Becca

@jetdriven Has a shop at KGAI (Gaithersburg, MD). We work on a lot of Mooneys (including our own). RPM Aircraft Service. https://goo.gl/maps/fPNNNZmax56Fh1o87

A few of us are going to Friar Tucks tomorrow night, Tuesday. Message me your mobile number if you want me to text you the meeting plans.

Reopening this thread!! We are parked midway through row 524 in the N40 (N201EQ). Stop by for a visit! send me a PM if you’re interested in grabbing dinner together with other MS’ers. Include your phone number so I can text you. I am thinking early Monday or Tuesday evening at Friar Tucks!

We've never tried non-revving, but I've heard it can be pretty difficult even to get a jumpseat because, you know, its Oshkosh and the pilots are getting there like moths to a flame. Fly the Mooney

Excuse the hubris, I've seen a few posts about Oshkosh plans, but nothing about a get together (and have heard sadly it will be another pizza-party-free year.. but correct me if I am wrong), I would still like to visit with our MooneySpace friends at Osh! I assume @jetdriven would like the same, but he is not much of a planner. So I wanted to start this thread for the following purposes: 1. Anyone want to plan a dinner at Friar Tucks one night? Perhaps Monday or Tuesday? Say so here, and I will try to collect people together! 2. When you arrive, you can reply to this thread and post where you are parked. We will do the same. We will have a MooneySpace supply worth of Spotted Cow beer for anyone who stops by! Our current plan (weather luck permitting) is to be at Osh on Saturday through Thursday (camped in the N40 if N40 luck permitting.) Becca

What's @yvesg status and pizza party plan?

Byron’s done it off and on. It always costs the client a lot of money in travel time - far more than would be saved if (as some seller’s have proposed) “well the plane is already opened up for annual, so there’s some efficiency, just look it over in my mechanic’s shop.” FWIW, despite charging for travel I’m with you, he doesn’t charge enough to make it really worth the time commitment even when it’s relatively local and he can use our Mooney to get there. Also lots of buyers have the expectation you can do it in 1 day, and when you add the morning and evening round trip it gets to be an absurdity.

Oh… so the precipitating incident to this conversation was a hypothetical scenario where the seller has his plane apart for annual in his own mechanics’ shop. So the pre buy would occur in the seller’s mechanics shop not the seller’s personal hangar. (presumably with the potential that the sellers mechanic would be breathing over the shoulder of the buyer mechanic while conducting the pre buy). In my OP, though, I was more interested hearing in general attitudes about relocating an airplane to a different airport for a pre buy than this specific circumstance. Or whether any one has examples of actual bad behavior from buyers or pre buy mechanics that substantiate concerns about not relocating a plane.

There’s apparently quite a vocal discussion going on the Mooney Pilots Facebook group regarding taking an airplane off-field for a pre-purchase inspection. I have always been of the opinion this is necessary for a couple reasons - one for the quality of the inspection and one pragmatic. 1. Getting an independent mechanic to look at the plane is important. An on field or local mechanic may have previously worked on the plane or might have a relationship with the Seller. 2. How is an off field mechanic plausibly able to do a full inspection in the sellers’ hangar? The seller is unlikely to have all the necessary tools available (eg jacks, speciality tools, borescope, etc.). Not to mention many airports now have restrictions about unapproved or non local mechanics working on their fields. (And this doesn’t even cover the additional travel cost and expense associated with paying a mechanic to travel to a pre buy location. Especially since travel time could leave less than a full day available to do the inspection or require an over night.) To me, this is all obvious that a pre buy should be permitted a reasonable distance away from the home field (say up to a 100-200 miles in a Mooney.) But apparently many people are commenting on Facebook that they would never let their airplane out of their hangar for an inspection, out of worry of losing control over the plane with an unknown mechanic. Does this happen? Do mechanics or buyers steal planes or hold them hostage as part of the purchase process - is this something a seller should worry about “losing control of their plane before sale”? (I find it a weird worry considering how many airports I’ve parked my plane at overnight away from my home field.). Would you walk if you couldn’t move plane for a pre buy? Would you refuse to sell to someone who wants to take your plane off field for a pre buy? I know Saavy advises customers to walk away from deals if the Seller doesn’t let them relocate the plane to an independent mechanic for pre buy. what do you think?

