FloridaMan

I bought a golf cart on craiglist for $1400 and a towbar. Learning to tow the plane took a bit of time, but now I have easy transportation all over the airport and a way to get my plane to the self-serve pump without having to go through a full startup procedure to get there.

INS can be made plenty accurate and I’d bet that I could have a decent solution working in days (hours if I didn’t have to do data collection and tuning in flight). No interest in giving it up for GA for the same patriotic reasons that I opted to not be a compsci professor. I know the Alaska guys are flying NDB all over the place and we don’t have the F35 to fight a bunch of proxy wars against shithole countries like our wars have been since ww2. I have zero doubt that in a total radio and radar blackout those F35s in IMC at mach 1.6 will have a better fix on position than we do on our best days. In the event of a major conflict, we can kiss GPS goodbye with a quickness.

I was thinking that Mooney couldn’t have a better opportunity to turn this into a positive all-around, especially for relatively inexpensive PR.

Yes, but at what altitude does that climb start to take longer? The Rocket will get there quickly and then you can throttle back. If it takes 45minutes at 18gph vs 20 minutes at 26gph there are certain flight profiles where the Rocket will be faster and more efficient with fuel burned in the climb. I haven’t done the math and I need to. I am still climbing at 1000+fpm at 24,000ft when I take off at max gross.

Same here. I spoke with JPI at sun-n-fun and they said they can send a PDF on how to adjust it.

I have the factory senders. What's interesting is the panel gauges on the Rocket were spot on accurate through the entire flight and the EDM900 is not, not with the factory senders. I suspect that JPI's analog circuitry has something to be desired. I still rely on watching the needles bounce on the wing-mounted gauges to confirm there's fuel in them.

Also, I wrote a piece of software that takes the JPI EDM900 download and converts it into log book entries that include flight time, start and destination airport, night flight and categorizes cross-country.

I still don't trust the level gauges on my EDM-900 as much as I do the dials on the wings and I still look inside the tanks before every flight. The totalizer on the M20F is dead nuts accurate, but the rocket always seems to take 3-4 gallons more than the totalizer said that I used after about 70-80 gallons have been burned. I've noticed the fuel flow will sometimes sit at 0 while I'm taxiing around when it's normally at 2-3 gph and I'm wondering if the location or orientation of the sender contributes to it. The install of my M20F was 30 hours and the Rocket was 40. If anyone else is interested in getting an EDM900 installed, the one piece of advice I have is to not install it on the right side of the panel with the remote "ENGINE" light in front of the pilot. Pull power to land and oil pressure drops into the yellow and you'll get a flashing light. Running at max RPM, but not past it (e.g. 2700 RPM), and you'll get a blinking red "ENGINE" light that is an unpleasant distraction. If the engine monitor is in front of you, the numbers turn red and does not distract you in the same way as seeing a light and having to look at the monitor and clear the exception.

This has been painful for all of us, but could you share all of the photos that you have of this? I believe it's an injury that should be shared with all FBOs for training. Someone can confirm, but if my memory serves correctly, there was a Mooney fly-in last year that resulted in three badly damaged nose trusses.

All the electric gear Mooneys that I’m familiar with have an airspeed safety switch and require you to manually hold an override button that is separate from the gear switch if there is inadequate airspeed. When doing the gear swing at annual and you have the plane on jacks, alarms go off like crazy while doing it.

I don’t see how this could be pilot error.

I don't know about that. I've done a couple LOP tests to check the injector spread and, while mine doesn't seem to run smoothly LOP, the temps looked good (TIT < 1600 and CHTs < 340) and I was able to get fuel burn down to 9-10gph (17mpg at 10,500 where I was showing 10mpg at 21gph at 32"/2400RPM). I didn't like to hang out on that side of peak because of the lack of smoothness, but I think that can be fixed (rearrange injectors, GAMIs and/or fine wire plugs). I would not be surprised if you couldn't give a 252 a run for its money (18 minutes to FL240 and then pull power back) and smoke an M20J's efficiency with the TAS you can get in the FLs. I am still flushing out things with my Rocket, but the grail is to make the same trips as I do in the F at the same fuel burn. The difficult part isn't that you can run a Rocket efficiently, it's having the discipline to do it. I always want to go fast and get to my destination, though sometimes the fastest point to point time is one where you fly efficiently enough to save yourself an hour on the ground for getting fuel, or you may wish to take a longer route over more forgiving terrain that would require a fuel stop otherwise.

That's really heart wrenching. Hopefully he'll be back in the air in no time. Will he be without a plane while it's down?

I wish I'd seen those. I can't imagine he would say anything that would come close to what I generally hear professional pilots say.

Or any board. Sometimes personalities or opinions clash a bit. I've learned to recognize negative emotion towards someone else who has competence as instinctive competitiveness kicking in, which is often preferable to the abject indifference that I normally feel towards others. Combine that with online communication, or written communication as a whole, being in its infancy and the lack of non-verbal information, and we leave ourselves open to not getting past things. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian

No. I check it every now and then just to make sure it works. It starts fine and comes out of feather pretty quickly.

