exM20K

You have an 80% mission that a turbo Mooney does very well. FIKI Bravo or Acclaim would make you very happy. Shipping bags or gear ahead is usually no big deal, whereas shipping live human beings is, so if your useful load constraint is stuff, just ship it. The unicorn plane would be a FIKI Encore, which has better UL and requires less fuel (weight) per trip. When I bought the TN in 2016, I also looked at turbo-normalized A36 bonanzas with TKS. There wasn't much to choose from, and they felt overpriced to me. As with you, the Mooney is "the Devil I Know," and after 25 years of ownership, with just a few years off, the Mooney is the best value, best suited for my mission plane - short of a TBM, which is a bigger commitment than I'm willing to make right now. Good luck in your search. Some day, there will be pre-owned planes available... -dan

Ditto. One of the fittings in the tail let go in my 231. Even in the factory FIKI installations, they really don't give you a service loop in the tubes between proportioning valves and panels. I've no idea why, but it is a big PITA. Other failures over 25 years of operating a TKS equipped plane: Windshield pump seized. I learned then to run it at least monthly. (231) Tube let go in the belly. (231) cowl plug tether slipped between spinner and cowl, landed on copper TKS sprayer, and snapped it. (231) None (Various DA42's) ruined a 30 gallon drum by using a cast iron rotary pump, which promptly corroded and contaminated the fluid. If using a drum pump, be certain it is for corrosive materials. (TN) Suspected frozen line or panel membrane in flight. System would not wet at all at FL200, but worked fine on the ground (TN) Fluid misting in avionics bay. Traced this to a "P trap" type of sag in the fill tube which was trapping fluid pretty high in the tube. Suspect at climb pitch, low-pressure area in tail was sucking fluid out through the little weep hole at the top of the fill inlet. Tie-wrapped fill tube to remove sag and now blow into fill tube after every fill till i hear air coming out of the drain. (TN) TKS Successes I'm able to use the plane year round for long XC missions struck a bird with the right wing in the pattern. No damage, and running the system served well to clean out the bird guts and pre-digested grass. My plane is 8-10 knots slower than book. On balance, all of this nets down to a huge boost in capability for the Mooney, and I'd not be interested in a non-deiced plane again. -dan

@cliffy is right. Good, Fast, Cheap: pick two. You'll get one. Aviation Consumer does surveys periodically. https://www.aviationconsumer.com/maintenancematters/paint-shop-survey-downtime-costs-up/ Nothing in your area obvious from my quick scan, but the article may be worth a read. A friend is trying to get his painted, and the big name shops are booked out a long way - like 12-18 months -dan

The Loonie is sitting at its yearly low…… Inflation erodes buying power bigly up north! https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?p=d1&t=6C -dan

Mooney is same. Prop runs continuously. -dan

With the cool new retrofit glass and autopilots, a DX Ovation or Bravo would be quite a find for someone that wanted a project. -dan

GX and DX 2004+

In addition to all the good advice above…. 1. The windshield pumps are supposedly helpful in priming the system and are prone to seizure if not used. So a cycle of both is a good idea before departure. 2. Don’t be surprised if the system won’t come up to pressure (steady green) if the fluid is warm, especially on the ground. Just look for good flow from all the surfaces and the mist fro the prop slinger. 3. There is a good pre-flight checklist in the POH supplement which I’ve incorporated into my ForeFlight checklist. -dan

One reason to prefer the Deb would be short field performance, which is a lot better than the O. But with practice and keen attention to AOA/TAS on final, the O will be happy with 2500’ and up. -dan

A deposit is earnest money - It shows the seller that the buyer is serious. All of the purchase contracts I executed when I sold airplanes had a deposit that was refundable under specified conditions. Specifically, airworthiness or not squawks which the buyer and seller could not agree on how to cure were deal breakers that could result in the return of a deposit. In my experience, there was never a case of an unserious buyer who had sent $20-$50,000 in deposit money to escrow trying to break a deal over a rusty screw or some other trivial squawk. By putting language in the agreement about squawks that seller and buyer cannot agree on how to cure, both parties are protected. Imagine a case where you put a deposit on a plane and find several cylinders are worn, though this was not disclosed in the description of the plane. Should not they buyer get back his money if the seller refuses to fix the engine? Also, I strongly suggest using an escrow service such as AIC, AOPA, etc. I would never send money to a seller as a deposit. The escrow companies will, under most circumstances, refund deposits. -dan

Not any more, you can't. Closer to $1.6 MM and next available is out into 2024 last time I checked. -dan

@Jerry 5TJ I'd say the Austro engines have been a big success: https://www.austroengine.at/uploads/pdf/mod_products9/AE330FactSheet.pdf 1800 TBO, and the intervals are, in my experience, quite a bit less that providing for the care and feeding of my TSIO 550. The DA42NG is a superior product to the DA40NG simply because it was designed around a diesel, albeit the lighter Thielert now CMI powerplant. The DA40 NG had the much heavier AE300 grafted onto the nose in place of an excellent gas-powered installation. The W&B envelope that resulted was very nose-heavy when I flew one many moons ago. The gas engine DA42's, which diamond built to keep ERAU from blowing a gasket when the original 1.7L Thielerts proved to be not great, suffer the balance problems in the opposite direction: they carry lead weights in the nose. The long body mooneys, especially the TN with its nearly 500# engine ( and the "G" is the lightest of them all) already is kinda nose heavy. Grafting a CMI CD300, weighing 100# more than the TSIO 550 would probably exceed the ability of the tail to keep the nose up. The long-term viability of the high-horsepower gas engine planes is probably dependent on a suitable fuel. -dan

