Becca

Quote: richardheitzman Al Jazeera is NOT one of the most respected news organizations in the world. Where the hell did you get that drival from? I spent 4 years in the Middle East and EVERYONE including the arabic people wished that Al Jazeera would Shut the F up. They are a propaganda tool for the radical fanatics. If you want to post videos from that organization then do it some where else. "oh I don't want to start a political discussion". pure drival R

So, the latest (reviving the thread again), apparently there are no more M20J ailerons, elevators, or flaps at the factory and no plans to build more. Thoughts on how to repair hail damage in this brave new world of no factory support?

Quote: Becca Here's a photo of me racing, notice the gear up, where they are supposed to be. But maybe you're right, I should slow it down a little to make it a fair fight for the other suckers not in Mooneys... Check out the air race photos here: http://www.sportairrace.org/id407.html It turns out the Yak flew the whole race with his gear down and then when he came into land, he put the gear up. Yes, that confused. We heard informally from the race coordinator that my time was off by 10 minutes (entered incorrectly in the spreadsheet). That means it should have been 47:26, which would have put my average speed at 153 kts (177 mph).

Quote: Becca The organizer emailed me and said my time had been entered incorrectly into their spreadsheet and was 10 minutes off. They will adjust the results. Anyway, that puts my time at 47:26, which my math says my average speed was 154.3 kts (177.6 mph). They also posted a picture of each plane on their web site (http://www.sportairrace.org/id407.html) Here's mine.

Quote: sleepingsquirrel If you had left the gear down, I would assume it was just your good sportsmanship! Nothing like a fair flight!

The organizer emailed me and said my time had been entered incorrectly into their spreadsheet and was 10 minutes off. They will adjust the results. Anyway, that puts my time at 47:26, which my math says my average speed was 154.3 kts (177.6 mph). They also posted a picture of each plane on their web site (http://www.sportairrace.org/id407.html) Here's mine.

Double post.

Quote: JimR Hey, Byron & Becca. You can lose that belly strobe if you want. My plane and lots of other 201s of our vintage were certified with just wing tip strobes. Unless you live in a really high traffic density area or fly a lot at night, it is just extra drag, weight, and something else to maintain as far as I'm concerned. An ounce of flat plat drag reduction has to be worth a pound of fairings and fillets. Just FYI in case you decide to remove it, I have a round inspection panel there. It is externally mounted with round head screws if I am not mistaken. What's the status of your protest? Jim

So my thoughts... First of all if she hates flying, don't force it. Its ok to have separate hobbies. Flying is a little problemmatic, since its so expensive, but as long as she's ok with your hobby, and you'd be ok with her having a similar consuming hobby, I think its no problem. Byron loves cars, I couldn't care less. Whatever. We both like flying and sailing. I love to swim, he's afraid of fish. Separate hobbies are ok. If you want to travel to vacations via GA, she can meet you via airliner or road. No big deal. However, it is probably worth figuring out what about flying she doesn't like, just in case it can be rectified. As others recommended here a pinch hitter course might be perfect. For the flight time, I have a few recommendations. 1. Don't go along on the flight. 2. Find a really really perfect instructor. No offense to the many professional instructors out there, but find one that has the right personality traits for this purpose - they should be enthusiastic about GA, good working with women (let's face it that's not always a required trait in the pilot population), even better, find a female instructor, calm and not jumpy (not prone to take the controls) and maybe someone that excudes experience and confidence (grayhair). Then if she starts agreeing to go flying to you, find out what parts of GA she dislikes - be it hot weather, bad weather, bumpy conditions, long flights, something you do in the cockpit that annoys her, whatever, and avoid those. I don't care how safe and legal those things are, just don't do them. Why would you? Its like a butterfly on your finger tip, don't make any sudden movements, make it as fun as possible. If she does have something she loves or a place she likes to go, take her there in the plane, e.g. visit her family, take her to a destination she's interested in, etc.

Quote: sleepingsquirrel I'm thinking you are right about mis-timing your run. I quickly looked up the 201 on pilot friend and was wondering if you had left the gear down? I once raced a sailboat for 24 hours came in second to a boat that won two awards; first place and the boat on the course the longest. Handicapping is madness sometimes. We finished two and a half hours BEFORE he did!

Quote: DaV8or Checked out the link. Looks like fun for sure. I will eagerly watch the results. I however, don't have enough money at this time to endeavour in racing. Certified aircraft engines just cost way too much to fix and rebuild. Somehow, flogging my engine at low altitude doesn't sound like I'm going to make TBO. Racing of any kind always costs you. At this time I will have to be a spectator. Please post all the results of your exploits and the races.

