FloridaMan

You should be able to get an absolutely perfect and highly modified F for the 50-60k range. I would expect that you could find a good, well-equipped IFR F with a Garmin 430, "J" glass, six-pack panel, manual gear and a good mid-time engine for around $40k. It looks like the prices on the sites are a little excessive. I would be patient and call MSCs and see if they have any regular customers getting ready to sell.

I am not fully qualified to make this statement, but I would assume that a McCauley propellor would be very easy to find a "J" spinner assembly for. The reason for the lack of availability for the Hartzell propellor is that very few J models came with Hartzell props (IIRC, only a few early ones with Q-tip props had them).

I've been there. Purchasing my airplane was a journey as well. As was said "patience" saved my ass and hindsight from the issues that I had through the purchasing process showed me that I dodged more than one bullet through blind luck in missing out on an airplane. I recommend subscribing to the myFICO service as well for credit monitoring, at least while you're going through this process.

You might be able to subscribe to the Lexington Law service if there are errors. I had a couple things that didn't belong on my credit report and they got rid of them quickly. In my experience utility companies and banks will not remove shit, but cable companies and medical bills go away. I merged a meter from a mother-in-law cottage into the house's utilities and the $35 final bill went into the void and showed up on my credit report. I had a 30 day late on a $35 credit card bill that I paid online, but the process, for whatever reason, was not recorded. Those two items alone dropped my credit score by 150 points. I discovered a medical bill from a walk-in copay that my insurance didn't reimburse and the bill never made it to me. The lawyers will advise you to maintain the debt and try to negotiate a "pay off for deletion" with the institution. I found that only worked with a small medical bill. For anything else, pay it off and then hope that it's not worth the collection company's time to respond to the weekly letters requesting further documentation since there's no economic advantage for them to try to collect. Another note on aircraft financing, if there is any blemish on the title, even from 50 years ago, you may not get financing. The AOPA search only goes back around 10 years and may come back clean. Some loan agencies use aerospacereports which goes back all the way. I find the credit system very frustrating because I am responsible with my bills, but I travel quite a bit and I've moved occasionally. It only takes a couple bills to get delayed in forwarding or lost to screw up your credit, even if it's a tiny amount compared to your credit flow. It would be nice if there was a central way of notifying you before things go onto your report as it doesn't make sense how they can find you to taint your credit and yet they can't reach you beforehand.

I believe that ARI mod requires the J spinner; if you've got a Hartzell prop, you're looking at $2500+ for that spinner assembly as used ones are generally unavailable.

That doesn't pass the smell test to call pulling a jug and having it overhauled after the engine didn't run for two months. Also, your IA should have very specific instructions for you regarding cylinder break-in. I know that before I picked up my Mooney after a cylinder overhaul that the A&P had a procedure where he would run the engine for short periods of time to help seat the rings and I assume there may've been a follow-up torque sequence as well. We ran Philips 20/50 and I was instructed to stay at 25"/2500 RPM for several hours. Where are you located? If I were in your situation, I would find a recommended A&P in the area, explain what you're going through and get their advice. It may be worth paying another mechanic for an hour or two of labor to ensure that the cylinder has been properly torqued and that there are minimal other issues.

As someone else said, we don't know the denominator. What percentage of the engines in the fleet have that sort of time? If only 10% of the failures are between 1500 and 2000 hours, but only 2% of the engines have that amount of time, then there's an issue. Flight school engines last forever and suffer the most "abuse." I've seen several flight school engines with 5000+ hrs on them SMOH.

I paid $3.87/gallon at KLEE today and on Thursday

That's cool and all, but why this mandate, yet there's no regulations regarding drones and drone operators? Something that would prevent unlicensed drones from getting anywhere near an aircraft or airport, and that would require pilots wishing to operate in other areas to go through rigorous training.

+1 for Phil. I considered his prices to be very reasonable as well.

If you can't make it work with a single, you're doing something wrong.

I'm not sure. I think he took delivery about 3 years ago because he's just bought the Mooney with his son. Come to think of it, that was my first time in a Mooney. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea for him to take me to the test flight of his AA5 in that plane.

I flew with a a guy selling an AA5 who bought an M20R (I think) out of FA40 back when I was searching for an airplane.

Mike; where are you based? BKV?

I was showing 120-125 (I snapped that pic as soon as I leveled off lest something happened that made me descend). I do get an extra prop pressure bump with the lopresti cowl, but I think that I closed that when it misfired. I've noticed that my control surfaces are much smoother than the corrugated surfaces of the later J and K models and wonder if that has anything to do with yaw stability.

It may be good for an idea; here's what mine looks like. http://mooneyspace.com/gallery/image/36166-/

There's a chart for Vy. IIRC, it's 113 mph - 1mph per 1000ft Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Next trip I think the plane can get there. I was still 25-30 mph over Vy at 17,000 and I may have been able to trade it. I didn't like the way things felt or sounded to me so I came back down.

I was seeing about 300fpm when I stopped climbing at 17,000ft. It was cold outside. My trim wheel was freezing. The handling of the airplane at that altitude felt weird and I swear I'd hear the engine misfire here and there. I was afraid that something weird was happening with either the fuel system or my own engine management. Also, the physiological effects on my body were something that I had never experienced. I may have been a little dehydrated and I didn't get a full night's sleep to begin with. I was on oxygen and my pulse oximeter showed me at 92, but my heart rate was over 100 and I felt very anxious, was unable to think clearly and felt confused so I dropped back down to 11,000. I have a feeling that I may have been mismanaging my oxygen by not sucking enough through the cannula and perhaps I should've used the mask instead.

So the passenger in the back seat can log time too... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They probably had offshore do it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's in the hangar tonight. I felt my rental car getting pelted with sand. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I work for Koch Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm tied down on the ramp at ICT. TAF forecasts 38kt winds tonight; should I pay the 60$ to have my Mooney stored inside tonight or is it nothing to be too worried about? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was taught in my initial checkout to not go below 18". Another instructor/DPE suggesting that going to idle below 10,000 ft and diving on a naturally aspirated IO360 shouldn't hurt a thing. I generally follow the most conservative of the two and use the 18" rule and I use it to practice maneuvers to lose altitude/drop through a broken layer. Keep in mind that your greatest thermal stress on your engine is when you apply full power at takeoff from idle.