exM20K

Demo pilot probably opened the alt static ;-) Oldest trick in the book. First plane I flew was the world’s fastest archer. 135-140 ktas on the airspeed indicator conversion ring. Amazing! There was something wrong with the static system. Sad trombones. This was before GPS, so the multi leg measurement wasn’t available. Twins are fun to fly, but never lose sight of the fact that the purchase price is just the ante. And you’re now sitting at a high limit table. Flew someone else’s 310Q for fuel only for a while. That didn’t suck. Conklin and dedecker have a good cost summary. https://www.conklindd.com/CDALibrary/ACCostSummary.aspx -dan

Assuming the acclaim is the same... width at the rear. 34” width at the front:38.5” depth front to back:35” Normal rear seat rake will eat into that depth number a couple inches as you come off the floor. -dan

No, he won’t. Even the TAT people wouldn’t make such an ambitious claim. I tried unsuccessfully to paste the chart from their website. See for yourself. 202KTAS @17GPH FL180 https://taturbo.com/frames.html What he should reasonably expect is 1.5 - 2 KTAS increase per thousand feet. So if a NA A36 is a 170KTAS cruiser at 8,000, it should be a 190 at FL180.

It is not obvious in your first post that you do 800 mile legs. Trips, yes. Legs, no. Regardless, the Ovation does that in less time than the Bo. If a Bonanza is what you want, then by all means buy one. $200,000 gets you a 1983 14v Bonanza or a 2000 Ovation. The Bonanza is ineligible for FIKI. The Ovation may be so equipped. Serious XC flying as you describe is made immeasurably easier with FIKI. All things being equal, I’d prefer the 17 year younger airframe. Big back doors are great. When I started flying Diamonds, I thought, gosh, this is so easy to get in and out of, how did I live without such convenience over 3500 hours in the 231? Then, eight years later, when I needed to buy a plane for the other business, I bought a Mooney because it checked all the boxes for me. I could have bought a Diamond at dealer cost, but it wasn’t the right fit. It didn’t check the Boxes I’d identified as important to me. Getting in and out of the plane is 15 seconds on either end of the flight. That didn’t even make the needle quiver on my GAF meter. Given what you describe as your mission, (2 adults and 2 kids,, 800 miles, Lots of trips) I believe that at your budget, the Mooney is a newer, more capable plane than the Bonanza.. your first post said something like “talk me out of buying a bonanza.” Ok, here you go. Same purchase price... Mooney is newer, more capable, and able to do the mission you describe faster than the Bo. It’s more difficult to get into the back seat. There aren’t many bad planes out there. Enjoy your purchase journey and building memories with the family.. I know I have. dan

The pressure sensor is in the tail, and it is very sensitive. When the fluid is warm, a normally functioning system may not be able to make enough pressure to make the green light go steady. If you’re getting good flow from all the panels. And it’s hot outside, I wouldn’t sweat it. -dan

That’s a really long trip if you’re going to try it in one leg. Especially with kids. And no potty. we did fine with two kids in the 231, and your budget allows for an ovation or Bravo. If you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to look at, ponder the baggage space, and look at the real leg times for your 80% mission. I believe Mooneys are undervalued relative to what they deliver because people are unfamiliar with or steeped in the untutored prejudice of how hard they are to land. so to us, it’s the devil we know, and if you can make the numbers work, you’ll get a much newer, lower time, and likely better equipped bird with a Mooney. -de

right - that's pretty much my worst-case threshold now: I know what distance the plane requires with no braking, so I've got at least that much performance. Wet can mean a lot of things - the Citations with no buckets publish all sort of distances with columns for wet, various depths of water, snow, and ice. practicing wet runway braking, i managed to flat-spot a tire last year: betweenbose headsets and wet runway, I had no indication the wheel had locked up..D'oh. -dan

My Acclaim POH has no notation on the landing distance charts for wet or contaminated runway conditions. Has Mooney ever published such numbers for the other long body airplanes? -dan

Good utility shelving.... keep stuff off the floor, and your rodent / pest problems as well as any lingering OCD issues will be eased. -dan

I had my plane detailed and ceramic coated (Sapphire) in May of 2017. Holy cow: it's hard to believe it was three years ago. The plane was looking a little unloved, so I took it back to the great detail shop at KARR, Real Clean Aircraft, for an in/out wash and detail. My plane lives indoors, so this is in no way a stress test of the ceramic coating, but to say I was pleased with the result would be an understatement7 All they did on the exterior was a wash/wax. Some exterior pictures are here. They're too big to upload to MS. will try to upload some lower res ones later. So if you're wondering how well a ceramic coating holds up after several years, consider this a datapoint. Also, in the interior detail job, they steam cleaned the seat belt webbing. It makes a huge curb appeal difference. seat belts get nasty. I don't think the plane looked this good when it was new. -dan

Daher / TBM buying Mooney isn't completely irrational - which makes it almost sensible in GA :-) One of the determinants of insurability for a new TBM owner is retract / complex time. 500 hours in a Cirrus isn't going to cut it, nor will a bunch of Caravan time. Underwriters want a proven track record of remembering to lower the gear. The company could work some kind of trade-up program for wanna be TBM owners who couldn't get insured. However, the product still has to stand on its own. Daher sells something like 50 TBM's per year, and maybe 10% of that needs complex time. -dan