Since Byron opened up the shop, I have seen so many variations on how annuals are billed when we compare our invoices to previous invoices. For instance, some places have flat rate 26-30 hr annuals, but then every single task is billed separately on top of that (oil change + 3 hrs; AD inspection +1 hr; etc.). RPM is too far for you to come from California, but just for a point of reference, we bill every item on Mooney Annual checklist as part of the labor hours as an annual, but then any squawk fixes as separate, but I am not sure there is a standard practice for this. I've also learned some planes don't have AD lists already generated -- this is so weird for me, every plane I've flown (clubs, rentals, friends planes, my plane), has always had an AD list. I am not sure how a mechanic is supposed to do an annual review of AD compliance without this, but apparently they do (or they just make assumptions? I don't know.). But if your plane If your plane doesn't an AD list, they can take some time to generate for the first time. I guess the point I am making is that when you ask a shop about how long the annual takes, make sure you ask what is included so you can compare apples to apples. Also ask if they use the Mooney factory checklist for the annual. I will say if you're getting a quote for $500, all that you are getting is opening up some panels and a cursory inspection, if that, its not an annual its a good old fashioned pencil-whipping. A real annual should take around 25-35 hrs of labor. As for what other folks have said, one of the pieces of advice I got from several aircraft owner friends when we were shopping for the Mooney is that "it doesn't matter what kind of plane you buy, it takes $10,000 in the first year to get it right." This was absolutely true for us and our first annual/year of ownership. And we have seen friends buy planes and have the same experience. If you haven't been doing maintenance between purchase and your first annual, expect the first annual might find some things that will cost you more than just the inspection labor time. Also another thing to consider is if this is your first year of ownership, finding a mechanic that will let you visit the shop during a day or two of the annual so you can learn more about the plane while it is disassembled.

If so, I would be curious to hear from @M20Doc a comparison between the requirements of being both, the type of factory support and training he gets from both, the type of quality control, etc. I think that would be a really interesting thread.

Good to know there are still ways to get the MSC designation! I think a newer designated one might be the way to go! You are right this deserves its own thread.

I know of several MSC's that are under entirely new ownership from the original MSC owner (Dugosh, for example, right?). Was Mooney involved in re-certify them or approving the transfer?

I do think there's something here for the FAA to increase the length of the list of owner-performed maintenance on their personally owned production plane. Perhaps even require a certification for this on the order of a weekend course and a certain number of hours of supervised work. That said, there's still lots of GA pilots that want to be able to drop their planes off for repair and get it when ready. They may not have the time or inclination to do their own maintenance and that's also why an experimental is not appealing to them. I mean look at oil changes - private pilots permitted to do their own oil change, it doesn't require an A&P, I learned how to change oil in a Cessna (and change spark plugs, and lights) shortly after getting my private pilot license on our flying club airplanes before I had ever even looked under the hood of a car, its not hard... however, most owners do not change their own oil and pay a mechanic to do that.

