FloridaMan

I can't find anything showing a deployment limitation in my documents or placards, but on the Precise Flight website, it says: Deployable at any speed below Vne (175 Knot limit if you have tip tanks) However, it says this for all planes (Bonanzas, etc). I have the long range tank STC, but these are not "tip tanks." I'll call PreciseFlight and ask, but curious if there's any tribal knowledge on this subject here.

I run WOT and 2700RPM in the climb in my F. WOT and 2500 RPM in cruise, throw the gear down at 120mph early in the approach and fly it at that speed until FAF and then slow to 100mph. All runways with an ILS are at least 5000ft so any approach down to minimums you have enough space to bleed off your airspeed when you can see the runway.

About to fly up there myself; any updates on the local fields?

My M20F is a 158ktas airplane. On cold days, it will cruise in level flight at 5000ft in the yellow arc. It was faster after the engine overhaul than it ever was for the 1000 or so hours I put on the factory engine that came with it. The overhaul shop flow matched the cylinders; I'm not sure if that affected it, but the fuel burn went up slightly and she picked up some speed. It has the LoPresti cowl, 201 glass, GAMIjectors and a powerflow exhaust. My rocket will do 158ktas while climbing at 1000fpm.

I had a King Air get relegated to #2 tonight behind my Rocket. I was on the ramp by the time he landed. King Air pilot even asked if he needed a specific speed and tower told him he was fine and I was doing over 180.

I have gotten to where I can pull my rocket out and push it back into my hangar with full fuel on my own with a towbar, and that includes clearing the tracks. The trick is that I park it close to the hangars on the other side of the taxiway. The taxiway is sloped downwards in the middle for drainage so it is uphill into my hangar. I get a good running start, ensure the nosewheel is lined up and the vertical stabilizer lines up with the line in the back of the hangar. By the time I get to the track, because it's uphill, I'm going slow enough to stop the plane if I have to, but it has enough inertia that I can continue to push it to where it'll clear the track. The most important factor in moving your airplane around by hand is to ensure the tires are properly inflated.

I can carry 370 lbs of people and stuff with full fuel (1000lb UL and 105 gallons of fuel). So me, a girl and a couple bags should be able to go non-stop from Tampa to NY in somewhere between 4 and 5 hours total time. I have not tried this trip.

If the Boombeam wasn’t a CG/clearance issue in my Rocket, I would have two. I went with a pair of PAR36 alphabeams instead. They appear far brighter than my Parmetheus plus par46 in my M20F. Lights are safety.

How’d it end up in the Marshall service’s auction with no logbooks? I couldn’t imagine someone would be running drugs in a plane with the UL of a Mooney (if someone’s gonna risk the penalty of running contraband, useful load will take precedence over fuel economy).

So are we virtue signaling now? I like that you can wear a gun on your hip in the open without any permitting in Asheville.

Ouch. Keep in mind it’s not just a prop that plane will need. Make sure you price out the exhaust repair if it was damaged and if the engine has to come off, it seems customary to have the mounting framework IRANed as well. I am not completely certain that skin distortion is from a gear up landing. And if it is, I would want to know how they removed it from the runway.

My standby attitude indicator takes a long time to get it up too. It's mounted where the turn coordinator would be and has an inclinometer. Once in flight, it works fine. I'd rather go with a Garmin G5 (certified) as my backup if it failed since the G5 gives you a full EFIS (you might want to check that for our certified aircraft). If my vacuum pump were to fail, I may still go with a G5 to replace my primary attitude indicator.

AVL is easy to fly into, but like others have warned, we all hate Signature. The employees at Signature are almost never the issue — it’s like getting upset at the person who answers the phone vs the company that employs them. I know Trump was well-known for having heated arguments with and suing FBOs and I seriously hope that fixing this predatory monopolistic problem is on the DOT/DOJ agenda.