Quote: rasman Fellow Go Fasters, I would like to invite you to participate in the fantastic sport of Air Racing. sportairrace.org I'm getting a little tired of having the only Mooney on the line. How this works we race in class. We start based on an estimated race speed and fly a course that may be 100-150 nm. Some of the events are held in conjunction with Air Shows Some are race only events. The camaraderie is great Generally 20 - 40 aircraft show for the event. There are some interesting aircraft. The last two races had participating a P51 mustang, T28x2. We even had the recent east west record holder. Races are held all over the country. Take a look at the site any questions let me know.

Quote: Becca So I was the one actually racing this plane. Byron (jetdriven) ended up leaving for work a day early and my other partner also had to work so I was on my own. The workload for this race was high with only one pilot and if I do it again, I'm going to try to find a navigator. I am suprised at the speed, actually, I frequently was looking at the G/S on my GPS and it was consistently in the 145-150 kt range (there was a head or crosswind for a substantial amount of the race, I'd guess about 90 miles the 120 mile course), so I was expecting a higher average in mph - on the last leg, I descended from 1000 ft to 500 ft and the g/s hit 180 kts. To be fair, I'm not the only one - we put in 180 mph as our maximum speed guess and so did the plane they put in front of me, and I followed him by exactly 3 miles the entire race, perfectly spaced. I flew WOT, 2700 RPM, full rich (if you backed off on the mixture at all, the CHT would start to rise up into the 390 range), burning an expensive 18 gph. It was terribly bumpy out and I had some significant altitude fluctuations. I used the autopilot on the two long legs to help control the altitude changes, but on the shorter legs on several occasions found myself climbing a couple hundred feet before I caught it (ouch, airspeed loss!!). Usually this was caused by me looking down at the map or zooming in on the gps and not looking out the window - with WOT I had trimmed full nose down and the plane still wanted to climb, it required slight downward pressure on the yoke at all times to maintain altitude. Also, I took a couple of the turns a bit steep and I think I lost some airspeed in the turns, I think next time I am going to shallow them out a little more in favor of less loss from the g's and better heading control. Also its amazing that no one hit a bird during the race, they were *everywhere*! There were actually a couple aircraft "incidents" that day, including a prop strike it sounds like. What I want to know is where did he find these results? They aren't posted on the air race web side.

Quote: testwest So, here are the results from jetdriven, called "Team Chaos" in the race! RACE 201 TEAM CHAOS MOONEY 201 FAC3RG 57 MIN 26 SEC 152.2 MPH 132.26 KTS Interesting....any comments from the racers?

So I wanted to revive this thread. As I pointed out above we were at T82 at the same time this plane was. We thought we were free from hail damage but after a good wash and wax and the right sunlight, its clear our elevators and ailerons are damaged. Now we are debating what to do. This is our first year of airplane ownership - what will a claim against our insurance in our very first year as insured (its a no deductible policy, not by choice, but that's just what they offered to us) do to our future rates? What will the effects of deferring this mostly cosmetic work be? (In a couple years when we repaint the plane and want to deal with it then, will there be no ailerons/elevators available at any price from defunct Mooney?) Anyway, thoughts from the more experienced owners in the forum would be appreciated.

Quote: testwest Good luck with the race and fly safe. You will have an absolute BLAST. As you can tell by the response to this thread, there are a bunch of us who wish we could be racing there as well. Make us proud and be sure to beat those Bonan(z)as while burning 50% less gas.

So I've read things about people adding blue tooth gps attennas to their ipad and getting pretty much full coverage while flying as good as a Garmin Aera. Any experience with this? As for 3G, I guess that would only be needed for real time weather (since with an application like foreflight the charts get downloaded and stored on your ipad while in flight).

I don't know abotu adding an FBO, however if you can add your Flight Instructor as a "named" insured (rather than under open pilot policy) without incurring additional cost its usually worth it is my understanding. As an open pilot, most insurance companies can pay the claim to you and than subrogate the claim by going after the pilot flying in the same way rental outfits can. They can't do this with anyone named on the policy, they just pay the claim to the named insured. But on the other hand, I suspect most flight instructors have personal insurance or insurance through their employer to protect them against this. Its worth talking to your agent and your flight instructor about.

We added a Garmin 500 panel dock to our plane and it was a great cheap solution to a moving map GPS. But now I am reconsidering and wishing we went the iPad route instead. The price is approximately the same, $700 for the Aera 500, $600 for the iPad 2 3G (you don't have to pay for 3G service, but you need the 3G iPad for GPS). The Garmin Aera 510 is $1100, has capability for XM weather if you pay the subscription fee. What we did not consider is the price of keeping the Aera 500 charts up to date. The advertisements say comes with a "free update" and we assumed that was good for a year of charts, since they sell their updates in annual packages ($530 for the complete annual package). But that is incorrect. The free update keeps the data in the Aera updated for 28 days, and after that you are on the hook to buy either the annual package or the one time update fee ($50 per update). So in other words, its a $700 device that will cost you $530 more after 28 days to keep up to date for the first year of ownership. The iPad, on the other hand, with Foreflight loaded, costs $75 annually (provides updates every 28 days included in that fee) or $150 annually if you want moving map approach plates too, it also provides DUATs weather coplotted on charts (not XM) as part of the package. And you also get a fancy new gizmo that is useful outside the cockpit too. Just my thought for the day...

