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I would suspect the altitude-compensating feature on the fuel pump and your engine set up procedure. A local A&P had ours all screwed up. Maxwell's crew straightened it out at last annual and now it's great. I would not leave it at 27 GPH at takeoff power. You may be so rich the engine is not making full takeoff power if you forget to lean, or if someone else gets in the plane. I've never noticed a fuel flow reduction in the climb. I'll look for you next time I get a chance and am headed up high. I do get a high fuel pressure alert at full power climbs somewhere above 15,000 feet. I believe it's because the pump is set a little rich for takeoff, 23 GPH, which is recommended for cooling and CHTs. So, I've started just reducing power to 34" MP or so when that happens, which is plenty of power for the last few thousand feet of climb. I don't understand the engine set up procedure well enough to say which screw needs to be turned on the pump, but MP, fuel pressure, and FF are all interconnected in there, and if any one is off, the engine does not run right.

I also don't use slips in the M20K, having read Mr. Kromer's article and the warnings in the POH. I have slipped it at high speeds (100 KIAS) to make an approach, and that works fine. But it's more effective to pull the power, drop the gear, pop the speed brakes, put in some flaps, and point the nose down. It's very easy to get a 1500 FPM descent in that configuration at 100 KIAS. Pull up at the desired altitude and you're quickly back at 75-80 KIAS for a standard approach. Alternatively, you can pull the power, drop the gear, put in full flaps, and raise the nose to 75-80 KIAS for a stable and sustained 1000 FPM descent "behind the power curve". Just don't forget to lower the nose and gain airspeed or add some power back in to come out of that descent, as you may not have enough extra energy to flare out of it for a smooth landing if you're heavy. If neither of those is sufficient, I prefer to just go around. If 1,000-1,500 feet a minute is not enough, you may as well fly a pattern or circle to land. If the runway is so short you have to slip to make it, I'll leave that to other pilots.

If I remember correctly, a 252 easily has the legs to cross the Atlantic on the north side with stops in Iceland and Canada. I think I'd do that (or pay someone to do that) before I let anyone start drilling rivets to remove the tail on a perfectly good plane and put it in a container.

The ones you get from the factory come on a USB drive and are not searchable. It's possible to print them (electronically) to another PDF file, then run OCR (optical character recognition) on them to make them searchable. Works great other than for the wiring diagrams in the back which lose their resolution. Very handy for finding what you need quickly.

Buffalo (H17) is a 3200 foot runway with no weather reporting or instrument approaches and trees on each end. 3200 will feel a little short in some M20 models, especially while you're learning the plane with a fresh PPL. I've never been in there, did not actually know it had an airport, but in addition to the runway length, the AFM supplement notes "Insuf rwy safety area byd each rwy end, fences, brush, trees." The short body Mooneys (C and E models) are pretty good short field performers, but only with proper technique. The mid and long bodies are not as good, even with proper technique and speeds. They will do book numbers, and 3200 feet is "enough", but if you ever come in fast or high, it would be easy to run out of runway. Especially if you throw in a stiff crosswind of unknown speed, other than guessing looking at the wind sock. I would consider that as a last choice until you know what you're doing in the plane. The hardest part about transitioning from a 172 will be, oddly enough, learning to slow down and fly the proper speeds on approach so you don't float or porpoise during landing. Lebanon (KLBO) may be a little farther but is an easy drive down I-44 and a nice airport.

Hello from Lake of the Ozarks. I'm a little familiar with Springfield - flew lots of approaches there for training. Speaking from experience, the way rural Missouri airports work, there are never hangars "available." If you buy a plane and tie it down, start paying the FBO, buy all your fuel there, have the local shop start doing all your maintenance, and get to know the people, all while letting them know you want a hangar really bad, you'll find one shortly. You may have to sublease or be in a community hangar for a while until a T-hangar or private box hangar comes up. The "wait lists" are full of people without planes and people who want to fill them up with boats and RVs and other junk. They're also usually pretty political. The airport managers can skip over people at will. Most places it's not policed and nobody ever even really knows. Just be friendly and pay your bills and you'll get put to the top of the list pretty quick. If you wait to buy the plane until you have the hangar lease, you'll be waiting forever. Also don't forget to check other options. Springfield Downtown, Bolivar, Monett, or Lebanon might work short-term and are all pretty nice little airports with some hangars. Good luck with the PPL and plane search.