We really need to talk about this and the OP's experience with an MSC. In my experience as a Mooney community member we loudly broadcast the benefits of MSC's, while quietly overlooking and complaining about the problems. AFAIK, MSC's all got their designation decades ago. The title "MSC" can be handed down generationally or sold to an entirely new business. There is no ongoing training requirement for mechanics at MSC - maybe the original mechanics might have received training from the Mooney company, but it is unclear to me if the new mecahnics who have started working at these places over the last 40 years have any specialized training. There's no requirement they have Mooney specific tooling or use Mooney-checklists for annuals or other repairs. We have encountered MSC's that did not have the special tool required to change on an M20K Rocket or the gear pre-load tool required for every annual. It is not clear that they have any better access to Mooney parts or factory support, but maybe they do, at least for what's left of the factory. I am unaware of any factory quality-control mechanism or way an Mooney could lose its MSC designation for malfeasance, let alone for poor quality or decreasing knowledge of Mooneys. I guess it seems to me that MSC's have the same variation in quality as all other mechanics. Some are great, some are terrible. Having MSC's seems to be great for our brand... but with enough of these stories, having MSCs is both harmful for the brand and GA generally as Mooneys get an undeserved reputation of being hard and expensive to maintain. Compare this to the Cirrus Service Center system - Mooneys will never be Cirrus, we serve a different price point and most of our owners would be appalled at the Cirrus service pricing. But you go to any Cirrus Service Center, and they are following the same procedures, they have centralized records on your aircraft, you can expect the same quality of work, and the Cirrus factory carefully polices their quality, training, and methods in order for them to maintain that designation - the network bands together to ensure seamless 24/7 nationwide support and special AOG support no matter where you need service. Its more than just parachutes that sells those planes. For all the blame going on here there is absolutely no excuse for a mechanic, especially one who has done half an annual as part of a prebuy, not checking for corrosion. Corrosion is like the #1 thing you should be looking for on the pre-buy. And anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of Mooneys knows that spar corrosion is a significant issue. Did they provide a pre-buy report? It should say "inspected for corrosion!" We've noticed recently more and more planes are not getting a pre-buy report, which surprises me. I have no solution to propose. Pilots repeatedly reject publicly reviewing mechanics, they don't want to burn relationships or hurt a small business with a bad review - let alone a designated member of the Mooney community - so its hard to find someone actually both naming and criticizing bad MSCs. I have to wonder if one day we will have some sort of alternative credentialing body to help owners that are mechanical-novices from finding credible maintenance. (Not to self promote, but y'all know I am not a disinterested party in this because my husband @jetdriven started as small maintenance business, RPM. He does have a gear pre-load tool, the tool require to change the oil on an M20K Rocket, and uses the Mooney checklist for annuals and 100 hrs.)

With all due respect to some of the previous posters, I think brokers typically add zero value to a transaction and take a cut of the pie. Just shop for yourself. If you use a broker ask what he will do - does he have access to comps that will help you bargain a lower price? Will he advise your on what must have equipment you should have in your plane for its mission? How knowledgeable is he about Mooney’s - can he do a basic log book review and walk around and identify likely deficiencies and give you good advice about whether to make an offer and for how much? Will he travel nationwide to get his eyes on a plane before you waste your time looking? Or is just some guy at the airport who will shop around controller and trade a plane for you in exchange for 3% of the purchase price? Because if it’s just the latter you can do that yourself…. as other posters have said spell out what you want and your budget (which are hopefully aligned). Start looking. Plan a long search, most of us aren’t so lucky to find what we want the first time we browse. Budget for a few pre buys so you are mentally and fiscally prepared to walk away from a plane you thought you would buy if things go sideways. A failed pre buy is the best money you’ve ever spent in aviation because walking away with only a pre buy bill is so much cheaper than buying a basket case. We actually bought our plane from Jimmy when he was at AAA, but that wasn’t so much a broker relationship - he has an inventory of Mooney’s and we considered his as well as private sales in other states etc. Turns out he had the plane we liked and he was pleasure to deal with. He has teamed up with Don Maxwell now who’s a senior statesman of Mooney Mechanics, which is also great, and I think hopefully what they are selling out of their partnership will be mechanically sound due to Don’s finishing touches. That said, I have heard a few people having Maxwell do the prebuy of a plane Jimmy is selling - since it’s now the same business I would advise against making that choice, no matter how upstanding both of them are (and they are), there’s just too much built in conflict of interest in that situation, and if you buy from them, I would still seek an independent pre buy, lots of other knowledgeable Mooney mechanics in Texas to use…

So tragic. I am pretty sure I met both pilots at the last Mooney pizza event at Osh before the pandemic. We had a table full of women Mooney pilots and air racers and we had a great time drinking wine into the night. They were encouraging me to make plans to come up and fly the a 99’s Air Rally in Ontario and get serious about participating in the ARC. They were such positive influences for the Mooney community and the women’s pilot community. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1254346664641357/permalink/4389463531129639/ https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/two-killed-in-mooney-crash-during-air-rally-in-canada/?fbclid=IwAR1oZILoSmgnPbZHsOOALNda3XKS1XInYUMiISr7uOQmDke7RmFMqgHoTPg

Tough call, but probably the right one. I am hopeful we will all be back together next year.

