FloridaMan

Uber is a godsend in these situations as well. It's often cheaper to get around using Uber at your destination than it is to rent a car.

Airports granting exclusive FBO access are in violation of the Civil Aviation Act of 1938 as well. https://www.faa.gov/airports/resources/publications/orders/compliance_5190_6/media/5190_6b_chap8.pdf

Nice job and thanks for telling us about it. These planes do well in fields and even in trees and telling such stories saves lives. The stories you don't read about in the NTSB database are, in many ways, the more important ones to learn from. I lost both plugs in #4 on takeoff due to FOD and set down in a field once.

Flew there in a Navajo a couple weeks back.

Are you talking about the panel gauges or do you have the dials on the tank? Supposedly getting the electronic sending units refurbished won't remain accurate all that long. I have the wing-mounted gauges and they are spot-on down to about 10 gallons where they read zero in addition to an EDM-900 with the fuel totalizer that seems to be accurate within < 0.5 gallons when I take on more than 50 gallons; I attribute the variance to fuel venting and how much the person pumping the fuel milks it.

Shoot. I was just in the area on Sunday and would've loved to have shown you my Mooney.

I've heard that there are bolts that are designed to stretch when torqued. Some of them don't stretch and you're supposed to discard them. If a mechanic was unaware of this, I could see this being an issue.

I noticed the same thing when I got my pucks replaced. It settled down after a couple months.

I will likely be there in Vintage. I'll have the Mooney that doesn't look like it belongs in Vintage.

You can do this yourself prior to sending it out for a PPI, or supervise the A&P doing the inspection that this gets checked. Read this thread of this guy's horror story. This is one of the most important inspections that you can make and is one that can be commonly overlooked by who you hire to do your pre-purchase inspection. Gear biscuits can cost you over $1000 if they're old (I believe there's a date in the rubber). Mine were nearly 20 years old, but I didn't notice issue with them, but when it went into a MSC for annual, it was insisted that they be replaced. Also, you'll be very happy with your decision to get a Mooney. I was in disbelief for a while that I actually owned an airplane and 800 hours and four years later I still love my F, but I'm looking to upgrade now to a 305 Rocket.

I'm guessing "airspeed alive, instruments in the green" from our primary training has something to do with it.

Bringing up this old thread after finding a reference to it elsewhere. This thread was just a few months before I bought my Mooney. Thank God I ran away from that 177RG that I was looking at when this thread was made. My grandfather was a fighter pilot in WW2. He supposedly flew "all" of them, and from what I've researched it was certainly most of them, and was invited to be a test pilot after the war. I know that for a while he was in the ferrying group that flew the Alaska route to deliver fighters to the Russians. My grandmother loved to bitch about things. She complained about how he would run the tank until the engine quit in his Bonanza when he'd fly. She says he told her it was to prevent moisture from getting in the tanks. I don't know the significance of all of that and whether the extreme cold weather and high altitude experience he had learned something that I haven't heard elsewhere, but I thought I'd mention it.

I'm in Florida so warm-up time is pretty short. I wait until 100deg for runup and seem to consistently take 7 minutes from turning on the avionics master until the start of the flight (subtracting flight time from start-up time in the "Flight Timers" section on the GNS530). According to my fuel totalizer, I burn less than 2 gallons when lean on the ground, but I go full-rich for run-up. I compute things a bit differently and developed this habit prior to getting my fancy engine monitor. My F carries 32 gallons of usable per side. When run dry, I can get between 33-34 gallons in the tank. I try to get 3 hours on the tank that I started on first. Whether it means I switch tanks after an hour and a half or just run it for three hours and switch, but I know if I make 3 hours on the side I warmed up and climbed out on that I have that much safely remaining on the other side. I don't include time on the ground in flight time; you burn more on the climbout; and I was surprised to see as high as 17GPH on takeoff and initial climb when I got the fuel computer.

I hate those. I've deviated around Memphis to get to Wichita before. On a side note. Didn't I meet you at Sun n Fun a couple years ago?

Makes me wonder if you couldn't have found the rising air over the terrain and stay in the windward side for a bit higher airspeed. That kind of speed moving over the mountains had to result in lift somewhere that you could've traded for airspeed, provided it wasn't too turbulent.

If your oil temp is high and oil pressure looks good and you're using the original "6 pack" of gauges, turn the master off and see if the oil temp gauge goes to zero. If it doesn't, push on it firmly with your thumb and see if it the temperature looks good. That happened to me; ended up being a bad connection on the instrument and the final straw to justify buying an EDM-900.

I think of it like this with weather systems moving in. "High, Headwind, Up" for if there's a High pressure system moving in, you will get a headwind going Up (North) on the map. So if I'm going up north ahead of a low pressure system, I'll expect a tailwind on the way there, crappy weather during my stay and a tailwind on the way back. Likewise, if I were up north and needed to go south and there was a nice high pressure system moving in, I'd expect a tailwind on the way down, nice weather while I was there, and a tailwind on the way back.

Even if you catch the same tailwind your total combined flight time will be longer since you spend more time flying at the slower speed with the headwind. Maybe it's a crosswind and it'll suck equally both ways :-)

What brand of paint did you use?

How about that Pilatus that crashed into the cemetery with the "Tomb of the Unborn?" It had the children and grandchildren of the guy who owned the largest chain of abortion clinics onboard. http://www.jillstanek.com/2009/03/abortion-chain-owners-family-died-in-mt-cemetery-plane-crash-near-tomb-of-the-unborn/

Two months while it was getting annualed after taking it offroading.

Yes, both in power-off and under full-power with a qualified instructor. Mooneys have gentle stall characteristics but can be unforgiving if you're delayed in applying rudder input. I noticed that performing stalls under full power at around 6000MSL that you naturally have to put in a shit ton of right rudder as you approach your stall attitude. If you don't know how to use your rudder and are just pulling back, I could see the plane having enough adverse yaw to throw it abruptly into a spin to the left. In performing "falling-leaf" stalls under full power, the plane yaws hard left and right, but is possible to keep under control. In my plane, accelerated stalls seem to return the plane automatically to wings level when breaking. It is absolutely imperative to look outside and have some visual reference for yaw when performing a stall. Pick a cloud or a terrain feature and use the rudder to keep it in the same location left/right in the windscreen. If you are not comfortable doing this, make sure you have a qualified instructor with you.

Have you considered Marathon instead? It's about an hour drive. IIRC, I was paying about $20/night at KEYW for parking. I guess it all depends on your mission, but I could see covers taking a good amount of time and frustration to install/remove.

Depends on how much you'd want to fly it while you're down there. The fuselage cover is bad enough and I'd think that doing the rest of the plane would be a real pain. I'd see if they can offer you some inside storage. It'd probably not cost much different than covers and would make your life a lot easier. Don't let them fuel your airplane unsupervised. I had a fueling issue with Signature where my tank loaded up with a bunch of water due to my fuel cap not being installed correctly. One of the internal tabs later broke off of that fuel cap a couple months later and I suspect it was related. In spite of all of that, the folks at Signature were wonderfully accommodating and did everything they could to assist me in making things right, especially considering how incredibly busy they were that weekend.

Eric is great. I hope that the Trump administration helps us out with the TFR system. I know for a fact that he was known for being "difficult" to work with by the FBOs because he did not like the price fixing/gouging and excessive ramp fees and was known for coming in personally and arguing with them. I also heard a few stories about Hillary that match the rumors about her off-camera behavior.