exM20K

I once received a radio call on short final: "Mooney: Check your gear." It was up. I was so focused on the banner-tow plane doing a pickup parallel to me in the grass that I simply forgot. I suspect that a lot of gear-ups have in the chain leading up to them, a break in normal flow. I've no idea if that was the case here. -dan

LOL. The shop broke the factory unit, and two replacement Rosen's are less expensive that one puny factory visor.

Ok so here is the video demo. I think.

I don't/ Maybe I'll poke around back there tonight and see what's what.

yes - that is what theytold me at OSH last year. I'm just trying to visualize how this all works - together with a boom canula - without creating a forest of hoses... thanks

If anyone here uses an O2D2 with the factory overhead oxygen ports, could you tell me how you have rigged it: eg: is the unit dangling from the ceiling, tucked in a pocket, or something else? Thanks in advance -de

If you're referring to me, then, no: I don't believe so. I've not engaged in name-calling here, either. You have.

"I was just trying to relay some of my experience with operating a Mooney in ice." To what possible end? To encourage someone that "mooney's carry ice better than most people think?" That's great! Anti-authority: once you picked up ice, you were in known icing. My recollection of the regs was not that you were permitted to plow along until you reached the stall strips. I could be wrong, of course. Invulnerability - no, I could tell you about some of the icing encounters that I had during instrument training and other times that snuck up on me that scared the hell out of me. I had a healthy respect for ice. What I'm talking about is droning along in trace rime. No - you said originally: My rule of thumb was when the ice is thicker than the stall strips it is time to take some decisive action. Here's the definition of "Trace," since you are evidently ignorant of it: Trace Ice becomes perceptible. Rate of accumulation is slightly greater than rate of sublimation. It is not hazardous even though de-icing/anti-icing equipment is not utilized, unless encountered for an extended period of time (over 1 hour). Pray tell: how does "Trace" ice accumulate to 1/2 inch? Macho? I follow rules and ADM rubrics. I don't bust minimums. I don't fly non-FIKI planes into icing. If in unforecast, unreported icing in a non-FIKI plane, I'd immediately get the heck out of there. Here's part AOPA's section on "Macho." I've bolded the part relevant to this discussion. Macho Pilots must have a high degree of confidence in their ability to operate an airplane. Aviation is full of challenges: flight planning, decision making, computing, and navigating. Our training is designed to foster our self-image as competent, capable pilots. As aviation pioneer Beryl Markham wrote, "Success breeds confidence...." Each time we succeed in our flying, we have more confidence that we can do it again. Sometimes our confidence outstrips our ability to safely fly the airplane. Especially when we have a strong desire to accomplish a goal, we can fool ourselves into believing that we can do something that is actually stretching the limits of our abilities. -dan

You mean, like, ATP's, airline pilots, people who use an operations manual? the data do not support your untutored prejudice.

How about you read what I wrote. Your rule of thumb *is* illegal, dangerous, and barking up the wrong tree. I made no mention of what was legal in the 80's, but since you bring it up, the only part you claim not true in the 80's is the "illegal" part. Everything else was true, and I'm not certain about the legality then of droning along in icing. You misunderstand what icing does to the airplane and how it creates a very real threat of loss of control - often near the ground. To claim that 'Mooney's carry ice better than most people think' is dangerous and preposterous. Have you polled "everybody?" You evidently are not qualified to assess how well a Mooney aircraft carries ice, but I can assure you that the laminar flow surfaces do *not* carry ice well at all. And airfoil degradation is only one of the many risks that comes with icing. Think: pitot tube, control surface impingement, fuel vent plugging (not in modern mooneys, thankfully), the weight of the ice, and more. So let's use a well-established ADM rubric to evaluate your rule of thumb: Antiauthority: Check Impuslivity: Nope Invulnerability: Check Macho: Maybe Resignation: Check Suggesting to other Mooney owners, who may have little or no experience flying in icing conditions, that the plane carries ice better than you think, and I didn't sweat it until I had a half inch on the wing is horrible advice. Here's my advice after thirty years and 5000 hours of flying mostly in the Northeast and Midwest: in unprotected planes: stay out of ice. If you see any icing accumulating, get out: up down or turn around. Ice will form first on the tail and the nav light/strobe fences at the wingtips; sharp edges are the best early accumulators for most ice. Ice is where you find it. Some of the worst I've experienced is in the summer in the tops of clouds. If you see a "Glory" in an undercast you're flying over and the temp is below freezing - you're going to be in icing unless you find a hole through which to descend Flying in icing is stressful - even in the TBM. In a non-protected aircraft, it must be many times more so. Stress degrades ADM. Poor ADM raises the likelihood of a mishap. -dan