I am equally guilty of the the gentle-delicate-flower perception of the generation after me too! You should have seen me in law school every time a classmate complained about reading or low grades ("let me tell you about the controls class where no one got over a single digit percent score on any tests") I do think, back in Mission Control, language mattered. You were taking mandatory rest because it was necessary for safety and performance of the mission - e.g. it was part of doing your job right. It was also nice that it gave you appropriate time with your family/leisure time, these things are important and good to prioritize, and all. As a patient, I also don't like how doctors just say "go to the ER" either. I think there are solutions to this that don't wreck doctors lives (sorry this is me thinking as a systems-fixer thinker messing around with business practices that I really have no knowledge of), and the answer is larger teams (For what its worth, I think this is true of lawyers practices too). If there were 2 or 3 people on the team, instead of one, you just pass off the pager (virtually), but there's always someone to call but no one person is ruining their lives by taking calls nightly. I have a friend who joined her children into a pediatricians co-op that does this very thing. Its a couple dozen local pediatricians in independent practices that take turns being on call, they pay a fixed monthly fee for the service, and parents can call a number 24/7 and always speak to a pediatrician and even get emergency exams/weekend visits without going to an emergency room. I suspect the doctors probably only end up on night or weekend duty once a month or so in order to provide this service to all their patients. Anyway, I think these are interesting problems that cross industries that employ high performing, highly trained people, and there's lots of lessons to be learned out there on how to do it better.

I worked in Mission Control for the Space Shuttle. We had a long, and intense, training period to certify. But we also had mandatory time off and sleep shifting time during missions, under express supervision and orders from the flight surgeons to have the schedule with that built in. (And yes the flight docs working in mission control had to follow their own advice given to the rest of us). I am a litigator now (I know big shift from engineering), and lawyers seem to have incorporated none of these lessons into their practice. They just expect top performance 24/7 and if you can’t do it the view is you aren’t cut out for the job. Me, if I was ever putting my entire business online at trial (let alone my personal freedom in a criminal trial), I would insist on a larger but better rested legal team. my takeaway from all this, is that if you don’t make the time off mandatory, high performers in these intense professions will not take the appropriate rest periods and people that toughed it out in previous generations will be critical of the weakness of folks who can’t tough it out. I am not sure where they leaves us. I think adding the extra year to residency seems smart.

It’s interesting to me.... I know nothing about residency, but I know a lot about human factors and CRM. And one thing we’ve learned in those fields is that rest matter in both knowledge retention and avoiding mistakes, particularly in high stress, performance matters, complicated situations. As they relaxed the residency hours (something I only read about in the news), I found myself wondering if there was some influence of the many doctor-pilots taking lessons learned from aviation safety and trying to apply it to medical safety. As a patient, I would like everyone performing surgery on me to be well rested. And yes I would like them very experienced too (and I get your point of less work means seeing less things). I don’t know the way around it, because doctor training is it’s own thing, but maybe the solution is also found in aviation - rather than declaring someone an ATP at the end of a “year,” they are declared it at the end of a set number of hours of experience combined with demonstrating of certain skills.

You know I always give this advice about GA and I think it’s important not to raise expectations here. When I bought the plane I thought it would be a $100 hamburger machine plus maybe a flying adventure a couple times a year, maybe regular trips to OSH, and I would still use airlines for everything else. But it turns out that, after owning an airplane for 10 years, the reality is way more nuanced and the plane is a lot more useful. Admittedly I am married to a professional pilot and mechanic and we are comfortable using the full IFR capabilities of our airplane and with two pilots it’s easier to deal with fatigue and we rarely have a maintenance issue preventing us from flying. But we use our airplane far more efficiently than traveling by airlines. Many of the places we go to visit family or vacation are 2+ hours from the nearest major airport, and to get to that airport requires changing planes and probably 2 hrs transiting airports on either end. Last summer we even flew from Montana to DC in one day! (3 legs, 2 pilots, took off at 6 am, landed at 9 pm, did lose time due to time change and it was arguably the most exhausting day we’ve spent flying.) I can’t say it’s cheaper, because we fly for free on the airlines. But it’s way more convenient “oh let’s leave at 3 pm instead of 9 am because I had this meeting pop up.” And “let’s throw this extra pottery turtle in the plane to give to my grandma.” In 10 years of flying, there’s been a couple trips that we’ve had to delay a day for weather and a couple diversions to wait out thunderstorms, but for the most part it’s been a pretty effective traveling machine. We probably use our plane for a significant trip monthly if not more frequently. I travel via airline for work travel (a lot before the pandemic) and I can easily say that I’ve had far more cancellations and delays on the airlines than in my personal plane. We estimate once all the fixed costs are paid for just to have the plane sitting on the ground, it costs about $60/hr to operate in fuel and depreciation and wear. $240 ain’t bad for a 600 mile trip for 2. anyway I wish the OP good luck with his mission!

