bnicolette

If you need to make an emergency descent, I don't see anything wrong with this technique unless one is not proficient enough to manage it. However, a 60 degree bank in a descent initially is not a big deal. I think what they are basically trying to say is that they want you to "unload" the wing and get the thing going down in a hurry without causing any negative g's. We do this all the time in the jet simulators in an emergency descent, but one certainly wouldn't want to keep the turn going, it is just to get it going down. You can only go down so fast before you hit Vne anyhow.

I agree with DAV8OR. I think all of these planes are way over priced for what they have. I think if you keep looking you will find a J with reasonable engine time, perhaps half life, with the king avionics package for around option #2 price. They are out there. I too thought I had an unreasonable purchase budget, but I found mine in February of this year and found one just the way I wanted it with the right kind of maintenance/long term owner/etc.. They can be found, just be patient. It will be hard to stay in the price range you want to be in when looking at the dealers such as LASAR, All American, etc.... These are excellent ways to go, but for a true discount, I think you will need to steer clear of them. Don't give up, be patient, and keep looking daily. Also, keep your "feelers" out there like your doing with this board and other Mooney boards, local airports, etc.. Good luck. B

I would be willing to help out financially any way that Craig would like if something needs to be changed. After all, I spend all my free time here now! It would be cheaper than rent.

I definitely believe that is true. I have seen some pretty horrific stuff in my years that an A&P has said is good to go. The shop that I use, I have the same guy working on my plane at all times and I have a history with this guy as he was the maintenance director for the flight department I used to work at. His shop speaks for itself when you see it. We have some fly-by-night/gypsy mechanics running around our airport and they are with out a doubt cheaper than using a shop, but I have come to the realization over the years that you get what you pay for. If anybody is looking for a shop near Pittsburgh, this guy is great and cares for a lot of Mooney's. http://www.aeroinnovationsinc.com/

Has anybody had any experience with this camera? http://www.nflightcam.com/shop.php Or does anybody have any experience with another in flight camera that would be a good setup to use? It appears that this is the same camera, but less expensive and the only thing I can see is that you would need to buy a jack for the headset: http://contour.com/products/contour-plus Thank you for any input.

I don't think a Mooney annual either it be an E,F, J, etc. would be anymore than the other? Looking back through the invoices on my airplane, the annuals usually ran anywhere from $1800 to $4500 for the last 22 years and that was at an MSC in Daytona. My current mechanic is becoming inimately acquainted with the airplane as we progress through the year and we are estimating a $1500 annual. However, I have spent close to 4.5K since I have purchased the plane in February of this year. I had to replace an attitude indicator $1600 w/labor, new engine rubbers $1000 w/labor, oil change, and some odds & ends, and now an overhauled magneto which will be an additional $1500 w/labor. I use my airplane for commuting back and forth to work, and family fun. I fly IMC routinely and like to work the system, in fact, I don't think I ever want to fly point A to B without it. The fancy avionics are nice, but keep it real for what your going to do with the airplane. I will never go fly without a 1000' ceiling (I need time to decide where I'm going to go when my engine decides it doesn't want to run anymore), so a GPS approach down to minimums was not part of my criteria. If you plan on wanting to do GPS approaches, definitely try and find an airplane equipped the way you want it. Don't live in the fantasy that you will be able to put that equipment in and get your money back out of it!! I have a KNS 80 Rnav so therefore I can legally file direct within 200 nm and get it most times even on the east coast. The fanciest thing I have is a handheld 396 which is panel mounted and also use an iPad for charts & maps(Jepps and NOS). Good luck!

Yes, I guess occaisionaly we would have to edit a voice over in our mechanics voice to make it appear that they are right there beside us. As they ALWAYS are.

Not a whole lot of takers on that subject, so I guess for those of us that are interested in doing it, we could just start an independant thread under one of the topics labeled Videos. And I agree, it would be nice to have a library of inflight videos as well. 201er - Get to work.

