kortopates

Ken, not everyone has bought a few dozen planes like you, many in fact are buying their first plane and benefit from professional advice and counseling throughout the buying process. A good percentage of the pre-buys we work result in recommending the client find another. Our fee is $750, but many only pay half that. We start with a review of the logs, which is free. If we continue we review the sales agreement providing input when needed, help find a shop for the pre-buys and provide a pre-buys checklist. Our checklist is broken up into phases so if a major discrepancy is found we stop there to avoid unnecessary shop fees. The buyer pays the shop fees to the shop. We then coach the buyer through the final negotiations. For a lot of inexperienced buyers, we more than save them the cost of our fee and reduce a lot of the risk. Much more info on SavvyAviation.com Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Although all mechanical tachs do count time based on the percent of the tach's designated RPM as @EricJ described (I thought Mooney Tach's use 2450 rpm) its not true that all electrical tachs count time 1:1. This is only true of one electronic tach I am aware of, the Horizon which is very popular because it has the same footprint as the legacy factory Tach's - its also one of the best electronic tach options given it features - but it 1:1 recording always killed my desire to install one for me. @Andy95W just gave an example of the UMA not counting any time till an RPM of 1500. The EI RPM1, works the the same way and doesn't start counting till an RPM of 1300, which is another popular option for Mooneys because it's the same footprint as the modern Mooney's tach's. Not counting till 1300 rpm has given me identical results from my old OEM Mooney the majority of flights. In contrast, the later JPI engine monitors RPM function are setup to work exactly like your mechanical tachs in that the 1:1 speed is programable with a default of 2400 rpm - which should be essentially identical to the original OEM Mooney tach but allows you to tailor it to exactly what the tach used your replacing in a primary instrument install. The point is no two electronic tachs count RPM exactly the same and the user should consult their documentation to see how theirs works.

Very good, I can't say on the pressure in PSI. I use one of these from ATS https://aircraft-tool.com/shop/detail.aspx?id=225DX&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 I just pump it up till the pressure is pretty firm (20-40 pumps) and then connect it to the caliper. When I am ready to bleed I open the bleeder port on the caliper and then roll on up to the MC's on the creeper to rotate, tap and work the rod etc. (doing this as a one man operation). But it fills a pint catch container I have connected to the reservoir within about 3 minutes. The actual PSI I don't know, but I wouldn't think very much. You're earlier mention of 15 psi sounds reasonable if its pushing fluid through it pretty quickly.

Glad you got some air out cracking the lines, but I suspect there is still some left in the MC. In addition to taping with the fittings on top, also move the MC rod while in the rotated position and that may also free some bubbles up. You'll only be able to push it in by hand maybe 1/8" - I don't recall anywhere near 3/8" unless there was a lot of air. The amount of freeplay you have the when the MC are in position and pressing from the brake pedals varies with the MC model. The original ones used in the K were very tight. The newer larger capacity ones being used have more freeplay. "I pushed against the AC with the brakes applied and it doesn't move. period. I set the parking brake and pushed the plane. That's not right. " That really sounds like the parking brake lever was pulled without pressing firmly on the brakes. Which would not lock the brakes up. Recall the parking brake just holds the brakes in the position of the applied pedal force. If that was done properly, and the parking brake is not holding the applied pressure, then you'll have to replace the 4 o-rings in the parking brake (4 is from memory). Good luck!

No paint codes exist. The factory didn't paint the baffles, they're only bare aluminum from the factory. That was done by a prior owner/mechanic.

Not but I'd assume its just a rattle can grey color easily matched. But the that rear baffling material is no longer effective and looks like its leaking really badly along the top rear where the upper cowling sits. I'd replace it soon.

Through Savvy, since the pandemic, we've had a record number of pre-buy clients and have had a lot of trouble scheduling timely pre-purchase inspections with many shops because of increased demand. The GA used market has been really busy this past year. Didn't Jimmy recently say he had a record year as well last year? Flight training was also huge this past year.

If its a 406 combined with the 121.5 beacon you heard then the SATSAT folks called the registered phone number(s) within 5 minutes to determine if its a false alarm or not. I've only seen it go for false alarms so don't know details beyond that, but after the emergency contacts are exhausted without learning the status of the plane, I assume they next check the airport where the aircraft is based and then go from there. Knowing the N number makes a big difference.

If the issues isn't from a lack of conditioning the pads, as mentioned above, you may well have some air in the system since you mention yours aren't as firm as another J model you tried. I have dual brakes which are very challenging to get air out and what I finally figu to get the last bit of air out was that I had to remove the cotter pins from the master cylinders so I could lower them and turn them sideways to get fitting on top to bleed them. In their installed position I could not get all the trapped air out. But once I had them hanging from their hoses, still connected, I could twist to get the fittings on top, as well as tap with the handle of screwdriver and push in the piston to free up bubbles all while I had opened the pressure pot to push fluid up from the caliper to the reservoir. A clear line from the junction of the pilot MC's showed the bubbles being freed and moving up as I did all this (tapping and pressing on the piston with my hand without much force). Personally, I found overly aggressive force while bleeding just makes things worse - such as stomping on the brake from the cockpit while fluid was being pushed up.

