Steve65E-NC

A local hanger might be available for my Mooney. However, current owners have a 61 Piper Colt sitting in the hanger that they want to sell before they will let me use the hanger. The two place Colt was covered in Ceconite in about 1980. My contact says that, as he recalls, aircraft and engine are about 1900 hours. He reports that engine is running well, had what might amount to a Top OH, and should go at least another 400 hours. It has auto gas STC. Package Nav/Com. It is about two years out of annual. I think they will sell it, as is, in flight ferryable condition for around $8,000. As they work on it that price will probably change and after annual it will certainly change. Send me a private if you would like to talk to them.

Beware the fumerious jaberwacki. For Mooney's this is the landing porpoise. Cessna and Piper instinctive reactions will not hack it on this. Until you know better, one nose wheel bounce and you go around.

You can usually get direct JFK, the problem is that then they take you up North almost to Hartford before turning you back toward Providence and the Cape. I have flown in the Bahamas a good bit. With sufficient altitude, I am willing to fly over water a bit. Last summer I put on my inflatable life preserver and filed from an intersection near Atlantic city up V139 more or less direct to Hampton at 9000ft (filed IFR). This offshore route was alot less hassel, vectoring and traffic, than the V1 or V44 choices. And you come out very near the Cape. I made sure to put the life preserver color and on-board availability in comments. Otherwise, I don't think they would spend much time looking for you. Falmouth is a good choice for Woods Hole, a little short. Call first. I landed at grass Cape Cod Airport in Marston Mills nearer my destination, even shorter. Reasonably smooth ground, nice folks, no problem with my older Mooney, probably not advisable if you have inner gear doors. Hyannis is expensive and some confusion about who does what FBO vs County. I found the green on green at Cape Cod a little disconcerting on final. Hard to judge altitude. Both ways I purchased fuel at Salisbury, MD which had good prices. On the way back I filed the same way but they took me right down Long Island and over JFK at about 6000. I think they had some heavy International traffic going out to the East.

Doppler Shifts are nice, but I prefer Four on the Floor. Frequency should be independent of speed.

Much better than earlier effort. Now we can see where we are going. Altimeter readouts are strange in that they show you landing by the ocean at 1000 ft. Liked the music. Would have liked a better view of the Narrows bridge. Daylight footage, even as light fading, better than night.

I have landed most of those places and though this video would enhance my recall. Disappointed. After about thirty seconds of looking at the un-changing cockpit/front fuselage side view I was ready to go pull english ivy in the yard (very boring). I watched the rest with no improvement. Is this really the best place to mount a camera if you want to appeal to an audience of more than the pilot himself.

My pre walk around and post shut down rituals includes: Prop chain with lock, cowel closures, tennis ball with day glo tag on windspeed, velcro attached bird bra on tail openings. Photos in my picture gallery.

They are bound to sag a bit. They are spring equivalents under load. The question is are they bottoming out under the added flight flightforces. At rest, If you still have movement without bottoming out when you press down hard on the top of the panel you are probably all right. If they are bottoming out under reasonable additional force (say the weight of the panel assembly for one G), then you do have a problem. You need either additional clearance or additional shock absorbers. I replaced mine and had lots of spare movement under vertical test force.

Might want to check your vents on the bottom of the wing. Insects have been known to build in and clog those. Some years ago a twin that had been sitting for a while took off. The vacumn in the tanks bought the airplane down. The pilot was lost and a valuable Mooney related business essentially ended with him. Just blow in them lightly to see that they are clear. You might need a short length of plastic tube, unless you are acrobatic.

Litiz, PA has both a MSC, Henry Weber..., and a major prop rebuild/service facility. I have heard and seen only good things about Weber. You might want to start with a call to them and they would probably bounce you to the prop shop is more appropriate.

My understanding is that if you have the airport thresh hold in site and can safely make the landing then you are no longer bound by IFR constraints. That is why you have multiple aircraft in sequence attempting the approach at airports that are near IFR minimums. The pilot makes the final decision.

I think Paul Lowen at Lasar can repair weld and yellow tag your seat component. He did one for me several years ago.

I agree with 601rx about the use of a hand vac pump and a little telephone consultation with Brittian. Once you localize the component they have rebuilds available for just about everything. The problem is usually just a leaking boot or tube. The hand pump makes it easy to identify those problems. I just have a wing leveler with the gyro in the rear. Do you have a more sophisticated unit with vor tracking etc? I think the gyro moves to the turn coordinator in those models.

Gary, As I recall the Brittian factory is in Oklahoma. They have alway been very helpful to me by phone and I think their prices are fair. If I lived one state over, as you do, I would make a phone call and follow up with a trip to the factory if indicated. I can dig up their phone number but I think a quick Google search will bring you to it. Steve65E-NC

A little bit of Locktite 420 might work. A very light vacumn, only a few inches of water, with a dry tank might also help. Careful on vac, you can use a plastic tube and a table spoon of water to make a manometer. Also be careful when emptying tank, and drawing a vacumn. Avoid any sparks and electric motors. Remember that a fuel air mixture in a closed space (tank) with any kind of ignition is highly explosive and dangerous. Maybe use a hand pump of some sort. You can collapse a wing even with that so be careful. Probably better not to use a drop light while working under the wing with open fuel. I heard of a guy who died that way when the light broke.