Conclusion has been drawn. My mechanic in speaking with "the Don", decided that we are going to send it to Mr. Maxwell's guy in Lancaster, TX (Aaron Reid) to have it repaired. Apparently the oil was internal (drive seal), not the flange. In pricing some overhaul options for that mag the prices were all over the board with one as much as $3K. With Mr. Reid we are hoping to be under $1K. Quite a difference and coming with the blessing of Mr. Maxwell, well what more could one ask for? It stinks that this has popped it's ugly head right now, but that's the way it goes. I was really anxious to see how the new lord mounts felt and see if cleaning the injectors brount my GAMI lean test a little tighter, but now I have to wait about two weeks while we wait for the mag to come back. For those that will need this in the future here is the mag guru's contact info: Aaron Reid 972-227-9581 Lancaster, TX

Oh great; more good news. LOL I have talked to my mechanic a couple times today and were still undecided on what to do. We have a few more folks to call and one at the advice of Mr Maxwell. I only wish I lived closer to that guy. Talk about a genuine individual that is eager to help Mooney folk!!!!! Sent from my iPad

This is in fact a dual mag. Sent from my iPad

Hi all, I need some advice and info on shops that do magnetos. We put in all new lord mounts for the engine last friday and also cleaned the injectors on my 1982 M20J. This morning I got a call from my mechanic as he was going to dig a little deeper into the oil around the bottom of the mag that he has been a bit concerned about and keeping an eye on. He told me that there is oil getting to the mag, but not getting into the components yet, so he doesn't see it as a safety of flight issue as of yet, but might be something that we might want to send out and get corrected with some seal or just have it overhauled? What is everybody's thoughts on this? Does it make sense to pull the mag just to have the seal replaced or should we just go ahead and have it overhauled? I know the last 500 hour coupling inspection was done only about a hundred hours ago or so. What are the shops that you all recommend to have mag work done and what are the costs associated with repairing or overhauling these things. Thanks all for any information. Brett

Hi Everybody, I had asked Mr. McGregor about the possibility of adding a Video/How to Video option in the forum list for those of us that would like to post links to videos on many different topics to use. He has asked me to try and see what kind of interest there would be in the community for this tool, so if you would like to see this in the forum list please just make a reply to this topic. Thanks all. Blue skies, Brett

Hey 201er, I came across one of your videos the other day and subscribed to your youtube channel. You did some pretty cool videos. I just thought it would be pretty great to see some videos of different maintenance items, trouble spots, upgrades, etc of things on our Mooneys. There is nothing like being able to actually watch how something is done as opposed to try and write a descriptive account as to how it was done. What really made me think about this was, I am about to try and remove my yokes to either have them powder coated and am a bit apprehensive about removing the switches located on the yokes. I have posted about this here before and some folks have responded and mentioned what a PITA it is, but very doable. So it would be nice to have a video of how it was done. I suppose we could start a thread titled videos to archive them in with links to youtube?

Hi all, I was sitting here thinking, being a relatively new Mooney owner, that it would be great to have a series of "how to" videos for a lot of projects that we are all working on, almost constantly. I'm not sure the best way to do that, I guess possibly utilizing Youtube? Any idea's? I just thought since it is so easy now to do videos with our cell phones, it's almost a shame to not have some sort of "help line" for different projects. I am getting ready to undertake the redoing of my yokes and if there is a lot of interest in seeing different videos, I will make sure I get some of that on video.

Does anybody have the travel boards for a M20J that they would be willing to share or rent?

That would be a nice surprise that I hadn't thought of. Thank you for the insight!!

Spent all day with my mechanic installing four new lord mounts and cleaning injectors. To my delight when we put the cowl back on, it lined up perfectly with the spinner and the clean air inlet. I elected to change out the lord mounts as there was about a 1/2 inch sag showing and didn't want to just put in shims to raise the engine back up. I had to believe that the MSC that put the engine in 11 years ago had it lined up/shimmed correctly and thanfully that must have been the case. It is perfect now with the new mounts. I am very anxious to fly behind it again and see if I notice a difference with the cleaned injectors and new mounts with the little bit of vibration that I had previously.

Flew home from work after being gone for a week............for the weekend (and then some)!! Woohoo. I love my machine and being able to fly back and forth to work once in a while (wish I could afford to do it every time). She is such a good girl!!!