I doubt it. There is no mention of turning on the landing lights in the POH supplement. It's probably a sufficiently small area to have no effect on performance. -dan

That was where I was going in my post higher up. The difference between steam gauges and glass is massive in terms of situational awareness, safety, and reliability. The difference between G1000 and something with a touch screen interface is there, but to me it's a marginal benefit only. -dan

What avionics upgrade could I want to a WAAS, SVT, Datalinked, ASD-b, GFC700 equipped plane? It just simply works beautifully. I have had my share of component failures as pointed out above, but turn-around time has been very quick, including a warranty replacement on the MFD. When I bought the TN in 2016, I don’t think Garmin had their latest generation stuff out-especially the autopilot. So buying and upgrading a steam gauge Bravo was not possible. Today it is a very good option in a Bravo or Ovation if you want a project. If I were Ovation shopping today, I’d definitely look for an upgraded steam gauge panel, but in this thin market, one done the way I want it is probably a unicorn. A G1000/GFC700 plane is turn-key. I can’t afford the downtime and cost/time uncertainty of an avionics upgrade, so for me, the G1000/GFC700 choice would likely still win. YMMV. Another consideration is panel height. The steam gauge long body planes have a very tall panel that for me impinges on forward visibility. Can the new Garmin retrofits lower the panel? I don’t know but would want to find out. I hope some day to be in a place that I would enjoy the upgrade project and can afford the downtime. But until then, G1000 obsolescence or end-of-life is pretty far down the list of issues that keep me up at night, and I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another. YMMV, of course. But what a great world we live in that we have to choose between these great systems. -dan

This. I posted on another thread how I had the same sort of failure after leaving the plane out in heavy rain for 2 days. Climbed to FL200 and hit the system. No worky. Worked fine on the ground and ever since. In my case, I believe the membrane in the panels themselves got soaked with water that froze, but it could have been anywhere in the system, I guess. Cheap Fix, though, LOL -dan

@Greg_D came by to bring my TN to DMAX for annual. I think it's the first time since i've owned it that someone else has flown it. Was a little weird watching him fly away. The plane is much quieter from the outside than I thought it would be. Maybe I need to ask Maxwell for some of those Loud Pipes the Save Lives when installed on Harleys. Really appreciate his making the trip as my schedule got packed this week.

I have this as my flight bag. Headsets live in the plane, but I find it nicely sized for iPad, stratus, kindle, power cords, extra batteries, car/hangar keys, nuts, protein bars, water, flashlights, pens, travel johns, barf bags, PLB, handheld, etc. https://www.sportys.com/flight-gear-ipad-baga.html very compact and seems to be well made. It would hold some charts and a few paper NOS plate packages, but do they even make those any more? -dan

Funny. I have an older version of that from the early 90’s. It held the four binders for my Jeppesen Full East coverage. I still use it daily with a laptop sleeve for work. This thing is going on 30 years of daily use. Top notch. -dan

I agree that fixating on ICP may be focusing on a spurious cause of engine wear. However, lower ICP = lower temps generally, maybe less crankcase pressure etc. I don’t have the APS materials in front of me, but my recollection is that when the big fleet operators of round engines adopted SOP/LOP, they saw quantifiable, documented benefits in engine life. there are lots of failure causes to fret. Corrosion from disuse, maintenance induced failures like improperly torqued case fasteners, metal failure in cranks or rods or pins, and so on. LOP or ROP operation will not have much influence on these. These are catastrophic failures. I believe the operational savings identified in the APS materials had more to do with top end life, so while one may not be able to draw a line connecting ICP to top end wear, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that cooler cylinders pushing out cleaner exhaust with less blow by into the crank case will last longer. if someone here has the APS materials handy and could post a synopsis of the piston airline experience, that would be great. -Dan

Same. Too lazy to learn a new UI and import all my data. -dan

I got 1100 hours out of mine before it croaked and took the starter adapter with it. I guess I should feel lucky! -dan

Things get a little funky operating LOP in the flight levels. I believe there are issues with the mass of the exhaust flow being insufficient, but I have never understood this note: “Above 22,000 power settings above 2300 RPM must be operated at 1675* or richer” That is for LOP

Mechanics are a very poor source for operating advice, in my experience. There are plenty who will tell you that operations LOP will burn up your valves and turbo cool down is necessary to avoid coking in the turbos or some other calamity. Does this DER have data to support this warning? It’s not as simple as more power = more wear as the APS guys have demonstrated authoritatively. In this case, spinning the engine 200 RPM faster will retard the timing, increasing detonation margins at full power. My operating experience over 4-500 hours with the 310 HP: oil consumption steady at 1qt per 10-12 hours oil analysis right where Blackstone says it should be borescope of exhaust valves every 50-100 hours show normal coloring Oil and cylinder head temps very cool (166-175 higher in the climb, and no cylinder getting over 375 in the climb even in the summer There are several flavors of TSIO550 550 running 2700 RPM for 315 HP, and CMI rates this one at 310. Mooney chose to dial it back to 280 by spinning it at only 2500. Performance is dramatically better. I’m based on a short field, and while I don’t have good before and after data to point to, I know it gets up off the ground much quicker. Climb rates are at least 300 FPM better than book, which, when climbing to the high teens is a signifying time and fuel savings. Disuse kills engines for sure. It is not obvious why running this engine at 2700 RPM like the rest of the TSIO550 550’s would, and my experience has turned up no evidence of increased wear. I am very glad to have done this relatively inexpensive mod. -Dan

I put this out there for proof-reading purposes. thanks. will un-check that one