The proper way to diagnose this is to start at the battery and verify proper voltage all the way to the starter to find your faulty component. Requires a mulitimeter and some patience, and maybe a helper to verify voltage while trying to crank the starter. Check all connections along the way for security and corrosion. A loose connection could cause what you're seeing. I would also check the main grounding cable in the tail, bad grounds cause lots of problems. Having been through this recently, I would suspect your starter solenoid. It is mounted on the firewall in front of the co-pilot's footwell, most likely inside the cabin, or possibly in the engine compartment on some models. It may be intermittently working, or providing enough connection to only work sometimes. If you have 12v to the solenoid, but not after, it's your problem. If you have 12v to the starter while the key is in the crank position, it's your problem. Drawings and part numbers for the solenoid are below. I found that neither 24059 nor 6041H-105A are readily available and ended up getting a Lamar FAA/PMA replacement from Aircraft Spruce: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/sts-12s24s.php?clickkey=8060 I found a lot of bad and corroded old wiring, old crusty solenoids, and a couple NAPA auto parts solenoids installed by A&P's that match the 24059 part number but are now sold as tractor parts. Replaced it all with FAA/PMA items and now it cranks better than it ever has. Good luck!

I did a write-up on this and posted some pics not too long ago, available here: You may want to avoid zip tying the oxygen line to any wires, and plan to protect it from damage. Good luck, still love my setup.

Yes. I've had a Garmin 496 on the yoke, and after that an iPad. I can tell the difference and the plane feels more stable without them, to me. I value your and everyone else's contributions. No effort required you don't want to give. I've read many of your posts over the years and gained some value from them. I do still feel entitled to have my own opinions based on my personal experience. Hope you're having a good evening.

Looks like that will all be quite the upgrade. Good luck and I hope it goes smooth. I'm curious - why would you need an Aera 760 with a panel like this? I found after the install of a G500Txi and GNC355, there's no need to touch anything outside the panel. If I had a GTN 750 and 650 as well, it seems like there would be even less need for a portable. Just for a better total redundancy option if you lose the entire panel and all of the battery backups on your certified instruments run out? At this point I open Garmin Pilot on my phone, but don't use it for anything other than its automatic logbook entry feature on a normal flight. Sometimes to study a chart if I don't want to put it up on the big screen in the panel for whatever reason. I won't mount anything on the yoke. These beautiful planes fly with perfect balance and precision as Al Mooney designed them until you bolt several ounces (or a couple pounds) of plastic cantilevered out into the cabin. Not for me, thanks.

The different TSIO-360 models in Mooneys have different max RPM and MP limits. Mine is a TSIO-360-MB, used in most 252's, and so it's 36" and 2700. I believe most TSIO-360-LB and TSIO-360-GB engines used in 231 models used 2700 and 40", maybe modified to 38 or 36" with the installation of an intercooler. I don't fly those so am not as familiar but there will probably be a more knowledgeable person along shortly. My plane came from the factory with one of these, but got an MB engine via STC. The latest K models, the 252 Encores, got a TSIO-360-SB that uses 39" MP and 2600 RPM to produce 10 more horsepower. Some earlier 252's were converted to this engine via STC. It would be wise to consult the POH for the plane you're flying, and any supplements associated with intercooler or wastegate STC's, to verify your maximum rated power settings. I do not believe I've ever seen any limitations on duration for max power in a K model Mooney.

231 with a TSIO-360-MB here. Full power climb, 2700 RPM and 36" MP, at 120+ KIAS leads to lower CHTs, lower TIT, quicker climb to altitude, less fuel burned overall, and shorter trip time overall compared to "cruise climb" which is in the POH and was formerly taught to be 2500 RPM and 32" MP. I no longer use "cruise climb" settings on initial climb out. I will use it if I need to go up 3-4 thousand feet in cruise for some reason just to avoid major configuration changes. In noise sensitive areas, decreasing RPM to 2500 supposedly reduces 90% or more of the noise your plane is putting out, so there's one reason to pull it back shortly after takeoff. I've also heard it said that RPM = wear, and so running lower RPM in the climb is better for your engine. That makes some sense to me. But, in my particular plane, I do not believe the decrease in revolutions is enough to offset the increased temperatures and additional minutes added to the trip that result from reducing RPM for the climb.