Most people will not see an attitude from me. Lots of members here have known me personally for years and I think could vouch for that. You generally won't see me getting pissed off at someone working in a customer service job, even if I'm upset over circumstances. I usually overtip insolent bartenders if I like the establishment to try and win their support. And, in general, when it comes to dealing with others, I weigh as if I were directed as the jury in the basis of the appeal of Vaughan v. Menlove (Jan. 23, 1837): "A verdict having been found for the Plaintiff, a rule nisi for a new trial was obtained, on the ground that the jury should have been directed to consider, not, whether the Defendant had been guilty of gross negligence with reference to the standard of ordinary prudence, a standard too uncertain to afford any criterion; but whether he had acted bona fide to the best of his judgment; if he had, he ought not to be responsible for the misfortune of not possessing the highest order of intelligence. The action under such circumstances, was of the first impression." However, in such events where I'm in disagreement with someone who insists on me acting in a way that puts me or an innocent third party at significant risk when they carry none of it, and then doubles down, attempts to pull rank or lies in a manner that could potentially cause injury, that I will respond with contempt. I have an absolute disdain for those types; you'll find a good number of them as helicopter parents in schools, assistant coaches or marching instructors, youth pastors, on HOA boards, working low level security jobs, college town law enforcement officers, members of city councils or working as "small business association" leadership, union reps, and as marshals at Sun n Fun.

I would prefer my 1967 M20F to a similarly equipped J. I have an electric flap/gear and a manual flap/gear Mooney and very much prefer the manual gear. In addition to lights to check for gear down, my fingernail checks the Johnson Bar on its own while on approach. It not being where it should be has alerted me that my gear is still up in the past. The IO360-A1A can be a less expensive overhaul if the crankshaft needs to be replaced. Also, engines without the single drive dual magneto (those with the "D" designation in the engine model number) are preferable as the dual magneto has killed people (there's a plastic gear that can fail, as well as it is a single unit that, if not properly attached, can result in complete engine failure). The IO360-A1A does have a "keep out" RPM range for cruise. A lighter airplane does mean lower wing loading and not as good of a ride in turbulence. You can still get an old F with a 1000lb useful load and 64 gallon tanks. That's good for 5+ hours of range plus reserves. You'll be ready to land by then unless you're @201er. Also, to add, there are airworthiness directives on some of the older hubs on the F. You'll want to see if it has the hub that requires the 100hr inspection.

Every time mine has leaked, I've gotten it resealed and it's only been a couple hundred dollars if I remember correctly (I'm talking about the 2-blade Hartzell on my F -- no telling what the Rocket might cost). Just make sure when it's reinstalled that the spinner fits tightly or you may end up with a cracked bulkhead.

Friend lost a partner and four friends in a Baron that crashed due to wake turbulence. They faulted the controller. IFR approach on a parallel runway with inadequate separation. I got rushed by a controller at ICT in my F a few years back to take off behind an A320. Winds were straight down the runway and I could see the cloud of exhaust coming towards me. I aborted, braked and flat-spotted a tire. "Unable," deviate, whatever you need to feel comfortable crossing under or behind a heavier aircraft. I got thumped hard in smooth air by an MD88 that'd crossed two minutes ahead of me. Controllers do not see what you see and there is often latency or inaccuracy in their data. You know the joke: What does a pilot have in common with an air traffic controller? If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies. If the controller screws up, the pilot dies.

That's smart. We've all been conditioned by Garmin to not think that different companies' products will work together and that all systems are proprietary. Even though aviation is a small segment, the technological barriers to product development are lowering significantly and adoption of open standards will be a major selling point for manufacturers.

I have around 4" less prop clearance on the Rocket than I do on my M20F. I believe the Rocket has a 76.5" diameter prop and more weight on the nosewheel. Both planes have gear biscuits that are 3-4 years old. I can span my hand and touch the prop with my pinky and the ground with my thumb on the Rocket.

That's a bit of a strawman argument there. I came back yesterday and flew the M20F and even that plane bounced along during the taxi. Other pilots approached as I was tying her down and mentioned how close the prop looked to the grass during the taxi, but I didn't see any grass stains on it. The empty weight of the Rocket is nearly 500lbs more than the F; while there's a second battery and slightly larger control surfaces in the back, I don't think it's necessary to calculate out the W&B to figure out that there's a lot more weight on the nose wheel. Pressure == Force/Area. Divide the weight of the airplane by the contact patch of the three wheels and then figure out how much is on that nosewheel contact patch based on WnB and I'd bet you're well within heavy twin territory (that ramp included 414s). Pressure is pressure. Try riding a road bike across a wet field or the beach.

How do you get to KLAL from KBOW?