I don't know if there are doctor's loans for airplanes like there are for houses. I would try other sources of financing besides AOPA, my experience with their loan department is kind of dated but they were not very competitive when we investigated them for sub-6 figure loans (as most of our Mooneys are), they had pretty onerous terms for low value loans. There's also specialty aircraft financing places like Dorr, First Pryority, etc. We ended up financing with our local credit union which required a few more hoops to get the loan but they had great terms (admittedly they behaved like we were asking for a loan on a $50 million jet, not basically a mid-range sports car/decked out pick up truck that they handed out loans for every day, and we were securing it with three very stable professional incomes in a partnership with great credit.). We know someone who recently got a loan through Banterra bank for a Mooney. Other option would be to finance something else in your life (e.g. your car, etc.) and then pay more towards your Mooney in cash. In retrospect, having our cars paid off and an airplane loan was probably not the most financially sensible arrangement of money (considering at the time car loans were actually cheaper than airplane loans). If a co-signer is an option, you could try that too, but I know not everyone has that luxury in their family.

So I went to the presentation and have some ruminations on the ruminations .. I learned a few tidbits: There wasn’t a lot of specifics about what happened. It was really, as titled, a lot of “rumination” regarding the Swiss cheese model of accident analysis. But certainly included a lot of ruminations about potential organizational contributions to the midair. These included things ranging from keeping sponsors happy to rapid growth to geographic spread of participants. There is video the midair! Have I missed this posted somewhere on the internet before? Apparently it is being shown at Mooney caravan clinics. I wished it was clearer and wonder if NTSB enhanced it at all would love to see it. (My observations - only watching video twice so I would defer to people who really analyzed it - is it was a very slow relative motion event, thus it didn’t change my mind about having a hard time believing unexpected wake turbulence was a principal cause of how the trailing pilot ended up in front of his lead.) The ppt briefing given pre flight (either printed or verbal, I could not tell which) was missing the page about blind calls. It was not mentioned in the presentation at all (something that seemed like a weird thing to omit), so I asked an open ended question in front of the audience about the accident reports suggesting that neither pilot knew they had a midair before landing and seeing the damage. The presenter (who was the lead pilot who’s wing was damaged) and his copilot had the opportunity to fully explain themselves to the floor. The response to my question: it was a low relative velocity event, so he did not feel the impact. He pointed to the midair that recently happened in Centennial Colorado as an example of not noticing either - possibly even suggesting this is just normal for a midair not to notice. (I think he must have had a mistaken impression that Swearingen pilot in that accident, given his cool calm badassery taxiing off the runway, didn’t notice that he had been in a midair. But I am pretty sure everything I read his he did notice something happened even if he didn’t have line of site on the colliding aircraft, and declared an emergency immediately after it happened, it’s just that he didn’t realize how badly he was damaged. And of course the other Cirrus pilot noticed because he pulled his chute.). After - in the interests of friendly dialog and accompanied by friends who participate in the caravan - I attempted to introduce myself to the presenter. Unfortunately, the conversation went south fast. Apparently, he has the mistaken impression that I am just a lifelong caravan critic that will never be happy with how this was handled. You can go back through my 10 years of MS posts, but before 2019 I frequently expressed interest in doing the caravan. My concerns with going were always personal logistical/timing ones, something Byron and I had hoped to one day overcome those and do the caravan with everyone. We have many friends that do the caravan and think it’s an important way of bringing the community together. We join the post caravan BBQ nearly every year In the N40 and have enjoyed the good times. Anyway, I expressed my concern that I learned some new facts here at the presentation that I hadn’t heard elsewhere. I got the caravan usual old response: you don’t participate in the caravan, if you had come to clinics we would have told you. Then I got accused of spreading rumors on the internet contrary to these