adrian

The sensitivity is one of the only downsides. I used to be happy enough to daydream while flying 2 degrees off heading or 20 feet from my cleared altitude. Now that the displays are digital, I find myself wanting it to be perfect - which is harder work!

I put a JPI930 in my Mooney. It was a restoration project, and most of the engine instruments were dead as were the fuel gauges. It was easy to install, and has been almost faultless. The only problem I have had is a flight with corrupt data, which caused me problems when trying to download to a USB memory stick. Calibrating the fuel flow took a bit of fiddling, but now works well. The OAT is generally warmer than the temperature displayed on my Aspen PFD, but I think that is probably due to the positioning of the probe. It was a problem the first time I picked up ice in what I thought were non-icing conditions - but I have learnt to just look at the Aspen instead. I am also fortunate enough to own a Super Decathlon. I put an EI CGR-30P into that earlier this year. The display is pretty small, and some of the small warnings can be hard to read. For example, there is a very clever warning that lights up if it detects a problem with either magneto - but it is tiny; having said that, at least it is there - the JPI can't do it. I find the controls a bit more fiddly than the JPI, especially when adding a few gallons of fuel. I haven't tried using it at night, and haven't tried finding LOP with it - I would need better injectors to be able to run the Decathlon's engine lean. If I was choosing again for the Mooney, I would choose the JPI930 again, because of the primary fuel quantity display.

If you want reasonably reliable IFR travel, it really helps to have the toys. So you have two real choices: buy a new, or nearly-new, airplane which comes fully equipped for today's world, or upgrade something old. I couldn't afford to buy a nice SR22, but my upgraded M20E gives me 80% of the capability for 20% of the capital cost - for 2 occupants, at least. I wouldn't get back what I've put into it if I sold it, so unless I am forced to sell or am able to buy a much more capable airplane, mine's not going to be on the market. I suspect that is the case with a lot of the nicer old Mooneys. I am surprised that a market hasn't developed to refurbish old airplanes. It's happening at the top end of the GA market, thanks to Nextant, but never seems to have taken off at the lower end. A $25,000 E or F can be turned into a fabulous $100,000 machine which, of course, can never depreciate by more than $100,000! $150,000 could make a perfect J, and $200-250,000 would give a perfect 252, which gives away almost nothing in capability when compared to a $750,000 new Cirrus. There are a lot of people who want to fly who can afford those amounts. Indeed, there are a lot who are losing that much each year on depreciation of a new Cirrus. I guess they just don't want to fly older airplanes.

As everyone else has said IFR training in your Mooney will be just fine. There are a few challenges in an E that you don't get in some other aircraft - particularly the low gear and flap speeds, the manual gear and manual trim... the workload in a go around from minimums is much higher than in many other aircraft. But you'll get good at it doing it with the right instructor. Was there ice or storms in that IMC? If not, I think you were very badly let down by your instructor. Training under the hood or with goggles is not the same. The only way to get comfortable flying in IMC is to fly in IMC.

I'd rather have the chute! By my reckoning 14 out of the last 100 fatal Mooney accidents have been attempted forced landings that didn't work out. Either hitting an obstacle, landing on rough ground, or spinning in while trying to stretch a glide to a landable area. It's a similar story for other high performance aircraft. Without a parachute it's a game of Russian roulette. You have some control over your fate, but you have a very good chance that your fate is going to be death. With the chute you lose the airplane and you don't control where you arrive, but nobody has ever died if they pulled the chute when they were high enough and slow enough, and nobody on the ground has ever been hurt. Plenty of people on the ground have been hurt by high-energy forced landings in unsuitable places. I love my Mooney, but if I had to have an engine failure I'd much rather be in a Cirrus!

I could be up for that.

They sent a copy to the UK publisher (who also took the picture). He's a friend, and passed it on to me. Much as I like this issue, I don't think I'll be subscribing!

It looks like I'm flying "freely", but in fact I have rarely worked so hard trying to stay in close formation with the camera ship as we turned so the photographer could get just the right shot! I love the result, though - well worth the effort.

They may not have had a clue what it is (though I like to think that they just selected the very best Mooney!) but there was no theft involved. They asked the British publisher for Mooney pictures and articles, and paid before use.

I think they bought the picture from a UK magazine that featured my aircraft on its cover last year. I wish I'd known in advance. I would have paid to run an ad saying "Beat the queues! Own the first Mooney in China! No premium over factory list prices!!"

Well, not quite.... but a very glossy Chinese language GA magazine has been produced, and to celebrate the Chinese acquisition of Mooney they decided to feature a Mooney on the front cover. They could have chosen the latest Acclaim or Ovation, but that would have been boring. So instead they chose a very nice picture of me flying my 1966 M20E over the coast of Maine. Perhaps they will be restarting production of the E?

I had to go inside for a while, to escape from the noise of all the wretched lawnmowers!

Ben, you live in one of the more anal bits of Europe! There were plenty of lawn owners going today in France, in the very short gap between lunch and evening aperitif!

I plan to be there on Thursday. Possibly also Friday morning. By car, sadly.

Nice report, and a great looking panel. The MVP50 and EDM930 are both great pieces of equipment. I flew with the MVP50T, and it has a large number of spare channels for recording pretty much anything you can imagine wanting to record. The 50P would have been great in the Mooney, but I chose the JPI. Just one small question: Does the clock that's permanently displayed on the EDM930 not satisfy that requirement?