There is no "typical" or "boilerplate" lease form for airport hangars in my experience. It's all negotiable and they vary widely. I believe at many smaller airports they are often done by attorneys who don't practice in aviation law, or by people without attorneys at all. Some allow the tenant to remove the hangar building at the end of the lease, but give them the option to leave it and let it revert to the airport authority. That's usually because the airport authority doesn't want to pay property taxes on the building, or wants the tenant to pay them. Others, probably more common, say the building becomes property of the authority upon completion of construction, but the tenant has leasehold rights until the end of the term. This puts the property tax bill on the authority, in theory. Sometimes they say the tenant owns it until the end of the lease, but then the authority takes ownership, but say the tenant can't remove it during their ownership period. Some actually require the tenant to remove the building and restore the site to pre-construction status (e.g. bare earth and utility lines removed). I have no idea why. Sometimes there is a "right of first refusal" at the end of the lease meaning the tenant can always keep the hangar as long as they'll match or beat any other offer to rent it. It's not all that common. More often it just says things like "the parties may negotiate the rent amount after the end of the lease term" which actually doesn't mean anything at all. Sometimes it says that rent will increase to "fair market value" at the end of the lease, which is a recipe for a disagreement or abuse by one party or the other. The more urban the area and the busier the airport, the more formal the leases get, and the more they favor the airport authority. I will also say most of the 50-year leases I've seen are older, meaning done a long time ago. More recent ones are commonly 20-30 years, for whatever reason. And it's not uncommon for ground rent to increase or start being due in year 20 or 25. This makes it hard to amortize and justify the cost of a building, at today's construction prices, and is really slowing down hangar construction in a lot of places. A lot of the time the person caught by "surprise" when the lease ends and reverts back to the authority didn't build the hangar, but instead "bought" it quite a ways into its term and didn't read the paperwork or hire a lawyer to read it and explain it to them. Those are usually the ones who are most upset when the authority comes by and tells them they now have to start paying per month for the hangar they thought they "own."

I still wish someone would post the name of the new decision, if there is one. I have a real estate law practice and have spent some time in this area. The FAA opinions are often necessary to share with the airport authority to get them to allow development. You may be dealing with a small group of city council members who are not experienced with complicated commercial ground leases. Their attorney may have never seen the issue either. When approached by someone who wants to build a hangar, they may think they need to "negotiate strongly" and insist on short-term leases and high ground rents that make it impossible to build economically. They tend to quickly forget they're getting an improvement that should last 100+ years built at their airport at no cost to them. Lately I've been seeing some airport authorities push back for any lease terms beyond 20 years. I've had an "aerospace engineer" tell me the FAA requires payment of "fair market value" for ground rent, to the tune of several thousand dollars per year, under a building built by the tenant (they do not, it says so right in the FAA's published guidelines). This type of thing is really holding aviation back and is the reason so many airports have vacant land sitting there unused while pilots have trouble finding hangar space. This is one area of aviation law where I can say the FAA really helps the pilots. All their guidance basically says, don't give the ground away, but otherwise, let people build hangars and they don't want to get involved, other than approving the location and height to make sure it's not an obstacle to takeoffs and landings. The Part 16 enforcement cases I've seen even all make sense - they will get involved if the airport is leasing ground to non-aviation businesses when there are aviation businesses who want the space. The email quoted above sounds like this decision would be another good decision for pilots wanting to build hangars. But you can't really rely on someone else's summary of an opinion.

This seems to be a copy/paste of an email from someone at AOPA. Can you post the actual Part 16 ruling by the FAA, if there is one? Or if you have the docket number, that would work. I'm interested in this topic but what is in here is not something that can be evaluated or understood.

More worried that it won't be done correctly, the numbers will be wrong and unreliable, and the logs will be inaccurate.

1982 M20K here. 41.9 CG. Very hard to get it out of CG, although it tends to run nose-heavy. Flies better with some weight in the back. I have some doubts about the W&B numbers after all the changes. Have considered getting it reweighed. Took at least 25lbs of wires and mess out during the last panel install. Sheets like the one posted here have made me reluctant to let the plane see the scales...

Yeah, I just meant the poles connected by the switch. What you said is probably more technically correct.