@aviatoreb: DA40 began its life as a trainer - an instrument-capable bird to complement the excellent, but VFR-only DA20. As a trainer, long distance fuel was not really a requirement. When the market moved more towards owner-flown, the 50 gallon tanks were almost universally installed, at least in the planes I ordered. For a new pilot, the DA40 is about as good a first plane as has ever been made. Regarding @Hyett6420 's proposed mission: four grownups, especially if they're 'Murican-sized, in any four-seat GA plane is more intimate than most want for that long, in my experience. two male/female couples or two adults/two children will work just fine. have you tired it for that long of a leg? I've got the same issue in the long-body, though the back seats have a bit more room: four FAA standard peeps, and I can carry 35ish gallons, which won't get me very far with prudent reserves. 10-4, and bravo on the weight loss to regain usefull load. Also consider careful calibration of the fuel gauges/totalizer/tank dipstick. I monitor and crosscheck all these sources, and I've carefully adjusted the Foreflight performance profile to match my data, so I have a high degree of confidence of how much fuel is in the plane at all times. Thus, I'm totally comfortable planning near minimum fuel at my alternate, freeing up 50-100# of fuel weight. -dan

Nope. Fuel vents sit in NACA ducts, which do not ice. Static vents seem unlikely to ice given where they are. -dan

With 30+ long body Mooneys currently for sale on Controller alone, I'd pass on both of these. Airplanes are very easy to buy, though not always so easy to sell, so why make someone else's story "your" story? The trainer end of the market (pro pilot schools) is getting wrecked right now; there's a fleet of 30 Diamonds for sale among others as these operations fail under the unbearable stress of this shutdown - both economic and immigration. I'm not especially bullish on any part of the piston market right now - especially considering how many of the higher-priced transactions are financed. Or, put another way, the fear of missing is at all-time low with respect to airplanes. Looking back to 2009-11, there were some smoking deals done on lower-end SETP's - Jetprops, especially. like $6-700,000 deals on planes that used to have two commas in the price. I'd expect the same for the top of the piston market. -de

G1000 flashes red over 33.5" I use full throttle, which is around 33" as my wastegate controller is set now. it will vary with oil temp. -de

On the margin, storage is leased. If you have stored crude which storage is committed to someone else after the May expiration and delivery period,, then you've got to get rid of the crude or find someplace else for it. There are some amazing pictures out there of floating storage (eg: every available tanker full and floating around). That's pretty expensive. More interesting to me as a former futures trader and software engineer: can the back office systems of the exchanges and clearing firms even handle a negative price? Kind of Y2K all over again. -de

Meh. You made your luck, or at least you made your luck useful by keeping your cool. All the luck in the world is useless if one is upside down, spinning, or otherwise in a LOC state. and practice means you’re not doing it for the first time. Way better, no? cheers -dan

Today was a beautiful early-Spring day in Chicagoland. Wife and I went for a flight from the west suburbs, down the Eisenhower expressway to the lakefront. It was really strange to see empty public spaces on such a day. I'm certain those cooped up were wishing they weren't. 1) Our neighborhood with Chicago in the background 2) millennium park and Lake Shore Drive, which should be teeming with people 3) Millenium Park and the loop. 4) United Center and approaching from the west. 5) Wrigley Field and wrigleyville. should have been hosting the diamondbacks today. -dan And, of course, the landing video.

@aviatoreb thanks. So just to be clear... your drove the screws through the Velcro strap that mountain higho2 provided? Had not considered that, and it would work very well with the long body ports being right there. now... where did I leave that Velcro strap??? -dan

Agreed, but don't "under-tighten" it. I had mine loose with the tank full to the top. The filler isn't much higher than the top of the tank, and the combination of pitch angle and the awesome acceleration of the 310HP acclaim made quite a mess in the avionics bay. The fill neck isn't much higher than the top of the tank. The vented cap has a "flapper" type valve on it which prevents fluid from escaping, but if the dummy in the left seat fails to tighten the cap. it can make a mess. And a little goes a long way with TKS fluid. =dan

That's going to be a tough sell for the major manufacturers. Logistics / demo planes / people / housing / trade show displays etc will be very hard to pull together at another time, and if I were asked, I'd not give it serious consideration as there is no guarantee that things will be any different one month later. The Diamond display at OSH used to have four or five of my planes, and it was not a trivial exercise to get them in one place at the same time. I'd sit tight till OSH (as a vendor). -dan

@Mooney_Allegro how do you have the tubes routed for the O2D2, and have you found a good place to mount it? I haven't found a really great place for the unit, so it usually sits in PAX lap with usual tangle of tubes from the ceiling to the box and thence to the people. -dan

Almost every time we flew this plane: -dan

Same owner for 13 years is a good endorsement of the type. -dan

You said much better what I was going to post.... the denominator is much more certain for flu than CV. And almost certainly understated for CV. Supply chain, travel, and school disruptions will be real, though. -dan