Jose, Intake Gasket??? Where and what is this?

Aircraft Spruce sent out an e mail featuring this product. The ad claimed they were pilot plug-in compatible. It would be nice if Aircraft Spruce took the time to establish the facts and communicate them clearly. Perhaps the manufacturer has legally extablished that these meet angle and brightness requirements. Based on conversation here I have my doubts. Right now, if I had these installed, I would hate to be on the receiving end of a court case where nav lights were and issue.

Dustin, Thanks. I looked and I have the same pages in my POH. Could have just measured from the nose gear attach datum to the battery box behind the luggage area in the rear, but better to have something official. What did you use for the voltage regulator set point and how do you charge yours. My standard auto charger has an AGM setting and I plan to use that? I know Concorde talks about special chargers but the trail just leads around in expensive circles. Steve65E-NC

I have just purchased a Concorde RG35AXC for my 1965E and will need to revise my W&B for the extra 2.5 lb. Can someone give me the official moment arm from datum for the rear mounted Battery Box in my, short body, aircraft? Any other items to consider in this change to an AGM like maybe adjusting the alternator regulator voltage. Concorde give a bunch of Voltages for a variety of temps. What are others using?

As I recall this mechanism involves at least one "pop thru", or "over-center" mechanism (just like each of our landing gear). If you remove the door cover you can access the turnbuckles that controls this. The handle force builds and then reduces as you go past "top dead center". If the mechnism is bottoming out before this toggle-thru happens then you do not have secure closure.

The navstrobe package at Aircraft Spruce looks very attractive at $250+. However, I have a three strobe combination with a single power supply in tail. Strobe lamps are built into nav fixtures on wing tip. Maybe just have both. Wonder how they would work together? Maybe pull old strobe system and improve W&B. I still have a rotating beacon but understand that I could maybe just discard it given the strobe system. Wonder if this is also true with the navstrobe package alone?

Do not paint it. When last I had my Mooney painted, I had them paint a top blade with Aero Gloss white. Out of the paint shop I noticed badly degraded radio performance. Their was an aircraft Salvage Yard nearby and I picked up a replacement pretty cheap. I painted that one myself - smart huh. It failed in the same way. I talked the Salvage Yard into replacing it with another and then the radio worked fine. I think it is the pigment in some paints. The antenna manufacturers gel coat is pretty thick, unless it is worn through (something other than white showing), a careful cleaning/polishing with something like 400/600 grit or compound, followed by wax should produce good results.

Once in a Cherokee , at night, on an IFR flight plan, pre-mooney, about 1990, I was going from home base on the East side of the App mountains to Knoxville. I climbed high in a beautiul clear sky to get over Mt. Mitchel. Once past the high ridge I did not really think about the overcast layer that often accumulates West of the mountains. I asked ATC for lower and they put me down in the soup. I immediately started to accumulate some ice. I asked to be put back up in the clear but ATC did not give it too me. I continued on, picked up the ILS, and broke out to higher temps well above minimums. When I landed I heard ice rattle off. Two lessons for me. Stay out of any potentially freezing clouds as much as possible. If I were doing it again, I would decare an emergency and climb out of the layer. If I had waited for them to give me lower, I do not think I would have picked up much ice.

I have done this job a number of times. I think the materials referenced below are those generally recommended. I used 3M General Purpose Adhesive Cleaner Part No 08984. It works well at softening and cleaning away old adhesive and does not seem to attack paint. Some scraping of softened adhesive might be required but I recommend doing that scraping with a shaped wooden stick (paint stirrer) and not metal. I was careful not to get any on plexi, but do not know how it might affect that plastic. I definitely would not recommend thinners like Lacquer Thinner, Acetone, and particularly not MEK. The adhesive I used was 3M Weatherstrip Adhesive Black Part No. 08011. I think it is also available in a yellow color. Just hope this is what earlier installers used. If they used their imagination in chosing an adhesive then you may be left with more aggressive scraping. Both the 3M Cleaner and the 3M Adhesive work together and are avaliable at most any Auto Paint store or industrial supply house for reasonable prices.

Many of the top overhauls out there came out of the Chermichrome fiasco. I had my engine rebuilt in about 92 with a pricy port and balance cylinder overhaul. The first Chermichrome cylinder failed badly on compression within about 400 hours. All had been replaced with Cherminil (yes ECI helped a little on price of parts) by 800 hours. Of course extra money for Port and Balance was wasted. Now at ninteen hundred since overhaul and now Eleven hundred hours since last cylinder replacement, I have had no particular problems with the Cherminil. Many claim that the IOs automatically need a top around 1000 hours and that may be so, but if Chermichrome was involved that alone will explain the top overhaul history.