aviatoreb

Quote: ToddDPT I agree with fantom. Get rid of that boat anchor!

Quote: jetdriven One thing a radar altimeter does is ding or light up when reaching minimums, something that is pretty valuable.

In April I bought a M20K Rocket with TKS - love it. I have been having my local shop work through several things, some from the prebuy and some improvements and upgrades. I am almost done with all that. The only thing on the panel that doesn't work is the radar altimeter. My knee jerk is to make everything work. I am hesitating on this item because I am guessing it will be very expensive, finicky and maybe it has less relevance than it did in the 1980s since now we have TAWS built into our wonderful GPS - even my handheld Aera gives me an audible warning in English when passing below 500ft AGL. So I would love to hear your collective opinions and experience with this item. -How much have you folks spent in getting your legacy radar altimeters up and working again? -Are they finicky? -Or is this a no longer necessary piece of equipment that can be tossed overboard/removed to share shelf space in my hangar with that nice ADF and Argus already now removed and on the shelf? Thanks, Erik

Quote: fantom ...or a late aborted takeoff for lots of reasons, or a very bad landing. The "fixed wing" Mooney has one notch of flaps in, and the gear seems to be retracted. Time will tell.

Quote: N4352H This..."well the insurance company now owns it" notion is a load of crap and for hotdogs.

Quote: galt1074 ...I'm a military instructor pilot on MC-130Ps. ... ...that's a WAG. Please, I'm not an expert in these airplanes so tell me how I'm wrong and tell me how I'm right. I'm trying to get back into GA but the mindset is very different from what I am used to and I need to learn. Greg

Quote: GTWreck Small world. Mine is 24-3020. And I'm really interested in how you like the 496 mounted up there too. I'm tempted to run out to the hanger now and play with that idea some.

Quote: jetdriven But since some 90% of accidents are caused by pilot error, and I an still a CFI and witness a lot of things during BFR's, I'd say there is plenty of room for more training. Not simply stalls and flaps up landings, but real short field landings to a full stop, crosswind landings at the limits, rejected takeoffs (whens the last time you did one of those?), secondary stalls, runn a tank dry. unusual attitudes, etc etc. etc.

Quote: richardheitzman

Quote: rbridges

To emphasize that a gear up can happen to anyone: About 4 or 5 years ago two pilots did a gear up in a nice twin at the next airport over from my home airport. The pilots were both CFI-IIs and one of those two was a 14,000hr pilot and a DPE. I have flown a whopping 50 hours in my new to me plane without a gear up - knock on wood when saying such things, but Bitchin' Betty will be riding right seat on my team with me for now on to help as she can. A little extra help can never hurt.

Thanks for the review Dale - just a few days too late! I already pulled the trigger. I put my credit card down on Tuesday and the P2 is supposed to arrive tomorrow. To install in my new-to-me M20K. I promised my wife upon getting a retractible that I would buy myself a Bitchin' Betty. Should be in by the end of next week when our runway reopens as it is down for work for the next week.

QT all the way for me. -Most comfortable - not even close - no clamping headset is anything like these. -Sound quality and noise abatement equal to the best of the headsets I have tried - Bose X and Lightspeed Zulu original (have not tried A20 or new zulu) -1/3 the price of the headsets mentioned by brand L or brand B.

I have a wedding to go to this weekend - my baby sister is getting married. 400nm away. We are "flying" the minivan ~12hrs. This weekend is exactly one of those "2 or 3 times a year" that I figured wasnt worth getting one of those slow-steerin' saratogas - I put away that idea when I decided that a Mooney is for me and that 4 seats is good enough for me anyway 99.9% my missions anyway - and it is, and way cooler too. But tomorrow around hour 10.... Its cool - we will bond. Last weekend! I flew to a state championship bicycle race on Saturday - me, my buddy and two bikes. 50min by rocket instead of 5 hrs. Then on Sunday I flew me, my oldest 14 year old boy, his friend and his friend's dad to Portland Maine where we kidnapped several unsuspecting lobsters and brought them back across state lines.

Quote: Shadrach My mains will continue to spin into the gear retraction if I don't tap the brakes. For those of you who feel that tapping brakes is overkill, consider this. At 70MPH our mains are spinning at just under 1500RPM and generating nearly 500Gs of centrifugal force...and gear retraction moves the rotational axis 90deg. Maybe it's not a big deal, but I try to remember to tap before I retract, because the forces involved seem significant to me..

Quote: Mooney_Allegro Is there a product you can purchase that fits ontop of the tail to discourage birds from sitting there? I appologize if this was discussed in an earlier thread. Thanks.

Quote: fantom According to all these morbid "stats" I should have died 18.7 years ago..... ;-)

Quote: airfoill

Quote: Mazerbase The gyroscopic force generates stress on the bearings and structure of the main landing gear only since the nose gear retracts in line with the rotation. Not being able to brake the nose gear is irrelevant since the gyro effect are nill. There is still the slinging of foreign material to consider. I'm not sure how significant the stress is at our takeoff speeds but why add any unnecessary stress?