Quote: jetdriven Jimmy and David are top notch, and I used to work for several dealers ferrying planes and I know their tricks. We bought our 201 from them last January. We looked at many planes (not Mooneys however) from many sellers and were absolutely floored at the misrepresentation, condition, and general poor offerings out there. Damage history, hangar rash, fires, missing logs, you name it. We live in Houston, so we went over to look at their 201 on a Sunday and they had plenty of opportunities to lie or misrepresent, but didn't. We liked the plane but it seemed, well, slow. I brough this up and they test flew the aircraft for almost an hour in a box pattern at 7500 feet and with a digital tach. Turns out the tach was off by 150 RPM. The plane was fine. We brought our second partner over to fly the plane and left David with a check for 5,000$. Annual and prebuy completed, and it was ours. In the end, the airplane was about exactly what we thought it would be on paper and after a couple grand in repairing inop stuff we already knew about, it is a great airplane. I'd do it again.

Quote: Aviator4Life The insurance company does indeed determine a minimum threshold. In my case, zero time in the M20J means I am required to get 8 hrs of dual instruction in my airplane, with an Instrument Proficiency Check, from a CFI that meets all the requirements of the policy. That in my view is just the bare basics and I intend to get approximately 25 hrs of dual as I have been advised to do by trusted advisors. For other pilots (not named on the policy), my insurance requires 500 hrs total, including 100 hrs in retractable and 10 hours in make and model. Make sure to ask the insurance company ALL the questions. Don't assume. I had zero Mooney time, and was a fairly low time pilot (<300 hrs, no instrument or commercial rating, but some complex time and an endorsement) Tinsurance company required me to have 5 dual/5 solo, and my even lower time partner 10 dual/10 solo. However, it wouldn't cover my regular instructor, when I first asked, despite many M20F hours under the open pilot policy because he had no M20J time. But it was no problem to just name him on the insurance, and then it was no problem at all (they didn't require he have any dual or solo once he was named). Some insurance companies, though, limit you to naming 3 or 4 pilots and then after that you become a "club" and are insured differently, and that was annoying. The insurance will price your insurance based on the least qualified named pilot.

Quote: Texasmooneypilot I sustained some minor hail damage to my Ovation 3 while it was tied down in Fredericksburg 2 weeks ago. The thin skin on the ailerons was that only surface that was damaged from the dime sized hail. I have filed a claim with my insurance that is suggesting "reskinning" of the ailerons. My insurance agent's opinion is that reskinning is a less desirable option vs. replacing the ailerons. Any suggestions?

I had a little over 250 hrs and a complex endorsement with the vast majority of my time in Cessnas and Pipers, my husband (jetdriven) is a multi-thousand hour ATP, and our other partner is slightly over 110 hr PPT. The insurance company required me to have 5 dual/5 solo, the less experienced partner 10 dual/10 solo, and husband none. All but two of Falcon's insurance companies declined to underwrite. I don't think 100+ hours is too low as long as you take the transition seriously and its the right airplane for you. I can only speak to my personal experience - I have about ~15 hrs in the plane since buying it over 2 months ago. 5 hrs of dual was just the right amount of time to make the transition (and my complex experience was from over 10 years ago too, so I had to re-learn some of that as well), and I think 10 hrs dual was actually a little overkill for my partner. Airmanship-wise, the speed of the plane was the hardest part for me to transition too, I still pull way back when approaching the airport, and ~120 kts makes it managable. Technically I am still learning about engine management, but given the amount of discussion about the subject on this board, I think I will be learning about it for a long time. We certainly talked about buying a transitional airplane (Arrows, Grummans, etc.), but that's what they'd be, transitional planes, keep for a few years and then upgrade. A 201 may have been a "stretch" for our experiene level, but its also more of a commitment - we're not going to need to "upgrade" to a new airplane as this will meet all our forseeable missions for a very long time and we can actually devote money over the years to improving this airplane instead of going through the headache of buying another airplane in a couple years. As for learning to fly, go buy yourself a C-150. Maybe buy it with a friend who is also interested in learning to fly. Or if you happen to be in an area with a good flying club, join it and meet a community of pilots there. 150s, 152s, 172s, those planes are made for training, so train in them, use them for the mission it was intended for. Additionally, I don't care how much money you have, it is cost ineffecient to learn to fly in a Mooney. Second, it will be hell on your Mooney, all those landing gear cycles, hard landings, etc. Don't abuse your Mooney!