aviatoreb

Love the poetic phrasing. In fact, et's offer a Mooneyspace prize to the best Haiku about good smooth peaceful confident landings to tell to ourselves while landing.

Exactly - I dont actually compute with the trig functions to two decimal places of accuracy on an irrational number when I am flying. My main point is I sometimes get the feeling that some people speak of cross wind across the runway that is a fierce 30 knots and they land it but actually its 45 degrees off perpendicular so they didnt really land a 30 knot cross wind and then they tell themselves it was fine and then another time it really is 30 degrees 90 degrees off and they are expecting it to be the same relying on mistaken math.

Just a thought - It's my guess that most of the wear on our donuts occurs in the long stretches of time the airplane is sitting - on its donuts - sitting in our hangars. Even say an airplane that is flying a lot - say 10 hours a week - that's a lot by anyone's standard except for maybe a part 135. There are 168 hours in a week. If it flies 10 hours - then it is just sitting there on the ground on the donuts 158 hours a year. That's 94% of the time. For most of us, it sits on the ground, on the donuts, a lot more than that. What if in our hangars we lift the weight off the donuts? Jack the plane up - just a bit - say relieve a thousand pounds, or maybe 1500lbs worth, but still touching the ground? As a standard hangar day to day storage idea. I bet this would dramatically extend the life of donuts. Maybe to the point that we would never have to replace them in a 20 or 40 year ownership lifetime? Im thinking of a new device. If we wanted to do this we could use our standard jacks, but maybe a special automatic jack that pumps in 500 or 750 lb automatically at each jack would do the trick and be easy to put on and off and less of a crisis of being so careful since the wheels would still be on the ground. Such a thing would be quick on and quick off to use on a daily/weekly basis.

Some are reporting the angle here, or implicitly doing so by reporting the wind direction and runway direction, but I want to remind just in case. I know a lot know but just in case, entertain this old math professor - 30kts at 60 degrees is a lot less than 30kts at 90 degrees. 30*sin(60)=25.98 which is a bit less than 30 if it were at 90 degrees and a lot more than 30 if it were at 45 degrees 30*sin(45)=21.21. So remember to pay attention to angle when considering. My personal absolute max is 20 degrees in the perpendicular component. So 30kts cross wind is ok if it's at 40 degrees. 30*sin(40)=19.28.

WOW - scary!

I wonder why. Rocket was an after thought mod but was purpose built.

Thanks very interesting Don, I bet you have flown in the rocket. Do you feel the 305hp is too much for that airframe? I am entirely used to it and like it but I do not have any other mooney time in a different mooney to contrast it to like you do. Anyway I like it a lot.

There is an interesting hybrid electric on their website too. I know what hybrid electric means in car - but in airplanes.... can it be setup differently. Suppose this engine likes to cruise at 130hp all day long. But we still want 225hp for short phases of flight like take off and landing - I could see the utility of hybrid electric where the average could be 130hp but electric is there and able to produce that 225hp for take off and landing phases. Can it do this?

Only a bit related - but with UL94 also being discussed - wasnt there an effort at some point to make some kind of electronics timing modifications to the big TSIO engines so that even they can use UL94 safely? I know the push toward a drop in replacement has merits but I dont understand why reasonable mods with modern electronics might also get us to a useful point if most engines can be lightly modded to accept a different kind of easy to use and lead free like UL94?

That does seem extremely appealing. What's the catch?

I have thought of flying there - I kind of want to but I am wary. I have landed on very ice runways and once I landed on a runway that was so icy at Hartford Barinard that the most treacherous part of the day was walking from the airplane to the fbo since it wasnt just ice but polished ice since there had been a recent freezing rain on the ice. With zero zero braking action if you even tap the brakes it skids. So all you can do is let the pressure in the tires let it roll out - it will stop eventually. I only attempted the zero braking action runway because it is 4000ft long if I remember. And think about the effect of cross winds too if the tires arent gripping at all. Fly it to a stop.

Ugh.

Reminder: There was a liquid rocket by rocket engineering. -a much rarer bird. I hear there were exactly 5 built. It was built on top of the long body airframe. The M20M or was it the M20 PFM? It involved fitting a TSIOL550 - the liquid cooled piston and I have read ads over the years for the very few that came for sale one describing 335HP and another describing 350HP. I have read it was capable of 260TAS up high. So an interesting thing about these is that the airframe itself went through some strengthening. I hear that some gussets were added, but I dont know the details. Presumably somehow where the wings and also tail feathers meet the airframe. I am really surprised this got by the FAA and presumably it wouldnt in today's FAA, but anyway airframe strengthening would surely be needed on a turbine mooney.

I don't know. A gear collapse causing the plane to roll and rip off a wing is just bizarre in my mind. Seems if that rolling moment would start, then it would lead to a cartwheel or a ground loop of some kind which would have likely lead to a much worse outcome. Everything about this crash sequence seems bizarre to me, but very fortunate in any case.

Its a miracle that with a wing torn off that this didnt end up as a big fireball and al souls lost.

Im not sure I would call that a good landing in this case.

The DSI.

And what happens after 80?

Are you still flying?

I read that insurance gets much more difficult after a certain age - can someone state a number? How old is that specifically when things get harder to find insurance.

We are all nuts indeed. Certainly I am nuts. My engine is in overhaul right now.

Im having it replaced with a nuclear powered rocket engine so I can go 95% the speed of light. I miss my bird... Engine should come back - eventually - I had a thread on it but it will be a nice RAM engine now.

One thing they are saying in the media at least, we shall see what the real scoop is in time, is that there were two controllers in a tower that is meant to be staffed for four controllers. That seems as if it is a huge contributing factor.

Oh well - so it turns out I am not a lawyer - and happy to not be one. Ok - as far as taking out drones - how about a trained pet eagle?

Sounds fine to me.