M20F

Haha quoted for truth (in good fun)

Just like buying a plane (manufacturer, model, etc.) it really boils down to mission.

My experience has been ATC tries to deviate you or asks if you want before you ever need to ask. Flying home Friday I would get the light to moderate 5 mile band of showers call from ATC and asked if I wanted to deviate. The plane got washed.

I use https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004MDXS0U/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I do a good wash and wax each spring and then shoot it with corrosion x. The detailing allows me to find problems to sand out and zinc chromate over. The x while messy does seem to work. Makes an excellent lubricant as well.

Give Jimmy/Dave a call at All American and do the PPI as an annual with Maxwell.

This is a good thing to consider as well. Sometimes it is not technique but another issue causing starting issues. I

All of the above is the perfect way but with a 1% chance of failure. A 100% guarantee is flood it, full throttle, mixture full lean, crank, and when it fires push the mixture in/pull throttle back. Would certainly follow advice in posts above but if it isn't working just flood start it as opposed to killing the battery.

Correct, I worded it badly but point is it isn't a great design.

People buy Cirrus's because for about 10kts less you get a more comfortable cabin, a lot more useful load, parachute, and a host of other better things. New Mooney's really don't offer much compared to the competition. My F is infinitely better in a lot of ways to many of its peers, the main thing being purchase price/operating cost (today dollars). But this isn't 1967.

Mooneys don't have a gas strut so pulling back on the yoke isn't going to stretch the nose up much. They are poor planes for unimproved fields and landing in particular can get interesting when you hit a bump. There is a reason why you don't see any other plane with rubber discs.

The joys of older Mooneys is 1000+ lbs of useful load :-)

As I noted in my original post, topic of contention.

Yes. A stable increase and a stable decrease.

I use TacAir and will be there this week. Easy enough and the overnight is cheap enough to where I don't even remember what it is.

Entirely related to EGT placement. Consistency is what you need to see is all. Without knowing the baseline it is tough to know if there is a issue or not but the temp itself is fairly irrelevant.

Well when you are looking to kill altitude it really isn't a worry too much about crashing. I don't like it from the cylinders getting cold though. It is hard even slipping to get down fast without shock cooling. I know that is a popular debate topic but I prefer to keep my cylinders right around 350-360 consistently (I run ROP).

I will against the grain and just say, 30yrs outside and no issues.

One would think but my experience has been otherwise.

Have you ever tried to swing a manual gear? It really doesn't take much motion or strength to do.

The only time you have too much gas is when you are on fire. Thus Jose's tanks and speed brakes are on my upgrade list. Flying more on the East Coast you get a lot of slam dunks (always into KBDL), if I want to get down fast from the FL's for hypoxia/fire/etc. they would be great, if you slip with low fuel in the tanks it will cut the motor. I don't need an auto-pilot, GPS, and a bunch of other things. Those things though sure are nice and speedbrakes are one of those things where when you want/need them they are great to have.

Below 280'ish you begin to lose the ability to break down the lead blow through. Pipeline flyers that fly low, slow, in the winter can experience this. Probably not much of an issue for Mooney operations but yes you can get too cold with effort.

+1 for Falcon

It isn't anything money can't fix, if you don't have the money probably not worth the risk. I had an issue with mine about 700 miles from home. Turned into a bad deal with the only mechanic on the field. 3 tickets home, ride down with some hanger fairies, and some magic rule bending later it got home. I have an EI-MVP50. It tells a lot of useful things but I really don't buy much into it helps you predict when a valve is going to snap off or a lobe is going to pop off. Engine monitors are good for helping you maximize engine life by running it correctly but it isn't clairvoyant. A lot of years worth of oil analysis might point to a trend but a cam lobe can go in 10-12hrs after really starting to make metal. If that doesn't coincide with your oil change then oh well. I just assume every flight is going to cost me $30K and if it doesn't then I am happy. If you can't live with that stress then really renting is the best option because it comes for all airplane owners eventually.

It can cause problems. RayJay's as example you can get the motor STC but not the airframe STC (or vice versa I forget which). This can happen with factory planes as well. Piper lost all the Comanche tooling to a flood so some of those parts are hard to find. An STC holder can kill the STC all together. Hard to predict the future. The larger the volume of planes made the better the odds are you will always be able to get what you need. I don't ever envision an issue finding C172 parts as example.