This is the replacement master solenoid I bought: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/skytec07-03565.php It looks and feels very high quality and has good reviews, both here on Mooneyspace and elsewhere, as far as I can tell. I will put the diode back on it, in the proper direction, and see what happens. Also ordered a new Concorde RG-35AXC battery to replace the Gill, proper milspec wires, AMP wire terminals, and a hydraulic hex crimper for the 2-gauge wires. Trying to make a scheduled trip happen on 12/28 so not taking any chances. Recently had to replace the starter solenoid, found that a shop had previously installed a cheap version now available only at NAPA, although it has the same part number as the Mooney parts catalog (24059). Learning more and more you have to watch what you let someone install on your plane. It lasted about a year and a half. When it failed, the prop started turning slowly as soon as the master was turned on, even with mags off and key out of the ignition. Mooney has a SB to replace some old solenoids for that reason. Got my attention for sure. That may have been why I immediately blamed the master solenoid this time. SB is below. I would not install a new old stock Cole-Hersee solenoid. I think the new Lamar FAA/PMA units seem like the way to go.

Close, but it looks like that's a 205A (400 amp), not a 105A (200 amp). There is one 105A listed on Ebay that says "New" but the photos look a long way from new. I'm comfortable with the SkyTec / Lamar replacement now that I know about the flyback diode. I was just confused because it looked like a jumper wire between the switched poles. I couldn't understand how it would even work like that. In fact, the diode prevents power passing through which makes a little more sense, although I'm still not sure I 100% understand how it does. I did however just hook the old solenoid up to my 12v truck battery using jumper cables and it seems to be working. So investigation continues. I think it's either the battery or a bad wire connection. Given the state of the wires I found behind the battery, a bad connection seems possible. I guess the old solenoid will stay on the shelf as a spare. It's looking a little rough and corroded anyways. Thanks for your thoughts and help.

Thank you. Had never heard of that, learned something today. I'll put it back on just like it was. The battery is 1.5 years old and was sitting on a maintenance charger, but I'll keep that in mind as well. I guess it could be bad.

The master solenoid has failed on my 1982 M20K. When the master switch is turned on, the panel stays dark and the solenoid just clicks repeatedly for a while, then stops. I was able to get it to kick on while connected to external power at 14v, but as soon as external power was removed, the solenoid went back to a failed state and clicked repeatedly, then stopped. This solenoid is bolted to the side of the battery box in the tail. The parts manual says it is a 6041-H-105A, which matches the one that came out of the plane. That item is no longer available anywhere I can find, except used salvage items. I've obtained a SkyTec 12V-STS-M12 FAA/PMA replacement solenoid. I thought this would be a simple swap. However, the old solenoid had a strange jumper wire running between the switch poles of the solenoid. It's marked with a "F" flag and has some kind of resistor in it (pic below). I don't understand what it does and I can't find any wiring schematics for the old solenoid. I also can't find any wiring diagrams or schematics in the parts manual or service manual for the plane. If I understand how the new solenoid works, and I think I do, I wouldn't expect this jumper wire to be necessary, and expect it might even prevent it from working. Can anybody tell me what it does, and whether it should be re-installed on the new solenoid? I've found some poorly done wiring back there behind the battery that I am cleaning up and taking care of, so I'm questioning what I'm seeing before I put it all back like it was. Thanks in advance.

Looks great. I buy ABS plastic filament in rolls on Amazon for 3D printing. Might be a good alternative to sourcing used Leggos and comes in lots of colors. Would be a lot like TIG welding I'd think. Never tried it myself.

Rigging can be complicated. What shows up as rudder slightly out of center while holding a course can be a misaligned gear door, an aileron issue, or a rudder issue. Our plane was like that when we got it, and would also always want to drop the right wing if you released the yoke in straight and level flight. An experienced Mooney shop went through it with proper rigging boards and got it flying straight. Big improvement in stability, especially on approach. I believe they started with the gear doors, then set the ailerons, then the rudder. Just starting at the back and changing the rudder can just mask other problems and put you further out of straight and level. I would be hesitant to let an A&P who hasn't done it start messing with the rigging. Also - what is strapped to your yoke? Flying with a big heavy iPad bolted on there and levered out 3" into your lap can throw the rigging off too, if it's not centered.

Did the GFC500 with yaw dampener in 2019 when both our King HSI and KAP-150 autopilot broke at the same time. Would 100% do it again.