 sensors had the same 3 wires. You can see them in the first photo. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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