LANCECASPER

I doubt that our thinking is that far off. He asked if he should exhaust the air into the empennage and then pull fresh air in from the empennage, with the two hoses right next to each other. My answer on Sunday was, "I can tell you one thing for sure - since you exhaust your hot air out the rear bulkhead you definitely don't want your intake there also. Let the unit take air from the cabin, which is what the Plane A/C does and the Arctic Air Real A/C does. It's more like putting your car A/C on recirculate." Anyway . . enough from me . . . Grant has what he needs to get started and make whatever decisions he chooses.

Although you do have to find the cause of what happened yesterday, the first question I would be asking myself today is, If the engine was running rough and I was getting surging in power, why didn't I land? When you get some time read over this accident from 2021 where a pilot keeps on flying even though he has an engine problem:

I've never turned the A/C off on the ground, but at low altitudes when practicing approaches I've turned it down. There are a lot of things I know nothing about and I will freely admit that. When someone who has never installed a portable air conditioner in a Mooney starts a thread and is asking questions on how to do it and is getting answers from someone who has done it more than once, then someone else who has also never done it, and admits he hasn't even bothered to read all of the posts, but is a self-proclaimed expert, jumps in and is telling me that my unit, which I have to turn down when it gets too cold, will never work . . . you can see my frustration. I'm done. @Grant_Waite if you have any more questions feel free to private message me.

Since it works very well and I have to turn it down when it gets too cold in the cabin I'd rather stick with what works in practice rather than theory. It's not me that's disagreeing with what is already working . . . This is a portable unit, not a perfect solution, but it's a game-changer for me in the summer. I fiddled around with Mickey Mouse coolers and ice an even bought a freezer for the hangar. I owned a 2000 Ovation with factory air and liked it, but I wasn't willing to spend $30,000 to have it installed in my Acclaim and pay the weight penalty of a permanent installation.

Or you can just follow the example of people who’ve actually designed portable A/C units for small airplanes. Or people who’ve actually put them in their airplanes. I did a PlaneAC unit in a Bravo that I later sold. Now I’m doing an Arctic AC in my Acclaim. If you look at the pictures on page 1 of both manuals they both draw their air in through the cabin and exhaust through the empennage. PLANE AC 2.0 Manual.pdf Arctic Air Information and Installation Guide.pdf

I like the way he keeps his head outside of the cockpit in VFR conditions - he is no child of the magenta line. How is he at holding altitude and heading? When filing a flight plan for you and him, under "Number of souls on board", do you list 2 or 10 (1 for you, 9 for him . . or maybe he's already used up some of them)? Can he do a CAT III approach (paws off) ? Have you customized his Emergency Checklist to include a section on Furballs? While instructing him, does he respond well to encouragement? ("That was a purr-fect landing") Does he seem overly concerned when you bring up the possibility of a bad flare leading to a tailstrike during landing? Have you reminded him - no catnip eight hours before a flight? Just in case you need to give him his FAA approved medication before flying: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/20anlzbviy0hwl8a65l5z/HOW-TO-GIVE-YOUR-CAT-A-PILL.doc?rlkey=9j6xo38asoonzmoyk9kdtdqle&dl=0

The inspection plates that I used for vents are exactly the ones Mooney uses for theirs' when they do factory A/C.

You won't find a Bendix mag on this engine. Your remaining mag should be a Slick 6300 series. How many hours on your right mag?

I have a habit of taking people at their word .. lol

Like I mentioned a few days ago since you're exhausting into the empennage you don't want to use that also for your air intake. If outside air is 95 degrees and empennage air is 140 degrees (after exhausting the hot air) I'd pick outside (cabin) air any day.

From the Bravo POH: Redline is 2575 RPM continuous on that engine. If it was an overspeed and you ran it continuously the last 45 minutes of your flight at 2850 RPM it will require a teardown inspection. https://www.lycoming.com/sites/default/files/attachments/SB369S%20Engine%20Inspection%20after%20Overspeed.pdf Regardless if whether it was 2850 or not, you experienced an Emergency today. When the only engine in an airplane starts running rough - get it on the ground. It reminds me of a flight N. of Atlanta in 1999 with a friend of my who had been an aircraft mechanic for 40+years. We both felt the engine stumble a bit on my first Bravo. I looked at him and asked, "What do you think?" Without skipping a beat he said, "I think I see a runway." We landed at KPDK and spent the night and found out the next day that I had a bad mag. The moral of the story - find the nearest airport and figure it out on the ground.

That's been available for a few years now. Join forums.avidyne.com and you'll find a lot of neat tricks for the IFD. Avidyne chimes in on that forum and brings the latest info and gives a glimpse into whats down the pike.