Your "rule of thumb" is illegal, dangerous, and barking up the wrong tree. Ice accumulates first on the horizontal tail. You do not have a good means to observe or measure it there, especially at night. Tailplane icing will lead to a tail stall if let go for too long, and a tail stall will make your plane into a lawn dart and you and your passengers who foolishly trusted you: dead. Did your rule of thumb contemplate the landing flap restrictions on FIKI planes? Please fly a FIKI plane if you are flying in ice or stay clear of it. It's not that hard to do. -dan

For sure, and being on the back side of the power curve makes it easy to bleed off excess energy I have a cheat sheet in my plane that tells me at a glance what my landing weight is, given people/bags and landing fuel, and what Vso, 1.3*Vso and 1.2*Vso are. The sheet also has the liftoff and 50' speeds at different rates. In the TN, there is a significant spread for low - high weights: 65/75 @ 2700# up to 77/84 at MTOM. I don't remember the 231 being so sensitive to weight on takeoff, but that was 10 years ago. Of course, now that I have the 310HP STC, all the takeoff charts are excessively pessimistic. Or, looked at another way: if the book says it's do-able at 280HP, I'm highly, highly confident it can be done at 310HP. -dan

serious answer: reports on this forum and mooney mailing list are that there is a significant speed loss. Take a FIKI M20TN, which is 5-10 KTAS under book and knock another 5-10 ktas off for VG's, and now you've got a TN- Bonanza that doesn't carry as much. I am based at a short field and would like the capability to take 1.3x 6 knots off my approach speed, but it's uninteresting if the speed penalty is so high. I'd be interested in any recent PIREPS on the speed loss. -dan

The salesforce would revolt: they couldn't sit on the wing at OSH.

Reasons to prefer the SR22: Often better useful load Interior is larger and better-appointed Reasons to prefer M20R: Faster Enjoyable to hand fly Not dorky there is a case to be made that G500 / GNS750 is a better package than G1000. This is an option for M20R but not SR22. The customer support community for the Mooney is a bit more ad-hoc than the formalized one for Cirrus, but it works. Don , Ted, MAPASF etc do a good job delivering training. In Chicago, look up Bob Werderich, who owns Illinois Aviation Academy at KDPA. he has M20R time. If it ever stops snowing, drop me a PM. I keep an 310HP AcclaimS at Naper Aero. -dan

I'll get some pictures up once I have the plane back. The rosen visors do work in the Acclaim. some maneuvering is required to clear the wet compass, but it's no big deal. Glad to have added them.

And Bob North, former owner of Mt. Snow airport, real estate developer, and good friend died inexplicably in one on approach to 4V8. Bob was a very high time pilot who operated a variety of planes in and out of there, from PA46 to Paris Jet. I love the idea of an A* but don't have enough runway for one, nor am I mentally prepared to maintain a 40 year old pressurized plane.

TIS old technology that is being phased out. It's on all G1000's w/o active traffic, I believe. Empty weight *is* with empty TKS reservoir.

You beat me to it! 50-60 gallons offers a lot of range. I've never been a fan of "Useful Load with Full Fuel " as a meaningful performance metric except when assessing long-distance ferry flights. I have found that with more than two adults and bags, landing fuel must be considered carefully especially with this particular configuration. M20TN MTOW=3368 M20TN MLW = 3200

yeah, there might be a few use cases where one small individual needs to fly really far, but that's a small market. As I work through loading on mine, it really is the landing weight that is the constraint most often. My understanding is that it's mostly a landing gear / drop test limitation, and if Mooney were to invest in new landing gear design, I'm confident that they'd sell a bunch more. MTOW Vso is well below the current 61KCAS maximum (currently 59), and when Cirrus went to the increased max gross weight, they got the Vso up to something like 64KCAS with a seat and chute redesign. It's probably not helpful for safety, but it sure is for utility. And if they could make it retrofittable, they could find willing buyers for this max gross weight increase among M20R and TN owners - maybe as much as 10% of airframe value?