Yes to all three with a few Mooney friends lost. They all hit you hard. The first loss of a pair of dear friends hit me the hardest by far. But just like virtually every accident report you've read, not one of them should have ever happened. All were easily preventable and all make you sad. Some make you angry at the senselessness of them, but there also wasn't a single one that I didn't learn something from, most quite a bit. So ever since the first lost, I've become a student of accident reports and the human factors involved for whatever I can learn to reduce my chances of adding to them. I'll add an important (to me) comment inspired by the often dismissive pilot I hear from imply something to effect of "that could never happen to me, I wouldn't have done something so stupid like flying that day or this or that ....". Not one of the the pilots I knew that perished was stupid, in fact they were all quite smart. One was one of the smartest people I knew and world renowned in his field. He even flew his Mooney, a J model, over the pond before the days of GPS (I was impressed!). Personally, I think we all have to be aware that as human beings we can get so caught up in multi-tasking that we can become overly focused on some details while blinded to another emerging threat and fail to correct for it in time. There are many things we can do to combat this but first we have to realize we're vulnerable and we need to be always double checking our work and our priorities in an effort to catch our mistakes before they're serious.

Expect about 800-1000 hrs although some will do better and some will do worse.

The K's do better in a full power climb. If you throttle back to cruise climb setting you can expect to see higher temps from a leaner mixture. The limited HP of the TSIO-360's just doesn't make them very good performers in the cruise climb power setting. In contrast, flying the higher HP IO-550's and TSIO-550's have very effective cruise climbs with power reductions significant enough to not raise temps yet still provide plenty of climb power. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Agreed, but one thing seems certain given a new gear design - it'll be an expensive upgrade by any measure. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

But this is exactly what they're working on - a new gear with pneumatic structs which sounds much like a Bonanza gear except it's got to be much lower on the ground. See the Mooney website forum for the description. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

None of us like seeing the premium increases. But I still consider insurance a pretty small part of my annual flying expenses at not more than 10%. I really don't ever see it's cost making the difference between me flying or not; but not being covered would. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My ipad is always bluetooth connected to both my FS-510 and my GTX-345. In your case you would connect to only the GTX-345 and would have the AHRS as a backup to your iPad if your lost your G600 AHRS. You'd also get wx, traffix and position data from the GTX-345 that way on your iPad.

Awesome job! I think a great many pilots don't notice that until the radios or avionics go quiet. I fell victim to that my first time as well right after getting my instrument rating. Like you it was right after departure but on an IMC night. Luckily for me the lights went out just a couple hundred feet short of going IMC. I declared to all those that could hear me in the cockpit - cause I was diverting and making a descending 180 and started squawking 7600 - which I am sure was also silent - but I went through the motions of my training. Within a couple minutes I had my portable radio on and telling tower I was returning to the field with a loss of electrical power. Next I had to get the gear down - I was worried not knowing how long it would take but it went quickly. All turned out well but what a tough way to learn to scan those instruments! It was a good lesson for life for me.

Good find Clarence, but what I've found from many Savvy subscribers that after engine overhaul the OEM CHT probe often doesn't get reinstalled in the same place and often goes into a more convenient rear cylinder. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, and that's true for both Lyc and TCM. Even side is on the pilot side. That's a badly chaffed ignition wire as it passes by the oil cooler. I am sure its leaking - something you can see visually arcing in low light while running (but be careful if you try that). I'd have it replaced soonest. They sell a kit to replace a single wire - always in grey though and will require the slick harness toolkit to replace it. I mention the kit since the wires don't look otherwise old or worn.

Yep, most vintage Mooney's are totaled by insurance from a gear up despite no structural damage. Make sure you also consider that the maximum payout for repairs that an insurance company will pay is around 70% of your hull value. That's based on the recognition that the insurance company will get back the salvage value of you bird when they auction it for salvage. I've been told on average they get back around 30% of the aircraft. So any repair that exceeds your hull coverage minus their estimated salvage value its going to be cheaper for them to cut a check for your insured hull value. That becomes even more likely when the aircraft is underinsured. Say for example it has some nice high value avionics and the insurance company recognizes they'll do much better than average in salvage value when they auction it. If the aircraft is over insured it works the opposite way and the insurance company may well want to pay for repairs when the owner feels they may well prefer to go shopping for another airplane.

No switch is necessary. John above surmised the headset mike might still be active. I don't know because if it is, it never breaks squelch and you only break squelch with the mask mike once you have it one. Nothing more than just plugging the mask mic into the standard mic jack is necessary except for adjusting squelch.

Thanks, look forward to your Pirep. You don't necessarily bypass the headset mic - but it depends on what your setup is. Since previous answers above were all describing a Bose Lemo plug with dual plugs - I'll assume you just have the standard dual plug headset only option. In which case, you'll simply unplug the mike cable from your headset (keeping headset speakers plugged in) and plug in the mike cable from your mask in the mic jack. The only option to keep both headset mic plugged in with your mask mic is when you also have the powered lemo plug right next to the dual head set plugs. You will need to adjust the squelch setting when using the mask mic - at least I can no longer break squelch with the mask mic with mine until I re-adjust mine when going from conventional headset mic to the mask mic.

You can't be certain of that, his ability to find discrepancies will be dependent on how much time he spends looking at the aircraft and whether or not he flies it. As an example, an autopilot issue is likely not going to noticed without a test flight that exercises the autopilot. A leak in the O2 system would probably go unnoticed without filling the O2 system. Some areas of corrosion won't be found without removing every inspection plate and also looking under the rear seats, which isn't common on pre-buy. Many pre-buys will do the 208 SB for tubular corrosion but don't look every where else. And some areas just won't be caught by anyone, like corrosion in the fuel tank. Its very common for an owner to find things after purchasing no matter who did the pre-buy and how thorough, just hopefully they're not really big issues like some of the ones we've all read about here including spar corrosion. Bottom line, a pre-purchase inspection is quite different from an annual inspection with very very different objectives and very likely to be looking at many things an annual would not.

Absolutely agree, it would be silly to reseal the entire tank when the sealant is in good shape except for a leak. Once one opens a tank, its possible to to get a good idea of the sealant's condition and if patching is adequate or not.

That's unusual that the factory probe is on a front cylinder, its usually in the #2, (rear pilot side).