@DonMuncy I sent you a PM regarding the Mapa Logs. Lance

It may need some remediation on the steel cage. The airplane looks good though. The previous owner Mr. Meeks stopped in once on here after he did some avionics upgrades

https://www.mooney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SBM20-208B.pdf This should have been done back in 1989

Many people sent theirs' off to places like this that "rebuild" their exhaust : https://knisleyexhaust.com/contact-us

I started using a Battery Tender in 1993 on a lead acid battery in a Mooney 231 - it was always outside of the airplane on the floor of the hangar. Later when I bought a 24v Mooney (M20M) with lead acid batteries it wasn't so easy to find that type of thing. I went through Gill batteries every couple years. As soon as Battery Minders came out I've used them for over 20 years and the unit(s) have always been outside of the airplane. Never an issue. As soon as AGM batteries became available that's what I have switched to in my airplane, with the appropriate Battery Minder. Every car, motorcycle and riding lawn mower that I keep in my hangar is on a battery maintenance device. Before batteries shot up in price they paid for themselves many times over. Now even more so.

On the Plane AC I ran the drain through a small hole with a grommet to the empennage and down to the belly. There was already a hole there in my Bravo for a battery vent which I no longer needed. I put a zip tie on the hose outside and inside of the hole to keep it exactly where I wanted it. On the Arctic Air Real A/C I did the same thing and on the Acclaim the hole on the belly even has a small fairing around it. You do not want your carpet soaked in the back and then moisture seeping down through that area on to your spar or any other area where corrosion could start. Those areas are not very easy to inspect annually and many times don't get done. Several Mooneys lately have been totaled due to spar cap corrosion.

Yes

I vented it on both sides and I bought two inspection panels for a couple of reasons: 1) If and when I sell the airplane to get it back to spec and not have any questions on a prebuy 2) so I can put the original inspection panels back on during off season if I decide to, but mainly so that if I ever have to have an annual done at a new shop so I can put the original panels on and not run the risk of having my airplane held hostage because of the vents on my inspection panels. The used panels aren't expensive: https://www.ebay.com/itm/334830055868 I cut a 4.5" hole in them and used these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JL15V7T?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details The PlaneAC was rated at 7500 BTU but moved 550 cubic feet of air per minute (275 exhaust and 275 cool air). The CFM made a huge difference.

The air just blew into the empennage. That was what the Plane AC manual said and Ray confirmed that. These portable units aren't STC'd so no paperwork. My IA cut the hole and put an entry in the logs that said, "Installed a 6" vent in the aft baggage compartment to exhaust air from a portable air conditioning unit which is not to be inferred as part of the aircraft equipment."

Since you're in FL and I'm in TX i can sympathize with the need for A/C in the summer. Your second to the last picture was my Bravo that I sold in 2021 where I had put a Plane A/C unit. Through the process I got to know Ray Ackley and was so sorry to hear of that tragedy. I wanted another Plane A/C unit for my Acclaim, and Adam Peck the new owner keeps promising to start up production but I don't think it will ever happen. I can tell you one thing for sure - since you exhaust your hot air out the rear bulkhead you definitely don't want your intake there also. Let the unit take air from the cabin, which is what the Plane A/C does and the Arctic Air Real A/C does. It's more like putting your car A/C on recirculate. One thing that taking air from the cabin will do is make you aware of any cabin door leaks you may have. It will show up on your Carbon Monoxide detector since the unit will suck air and exhaust from a leaky door seal. this project caused me to also put in a new Bob Field Inflatable door seal on my Bravo and my problem was solved. I bought additional rear side inspection plates (the panel shown in the third picture of N201FV) from Ebay and painted them and them put louvers in them for the exhaust. I kept the original inspection plates for winter when I wouldn't be using the portable A/C. I have an Arctic Air Real A/C portable for my Acclaim. I am running the exhaust out the back of the hat rack to get the hot air further back since i don't want to blow it across my G1000 boxes in the back of the airplane. I don't think one EcoWave will be enough to cool down the cabin, but I hope I'm wrong. Let us know how it goes.

@Parker_Woodruff would be a good insurance resource to answer most of those questions. https://airspeedinsurance.com/about/ Edit: @toto and I replied at the same time . . . great minds think alike, but what does that have to do with us?

At the moment if they updated us every month or quarter they would be telling us how many Mooneys they serviced or how many of which parts they sold. Why would they do that? They aren't a public company. We aren't shareholders. If they come up with the money to do the gross weight increase on long body Mooneys or the NXi update for G1000 owners I'm sure we'll hear something. Neither of these apply to most Mooney owners. I'm not holding my breath on either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooney_International_Corporation#External_links The corporation that is Mooney today hasn't sold most of us our airplanes. The ownership history is complicated, but I think only if you are one of less than 100 owners who bought a Mooney after 2014 when they started producing again, have you bought an airplane from the current Mooney. In other words they don't owe most of us anything. Yet every part that people have sweated over (Eaton no-back springs, etc) they've always come through with eventually.

How do you like the GI-275 in the G1000 panel? It's something I've considered.