secret facts I don’t have access to without coming to the clinics. Basically it was the same circular reasoning we see play out here on MS for the last 2 years. Trying to get back from the emotional defensiveness to the conversation, I said well I have a few specific questions and in answer to the questions I learned the following: the tail pilot did have the clinic training prior to participating in the caravan despite rumors to the contrary (this was double confirmed by two other caravan participants that were more friendly after the conversation.). the NTSB either did or didn’t interview both pilots I couldn’t really tell (it was presented more in the form of challenging question to explain how little I knew “do you even know if the NTSB talked to us?” “No, I’m curious did they?” “See you don’t even know that! How can you possibly have an informed opinion?!”) The Accident pilot insists with some passion that he did not feel the accident nor did he notice the damage to the wing until after he landed. Unfortunately he was not open to the suggestion that it’s odd or surprising that he didn’t notice - basically any question on this subject at all amounted to me calling him a liar and that I lacked the basic necessary understanding of a low momentum collision between two light aircraft traveling at a similar velocity if I even contemplated the problem. (As an aside, I have two engineering degrees, and worked on a certain spacecraft investigation that was crippled by its own internal organizational declarations about the energy involved in collision with foam that required an external independent evaluation before coming to grips with what happened). He stated he didn’t notice the wing damage until landing because after the near midair, he was joining up on the wing of another pilot, and his eyes were focused on that plane the whole time and so he never looked out his window at the damaged wing. He stated if he knew he had a compromised airplane he would definitely have landed, so there’s no way he would have continued on if he knew his wing was like this. My personal observations in reflecting on this story: Get-there-itis and adrenaline do all sorts of things to aeronautical decision making and memory that don’t make sense in retrospect. Unfortunately the ruminations didn’t include any thoughts about “how caravan flying can make you so tunnel visioned on following your lead pilot that you and your copilot don’t notice your wing has been bashed in either when it happens or for the next 10-30? minutes of flight to Oshkosh, and that’s a dangerous situational awareness problem too,” so we couldn’t really continue this conversation in any meaningful way after that. The presenter was very very adamant I come back online and relay what I learned. It seems a little odd me sharing my impressions of what he said, instead of him doing so here in his own words. Frankly, if the presenter or the caravan wants to share information, they know how to post in MooneySpace (and the caravan even has its own web page!). In fact, all these things have apparently been shared at caravan clinics, so any of the dozens of pilots who participated in those could chime in too (do they make you swear on a secret handshake not to comment or something?). The solution if you are concerned with internet rumors? Reply with something that dispels the rumor not just “that’s not what happened but you’ll have to trust me unless you spend your weekend at our formation clinic...” Personally I think the “only caravan people are entitled to the details” is a poor PR strategy to attract new participants to the caravan, and until they fix their organizational culture to value transparency and invite independent evaluation of incidents (rather than keeping it all in-house), I think they still have a potential safety problem that will come knocking on their door one day. The other thing I have been wondering since I left the forum - if one takes this narrative at face value and the pilots thought a near midair happened, combined with a pilot losing sight of his lead without making the appropriate blind calls... what should you do next? I mean this is all definitely arm chair quarterbacking now - we all can look back and wish we had done something differently - but I don’t think forming up and continuing in formation after that is necessarily the right thing to do. You now have a known safety problem with your formation. Perhaps breaking off, debriefing, and taking stock of your situation would be better. Curious, what’s the caravan near miss procedure? I guess I have to go to a clinic to find out...

Not entirely trying to resurrect this thread - but someone mentioned there was going to be a forum at Osh on lessons learned from the midair. Can someone tell me what the title of it is so I can find it in the program? Thanks!