And another European here! British expat based in Lyon, France, with an M20E that I bought and restored in America and flew to Europe last August. I have spent most of the last 3 years working in the States, in Maine, where I keep a Super Decathlon for aerobatic fun. Before the Mooney I had a Jodel on skis for flying in the Alps, but the Mooney is rather more practical for going places.

It doesn't work!

Hi! Thanks for the comments about the panel. The picture was taken on my very first flight away from the local area after restoring the airplane. I think we were just coming up to JFK on the way from Maine to Sun 'n' Fun last year. To answer some questions - - I don't know how the lower panel got to be so shiny! It was that way when I bought the plane. Everything else got changed, but the the polished lower panel was just right as it was. - 88 gallons of fuel is what you get from fitting Monroy long range tanks. They were nice to have for the flight to France (the trip could be done without difficulty using standard fuel - but options are nice to have), but they were mostly fitted so that I can fill up the tanks on the rare occasions I come across affordable fuel in Europe! It's $11.60 / gallon at my home field... - The clothes pin is an FAA approved, PMA'd, Analogue RPM Stability Enhancer! The prop governor has been overhauled since that photo was taken, but I need a new prop control. Engine vibration causes a gradual clockwise rotation of the vernier control. I can either pay a few hundred dollars to fix it... or not! - Yes, I need an autopilot! But hand flying for long hours over the ocean in IMC is good for the soul. One day I will bite the bullet, but I'm hoping that by then I'll be able to get an attitude-based digital autopilot with a flight director for a lot less money than I'd have to pay today for a rate-based S-Tec. (I'm probably deluded, but I like to be optimistic.) The whole panel, indeed the whole restoration, is probably over the top. However, the airplane - which hadn't flown for almost 17 years when I bought it - was basically in excellent shape, I had a great A&P working for me with a lot of time on his hands, and I had most of the avionics already; only the engine monitor was purchased new. So for about the same cost as a nice, ready-to-travel M20E I got a nearly perfect one which is just ideal for travelling alone or with one passenger in Europe. Despite being nearly 50 years old, it's impossible to beat the combination of speed, operating costs and short take off and landing.

Sorry - I don't know. It was almost like that when I bought it, before doing the panel work. A few minutes work with some metal polish got it to its current condition.

In the US, at my home base (when I'm in the US!) of KBXM.

Thanks José. A lot of thought went into it, and I was lucky to have two extremely skilled (and nice!) people to make it reality - Scott Royal, my A&P/IA whose work is second to none, and Dan Boillard, an excellent avionics tech. It's a shame I had to keep the ADF needle, but it keeps the European bureaucrats happy.

The 530 fits just fine in the centre stack. I have a 530 and a 430, and there is plenty of space left. Here's a link to a picture: http://n822e.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/p1010431.jpg

I did my commercial rating last year in my Mooney. I used the King videos to learn some of the theory, and the Gleim book to run through the essentials the night before the test. There were no questions in the exam that required use of the E6B (there were plenty where I could have used it, but it was always possible to identify the right answer without it, or at least to eliminate the wrong answers). I may have just lucked out with the questions that came up! For the checkride, I never unfolded my paper chart. We went pretty much straight into the performance manouvers, then back to the pattern for several landings. While it was fun doing the test in my own airplane, it would have been easier to master power off approaches to precision landings in something draggier. I had done an Instrument checkride with the same DPE a few weeks before the Commercial checkride, which may have influenced his decision to dispense with the dead reckoning navigation so quickly.

Just as relevant as engine time since overhaul is when the overhaul was done, and how much use it gets. I would much prefer 1500 SMOH in 2008 to 300 SMOH in 1998. Things deteriorate with age, and one of the biggest problems with light aircraft is lack of use. The ones that get flown a lot generally aren't for sale, often because their owners have spent way more on them than they are worth. I bought an E that had sat for a long time. I knew what I was getting into, and the engine had been pickled for storage and turned out to be in great shape. But with a lot of years since overhaul, it needed new hoses, overhauled mags, new engine mounts, new crankshaft seal, new suspension discs, etc. etc. Having now spent almost twice what I could sell it for, I have a fabulous airplane which isn't for sale! Another example - at the end of 2012 I bought a Super Decathlon. 270 hours SMOH in 2007. Unfortunately (as we thought at the time) my co-owner had a prop strike and the engine had to be torn down. It had significant internal corrosion, most likely caused by 3 years of under use in Florida before being sold to the guy we bought it from. So do beware of overhaul times; they don't tell the full story.

Mine sat on the ground for 16 years. The owner sprayed it regularly with ACF50, and inhibited the engine - always intending to fly it again one day. He spent more on hangarage during those 16 years than I paid for the plane. I had two huge advantages - an A&P/IA and an avionics tech who work for me and could tinker with the Mooney between other projects, and a pile of good avionics looking for a new home. It took 3 days to get it ready for a ferry flight from Florida to Maine, and about a year to fully restore it. I now have a good-as-new M20E which this year made flights from Maine to Sun 'n' Fun, to Oshkosh and a one way trip across the Atlantic to France. For the right buyer, an abandoned plane can make a lot of sense. But sadly for most people they make no sense at all; if I had had to pay commercial rates for labor and avionics, my aircraft would probably have cost me close to $150,000.... and in today's market I would be lucky if I could sell it for more than $50,000.