I love the Inreach. I use the Earthmate app with it

I was indicating around 155 at 16000 on the way up there and 145 at 4 OAT and 147 at FL230 and -8OAT. Both at 76% power

I know I sound like a paid shill, but I can't say enough good things about Aero Engines of Winchester when it came to my overhaul. I had a factory overhaul from the mid 1990s in my M20F that started making metal at around 2100-2200 hours. That factory overhauled engine from the 1990s certainly did not come with a "0" time logbook and showed 9000+ hours on the core. Aero Engines turnaround time was around two weeks as they used yellowtagged parts for those that would take longer to come back (I was ok with the possible substitution of my 9000 hour case). Aero Engines did reuse some external hardware and the fuel servo looked "not new" when it came back; my IA had some misgivings about that and a second opinion from another confirmed that overhauled fuel servos often look cosmetically a bit old. I cruise in the yellow in my M20F at 5000ft on cold days in level flight with that engine. I was considering going the factory route when it was my time for an engine because I expected fast turnaround times as well, but the factory quoted me 4-6 weeks for the overhaul/exchange. See this thread:

On my F, the ailerons look the same in flight as they do on the ground — aligned with the flaps when the flaps are up. On the rocket, the ailerons are even with or slightly lower than the flaps on the ground, but float up as much as an inch on both sides at the same time in flight. Lifting on the ailerons together on the ground with help from a friend will pull them both up without much force, like they’re bungeed together in the middle. I’ve not seen this before and I suspect it’s spoiling lift and affecting climb and cruise performance. Before sending it off for rigging, I’d like to understand a bit more about what would cause this.

It sure looks like a straightforward install to me. Things are a little tight on the Rocket, but at this point I fail to see anything that gives me cause for alarm or concern. If there is some supernatural complexity with the TSIO520 in this configuration that would make things fail to work, I would certainly like to know about it.

I would trust Phil more than any of the big name MSCs for a PPI. His shop is a two man operation with him and another IA. I use him occasionally for Mooney-specific tasks. One costly issue i have discovered with bigger shops is you often don’t have qualified A&Ps turning wrenches on your plane. Phil may have saved my ass once on my ‘67 F. He discovered an old fuel line that was weeping and dripping onto my exhaust. Aside from Phil, there are two other shops in the state that I think very highly of. Mike at Double-M in Lakeland and there’s a younger guy here on my field in St Pete that continues to impress me. My annuals with the local guy run less than $1000 and he does excellent work and has done a number of non-trivial repairs including composite repairs, running new wires from the battery, and the R&R of my engine.

I have Concorde batteries in both of my Mooneys. The one in my M20F I think was from around 2013 and is still going strong. I suspect one day I'll come out to a dead battery in it. The ones in the Rocket were replaced in December and were weak five months later in May. We found out why. Both had split wide open from failure to vent. @Cujet suspects high altitude is hard on them. I also care an EarthX booster pack in my plane with me. The reason for that brand is that their packs use LiFePO4 cells, which, according to their site are much more stable and have a thermal runaway temperature of 518 deg F instead of 302 deg F (read: not cheap chinese spontaneously combusting cells): https://earthxbatteries.com/shop/earthx-jump-pack

That was my experience. Only time I ever got water in my tanks.

I do this exact thing. Three strips wide to cover the fuel cap. I guess it might make a line guy think twice before gassing you up with Jet-A as well. I've thought that a silicon disk with a rare earth magnet in the middle would be a good cap cover for on the ground as well. ETA: Nevermind; just read the rest of the thread and saw those bowl covers.

You don't fly IFR in the summertime in Florida. The trick is to have a cool scoop in the window and get to 4000ft as quickly as possible.

This was after several cups sumped from mine. I sumped it til it was all blue while shaking the wing between sumps, started on the other tank and then made several hard S turns for a mile down a taxiway and then got another few ounces of water out. I took off on the good tank while my passengers waited on the ground, flew over the field, switched tanks and flew aggressive turns and banks, switched back to the known good one, landed and sumped again, then picked up my passengers and went home, taking off on the tank that had not been contaminated. The cause was a line guy at KEYW improperly installing a fuel cap. I posted in another thread. Smell your fuel and verify the color. Had I not noticed the absence of the avgas smell, I might not have caught it.