Quote: mooneygirl Erik I don't see the seminar online at AOPA. I suppose it is because they are still showing it around the country. I actually attended the seminar at OSH and they said that 50,000 had seen it! Yikes. At least my hair looked good. HA I will let you all know if the seminar becomes available online. Nutshell: #1 cylinder valve came unseated on a compression stroke apparently on takeoff. Departed Hood River, OR 4S2 runway 29. We were in the air maybe 90 seconds or so. Terrain rising to Mt. Defiance, we were not rising. I cut the engine and pitched up into flare. Six trees taken out by the Lucas tree trimming service. Landed upside down in a mud pond with trees on us. No intrusions into cabin. No major injuries. She protected us all the way to the ground.

Quote: Mazerbase I calculated adjusted risk as speed of plane/ speed of mode of transportation * risk per hour to show what the risk is if you are in that mode of transport for the time it takes to cover the same miles. Since my average speed in my car was only 30 mph per my GPS (and I'm not considered a slow driver by any stretch of the imagination), I had to assume some total mph for a bike that includes the time spent stopped, turning, etc. It was only a swag in relation to my car's average. Maybe bike mph isn't the same as a car's mph because they are used so differently but if you are commuting on a bike, I would guess there is a lot of stopped/slow time involved. Like I said, just a guess.

Quote: fantom Trees....who likes trees? l/Bush_Mooney.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480" />

Quote: mooneygirl Well as some of you know from AOPA's Close Calls, Lessons Learned that I have experience landing in the trees. As mentioned in an earlier post, I had the uprising terrain, without an engine producing the power necessary for flight. I was going to post pictures, but looking through them just now, I am not able to do it. Still pretty upsetting. I did have the voice of my instructor in my head saying "if you are going to hit something, hit it as slowly as possible, and hit the least expensive thing." We began to impact trees after I cut the engine and put the plane into a "landing flare" at 55 mph. Lots of lessons in my situation, but the two things I did absolutely right: 1) fly the airplane all the way to the ground; 2) don't try to turn around and go back to the airport if you don't have the altitude [i had 150 feet].

Mazerbase, I don't understand what is the meaning of your adjusted risk column. Ummm - Also - your bicycle is shockingly slow. You need a faster bike. I bike at least double that speed on average. Sometimes a lot more than that. I saw a comment above regarding the low numbers being low enough not to worry about. From above, "as opposed to the rather miniscule risk.Even at 1or 2 fatals per 100000 flying hours...actual risk is low...or too put into odds..how many eons would it take to win the lottery at those odds???" It does not take as many eons as you might think, and the accumulated risk can be surprisingly high: In the following for simplicity of computation I will assume statistical independence of an event during each hour to the next - this is not quite right but good enough for a rough estimate I believe and definitely the non-independent computation is MUCH harder. Let p=1.5/100000 be the probability of a fatality event in 1 hour of exposure. 1-p is the probability of no fatality in 1 hour of exposure. (1-p)^n is the probability of no fatality in n-hours of exposure 1-(1-p)^n is the probability of a fatality in n-hours of exposure. Take an average pilot such as myself who flies roughly n=100 hours in a year. Then, 1-(1-p)^n=1-(1-1.5/1000000)^100=0.0015=0.15% chance of a fatality event per year. Let q=0.0015 If you fly for 30 years, then the chance of a fatality event in 30 years is. 1-(1-q)^30=0.0440=4.4% 1-(1-q)^40=0.0582=5.82% in 40 years ...or if you fly more, then q=0.003 and 1-(1-q)^30=0.0861=8.6% and 11.31% for 40 years. The punchline is that even a small number like 1.5/100000 becomes a large number with repeated exposure and it does not take eons. As I said, the real way to do this computation is by a field called rare statistics which has its own tools and a great pain in the neck but the above gives you an idea. No two ways about it - flying is not a no risk activity. That said, I bike race - and I ride roughly 12hrs per week. I incur a much greater total risk cycling than flying. But then I like to think that this activity mitigates some of the other usual risk like heart disease and cancers, etc. Bath tubs are dangerous too and I stand in a bath tub to take a shower after each bike ride. Sometimes I go in a canoe ride. Nice thing about any of these activities, flying included, is that bulk average probabilities like p=1.5/100000 across a population is not likely your personal probability. You might be much worse but hopefully you are better. I am a believer that in this particular activity, that 90% of the risk is concentrated on 10% of the people. I.e., those hotdoggers who have no fear or hesitation to launch into a building thunderstorm. So if I am right, I like to think that with good aeronautical decision making (vow to make the right decision every time and don't launch even if you will be late if the weather aint right), excellent recurrent training (I do believe that statistically skills are not as important as basic decision making - this is why airline pilots still die in Cessna 172s sometimes - but skills are important nonetheless!), make the decision to maintain your airplane in absolute tip-top shape and never skimp on premptive maintenance (and this too is a smaller term in the risk too since we know that mechanicals are the smaller part of the incident scenario risk - nonetheless chase out all the demons!) - do all these things and believe my 90% risk on 10% of the people concept and you may put yourself out of that 90% of the risk category. If so, then maybe-maybe p=1.5/(10^6) for you personally. This is not mathematics, just a wish. And a working principle on how I approach the activity. And a promise to myself.

& Quote: Mazerbase I can't remember where but this question was studied and the answer turned out to be trees. I'm not sure I understand why but the highest chance for survival was not water but trees. nbsp; Seems counter intuitive but that is what I remember.