Regarding Vref, and I state this as one of the largest-volume Diamond dealers for almost a decade, The dealer (more robust) version is usable principally as a checkbox for loan approvals. The valuations are naive. I do not know of a significant player in the Diamond dealer community that reports transactions to the company, and the valuation changes appear to be formulaic, not based on actual transactions. Moreover, the equipment valuation adjustments are incomplete or missing eg:FIKI vs STC TKS. They are different. There also is no consideration for how equipment plays together on a particular plane. I do not believe there are many FIKI / AC Acclaims out there, and that's for a good reason: useful load. Lastly, there simply are not very many good airplanes (diamond or mooney) for sale; nearly every Diamond I sold last year was sold privately - not on controller, and that's how I bought my acclaim in 2016. The best you can do as a buyer is to evaluate individual airplanes against each other and make what you believe are reasonable bids for the one you perceive best fits your mission and budget. The supply situation may loosen up in the near future since recapture is no longer such an issue on used aircraft trade-ups. With 100% expensing for business use aircraft, recapture on a sold aircraft is immediately offset by expensing on a more expensive trade-up plane. On paper, and without the benefit of looking for scary stuff in the logbooks, N79333 appears to me to be underpriced at $395,000. If you can live with the useful load and subject to a careful inspection, it would be a good choice, and I don't expect it would stay on the market for long.

Haven't tried LOP climb - might, but enjoying the big climb rate at full power. Did get to fly a TBM930 with a friend today - super impressive aircraft and short field capable. Now... to work out the CAPEX and the fuel situation.... Garmin NXi is mostly intuitive for me with thousands of G1000 hours. For someone coming from the new Garmin 650 / 750 panel mounts, it would probably be more so. -dan

I'm going to disagree with you on that point. I'm an APS acolyte, having drunk from the LOP cup many years ago when I owned a 231. If they are correct, then detonation is the primary operating wear factor. Full rich, high RPM, provided that the fuel flow is set properly, offers huge detonation margins. Further, they will tell you that "pulling it back" to a cruise climb power settings typically yields higher CHT's and internal cylinder pressures. Ditto 50* ROP, which is Mooney's recommended Best Power setting. Most continentals will require a mid-life top overhaul. You just bake that into the financial cake, and if yours doesn't: bonus! Go buy a bass boat. Mine made it to 850, though there was some early valve work by CMI. Since I've owned the plane for only 150 hours, I don't know much about how it was operated for most of its life. However, I plan to keep this plane (PA46 is too slow in climb and too big for what I have in my hangar), and the tuned induction TSIO550 runs beautifully as lean as you'd like. Interestingly, my top overhaul was done because of high oil consumption turns out the engine must have sat somewhere wet, as all six jugs were corroded Thankfully, the corrosion was limited to cylinders, and they were reusable. When we had it apart, the shop noticed wrist pins out of spec, and the con rod bushings had been pounded out of shape too. I'm glad we did the top. If I do overhaul at TBO 2200, and between now and then, it will be run 60-100* LOP and probably full power climb. I'll have a single datapoint to support or not th APS way -dan

Once we finally got the ff set up correctly, full rich get was unremarkably low. I'd have to pull the flight data to put a number on it. I flew in circles because my wanted to stay near the field while doing the first hour or two on the cylinders. This was a fairly extensive overhaul that took three attempts to get right (they said it was done, but it wasn't. ) will i I climb it this way all the time? I dunno. I'll talk to Walter and John at APS. From a wear and tear perspective, it's probably minimal. The engine runs at 2700 on the Cessna TTX and SR22T just fine. Mostly I did it to shorten summertime takeoff runs at our little 2500' strip. Mission accomplished on that matter. -Dan

wound up with a JPI Mini under the prop control. I'll post up a picture when I get back to the hangar. The verdict on 310HP: Totally Awesome. At approx 3100#, I was able to sustain 1700-2300 FPM @ 120 KIAS all the way to 16,000.