I would have to agree with the fact that the next buyer may look at the time when overhauled and seem to think that either the previous owner was not very kind to his/her engine or the engine is a lemon. I know when I was looking for my airplane, those figures were very high on my priority list. I fly IMC all the time and I could care less about having an IFR GPS or other gadgetry (well, it wasn't high on my wish list; it would be nice, but other things were much more important), but I did want a sound airplane and engine with great history. I suppose if you want to major the engine now, a factory reman would be the way to go. I think a field overhaul may cause you a headache down the road with regards to resale since it is being done very early. Or not. Just food for thought. I have nothing against field overhauls. My engine was at 1950 hours when the previous owner had a gear up, and that's when they decided to major it (field overhaul with new ECI steel cylinders, etc), I guess in part because the insurance was paying the bill anyhow. It now has 600 trouble free hours and it is out of that danger period and knowing that it went to TBO previously, I have a lot of confidence in my engine. Especially with the engine monitor, oil analysis, and periodic compression checks. We also have a boroscope at work, but I have yet to do that since I bought the airplane. I know how important it is to have confidence in your engine, but honestly, if you are doing the oil analysis, and nothing has changed with oil consumption or leaks, and you have your mechanic do a compression check and boroscope, I would think your confidence level should be very high. In order to have a high confidence level again after an overhaul, I would think that you would have to be VERY cautious the first 200 hours you fly. I'm not sure how much you fly, but for the average GA pilot, that could be 4 years of high caution and lot of VFR days. Just more food for thought. Good luck in your decisions.

Does anybody have any insight on this airplane and why the price would only be 52K? http://barnstormers.com/cat.php?mode=search

Hey Scott I have noticed that the cowling rides up a bit during the flight. I am measuring the sag after pushing the cowl down as far as it will go. Thank you for the suggestion on the injectors. I will definitely have him check those while we are doing the mounts. It would be nice if we could flush those out and have my spread be a bit closer!!! Any money not spent is always a great thing.

Ross, Thank you so much for that offer and I might just take you up on that. I'm not quite sure how I could make sure it was shimmed correctly when they first installed the motor/mounts? I know the previous owner was pretty methodical with the airplane, but I don't know if he would have noticed that it was sitting low on the cowling or not? I think at this point I have to assume that since it came out of a MSC that they would have made sure it was correct, but who really knows I guess? There are the thin shims on the bottom mounts, so they attempted at some point to bring it up a bit? I think that since I am going to try and make her as smooth as she can be I am going to replace the lord mounts and go from there. The vibration is nothing I would call "bad", but rather a bit annoying.

Hello all, I was wondering if anybody had any intel or thoughts about the limits on engine mounts as far as when to replace them? My plane has a bit of vibration and I am thinking of starting with the mounts and then moving forward. My engine mounts are the "lord" brand and were replace at overhaul in 2000, 550 hours ago. The engine shows a bit of sag, perhaps up to a 1/2 inch but no more than that. I am assuming that it was shimmed properly when the engine was put on by the MSC who did the overhaul, so I don't just want to reshim it to bring it back up?? I was going to start with the mounts, then opt for the GAMI inectors (my spread is about .8 gallons between leanest and richest), then perhaps have my prop done. The prop only has about 550 hours since new, but that was 11 years ago. I have just started noticing it throwing a mist of grease on the window and front cowl (this was confirmed by removing the spinner and seeing the grease marks). Then finish with a dynamic balancing. I had the dynamic balancing done just the other day, but I didn't really notice a big difference even though at 2600 RPM it was a .01 (whatever the heck that means). I have been accused of just not being used to single engine airplanes and the way they feel since I have been flying nothing but jets the last 14 years, but I still think that when I feel a vibration in the yoke, seat, etc. that something can be done about it??? (Thoughts on this??) Or is it really just the way Mooney's are??? This was precipitated by having a bolt come out of one of the intakes the other day while flying at 7000' on my way from home to work and making a precautionary landing at KCXY to find out why my engine "farted". I was running right around peak perhaps just a bit LOP when all of a sudden my engine lost power. In a nano second I had the mixture full rich and boost pump on and everything seemed to be indicating properly on the JPI, but by then I also had the power back a bit and had started my descent for Capital City.

Quote: peter I saw a statistic that 83.62% of all statistics are made up on the fly.