FloridaMan

Quote: allsmiles I would speak with Bruce Jaeger about your dilemma and trust in his advice.

Quote: Mitch Yes! But I would certainly stipulate in your purchase contract that you have to approve all prior to final purchase transaction.

I'm considering buying an airplane that's been maintained by Willmar for the past 20 years. I'd love to have Don Maxwell do a prepurchase on it, but it will cost me at least 1600 to get the plane to him, plus another $950 for the prepurchase inspection. Willmar seems to have a reputation that ranks them up there with the very best MSCs and I simply don't think that it would make any sense for them to misrepresent an old Mooney. It would be sold to me with a fresh annual from Willmar as well. This is my first airplane and ordinarily I would not consider buying a plane without a thorough prepurchase inspection from a 3rd party, but would it make sense to make an exception in this case?

I have AOPA legal; could I rely on them to advise me appropriately?

Should I create a separate corporate entity to own my aircraft in Florida? If so, what's the best way to go about it?

I've been trying to catch it, but it looks like there's not enough activity for me to detect the issue. It certainly seems like the rendered content, possibly including authentication cookies is being cached and resent when another user requests a page, thus changing users' login information. Google Chrome has excellent tools for detecting this type of stuff. (View Menu >> Developer >> Developer Tools). Click "Network," select your file (e.g. index.cfm) and pay attention to headers and cookies. It may help to be logged in as another user in a separate browser or have someone else hammer away at your site to help detect the issue.

Anyone on here familiar with the orange and white west coast Mooney 20F with "What's Up Doc?" painted on the vertical stabilizer?

I can't sleep, and reading these isn't helping as I'm about to go look at an "F" model. It looks like nearly 1 in 10-12 of the M20Fs ended in a fatal accident. Amazingly, of the nearly 100 fatal crashes, only a couple of them were controlled off-airport landings that ended in fatalities, and I believe those were either far out over water or at night. Every other fatal accident involved a stall/spin or continued flight into IMC resulting in loss of control. What I get from this is that if I buy an M20F and have a problem, my odds are better if I don't try to make it to the best landing spot, just to maintain control and get it to the ground. ADDED: I'm going through the non-fatal crash reports and those make me feel a lot better as they almost all say "Uninjured" or "Minor" for severity.

Verify output caching isn't enabled in IIS. I can't remember the exact setting and I don't have an IIS 6 box handy, but I remember it was in the admin interface, it was something that was supposed to improve performance, there were two checkboxes and one of them caused all sorts of hell if it was checked.

Are you running IIS? If you're on an older version and have file compression turned on (I think that's the feature), it can cause this behavior. I ran into it once a while back.

They're spelling out 747 with a 747 in the flight path.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BOE523/history/20110802/1330Z/KPAE/KPAE

The Ferry pilot commented on the linked article and says the plane sat for months and that he was supposed to install a new prop, but had not done it yet. Another commenter had to be a douchebag and made some statement about doctors killing themselves in airplanes.

Looks like Garmin bought another company.

I always wondered why there used to be so many Mooneys looking like they were wasting away on the ramp at VNC. I've never dealt with them, but if they have such a bad reputation among Mooney owners, you should solicit Mooney to have a Cease and Desist issued to them for trademark misuse or unauthorized use. What happens when a first time mooney buyer gains confidence in reading through the log books of an a/c across the country that's been maintained by "Mooney Mart," they assume that it's an MSC and then their ownership experience ends up being "I'm never owning another Mooney again?"

...or edit...

Dammit. I guess I can't embed.

It looks like SWA has started retrofitting cockpits in light of this:

First off, I'd like to thank Parker for taking me for a ride in his wonderful M20K. If a Cessna 172 is like a mid-80s buick, a DA40 is a Honda Accord, the Extra 300 is a no-compromise uncomfortable race car and that M20K felt like a BMW. I have never flown in such a smooth, solid feeling small airplane as that Mooney. The M20K 201-flyer is selling may be the right plane for me, but, being my first airplane, I feel like that one may be too nice for me and I don't exactly know what my flying habits as an owner might be. I know from my experience with turbocharged cars that they, moreso than naturally aspirated engines, don't like to not run for even a few days. So, with that said, I think an older J is the right plane for me. Ideally, I'm looking for something with a low to mid time engine, mid-time airframe, IFR, ok radios and some form of autopilot. I think I can probably get something like that for somewhere in the 65-80k range. I'd probably keep it in a covered tie down or tied down and covered on the ramp since hangars are a good $600/month here in Tampa, with a 6+ month waiting list in some places. I plan to add a second attitude indicator, traffic and weather as my first investment, so these items would make a prospective airplane worth more to me, but since they're more rare on older airplanes, I'm not gonna hold my breath expecting to find one so equipped. I hope it's alright with the forum that I post an "I'm looking" thread, but I figure there are several planes available that aren't listed in the circulars and brokers to stay away from. Feel free to send me a message or post if you know of anything.

carusoam, I don't remember the DG doing much of anything. It also took about 5 minutes from the time the low vac light came on until I lost the attitude indicator. I was on the horn with ATC and first thought it was just an indicator failure. The controllers were real excited; they kept asking if it was an emergency and were giving me "no gyro" headings and all that. It was clear daytime VFR and I could see where I was going.

I lost a vacuum pump in clear VFR when I had less than 200 hours. The airplane I was flying was also equipped with an electric backup pump that also failed. It wasn't like when you're doing your instrument training and your instructor slaps a post-it over the indicator, it slowly rotated in a manner that you might chase to put yourself in a bad situation. If you have two and one fails, I imagine the electric would give you a flag and the vacuum operated one would most likely be the result of a pump failure, which would be indicated by the gauge. This is what my failure looked like: I would not be comfortable bouncing around in Florida IMC using the turn coordinator to keep my wings level.

This is my first post here. I've never flown a Mooney. I flew right-seat in an M20R and watched the checklist for a fellow that had just purchased it but I've never felt the controls. I'm an instrument-rated pilot with a couple hundred hours TT and am based in the Tampa Bay area. Two years ago when still a student pilot, the guy that owned the flight school immediately said that the M20J would be the perfect airplane for my mission (single, usually travel alone, not wealthy and my standard mission is between FL and NC). The M20K seems to be price-comparable and I've read conflicting things regarding overall cost of ownership. I've been full circle in looking at airplanes; the problem being is that everyone has their own opinions and brokers want to put you in whatever airplane they can sell you, not necessarily what's best for you. Even my own grandmother made fun of me when I mentioned considering a Mooney "A Mooney!? What do you want a Mooney for?" (my grandfather had been a WW2 pilot and flew everything; after the war he had a couple Bonanzas and a Waco -- apparently, one of their pilot friends bought a Mooney and they all gave him hell over it). There seem to be a lot of Mooneys around in FL and I was curious if there was a place that could get me a little time at the controls and perhaps help me with a purchase. I wouldn't care to handle them at the critical phases of flight, but I'd love to just see how the controls felt and it would be an added bonus to feel the stability on a bumpy day in FL.