Taracka

As a reminder I have lots of M20C parts and other aircraft parts listed on EBay and will be listing more in the near future. Since I sold my Mooney I no longer need to keep the parts as spares. To see these items go to EBay and search for the user rtaracka. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hello, I’ve listed a bunch of aircraft parts on EBay. I recently sold my 62 M20C and am working on selling the cache of parts I retained just in case. Some of these are Mooney specific, others aren’t. I will be listing more parts as time permits and intend to list parts on this forum as well also time permitting. You may search on EBay by my eBay screen name rtaracka. If you are interested in any of the items you may purchase them on EBay or email me at taracka@skyvalleyltd.com with any questions or offers. Thank you for looking, Rich

I am not aware of any lipo batteries that are approved for any certified aircraft. The SBS J-16 is approved for several models, just not any Mooney’s. This makes it easier to get field approvals on other types of aircraft. While the amp hour capacity of the Powersafe battery is less than the Concorde I have installed now, so is the demand with all the lighting changes to LED. also I have no intention of flying this aircraft IFR which is usually where they draw the line on field approving these batteries. Besides, if I change my mind and decide to fly IFR I could switch back.

Hello, I’m thinking about seeking a field approval to install a Powersafe SBS J-16 battery in my M20C and wondering if anyone has done this and has a copy of the field approved 337 I could use as a basis? thanks, Rich

So First off, I flew the other morning down to the Seattle mode c ring to confirm my suspicion that the issue is local radar interference. We have two maritime shore based radar stations here and I noticed the mode 3A failures occurred near them as well as on the ground. The report for my flight today showed zero errors. It seems my mode c is hit and miss on the ground (today luckily it was hit), probably a product of marginal reception of the nearest atc facility. I received an email also the last week from the FAA guy stating they are investigating the following issues and that I should fly as normal until they get it figured out. They acknowledge there is an issue with mode 3A errors with the Skybeacon such as when the aircraft is on the ground in a non-coverage area and the transponder isn’t being interrogated, and yes, you will fail a test flight if this happens, they don’t care that it wasn’t in “rule” airspace. They are working with Uavionix engineers on this issue. The FAA guy also indicated they need to have an internal meeting and determine what an acceptable level of performance is outside of “rule” airspace. This confuses me since it isn’t required in those areas. He said he would advise me when they have determined this.

Immelmann, I had two failed flights before the third one that passed getting me the rebate and yes, they counted those. I have corresponded with the FAA guy and he’s saying it’s a setup issue. I will try working with Uavionix to see if we can come up with a solution. So far, they think it’s an Ads-b fringe area issue. What I’ve found after numerous flights is the only transponder monitor threshold setting that works at least some of the time is 39%. With this setting I’ve had four passing flights and three with mode 3A fails ranging from 1 to 22 percent. A transponder check was done very recently and everything checked out on the transponder. While I realize the AT150 is a thirty year old transponder, Uavionix claims their product will work with ALL transponders. I will update as I know more.

About a month ago, I installed a Uavionix Skybeacon on my M20C. Initially there was an issue with the Transponder monitor threshold needing adjustment to work with my Narco AT 150 transponder. After 4 test flights I got that worked out, passed, and got the rebate. About a week ago, I received a certified letter from Mike Smith at the FAA in Washington DC stating my ads-b failed to comply with equipment performance requirements and I had 45 days to fix it or the airplane would be subject to filter which prevents processing of ads-b data. After speaking with Uavionix tech support, they feel the problem is fringe area poor reception. The FAA guy says it’s the device configured improperly. The Skybeacon has short duration “mode 3A” failures which seems to be consistent with being at low altitude where my transponder isn’t being interrogated and thus not sending out a squawk code for the Skybeacon to see. I’m stuck in the middle of this and am considering returning the Skybeacon and going with another option since I have spent tons of time on this and most of my rebate on fuel. Has anyone on here had a similar problem? Rich

I spoke with Uavionix tech support today. They reviewed my PAPR report and confirmed it was perfect and they indicated it was a technical problem on the FAA end. They sent a review request to the FAA contractor help desk and will hopefully succeed in getting a GAIRS generated.

Transponder monitor threshold is a setting in advanced settings. It is default set at 42 percent but in some cases is needs to be adjusted to work with some transponders.

I had sent an email to the address indicated on the website and got an automated reply which included the same link you just gave. I tried it yesterday and still no GAIRS report. Repeating the flight and submitting correctly the first time may be easier than dealing with this error.

I requested it via the rebate site after the other site and it still didn’t work. It will only give me the PAPR report. It’s like the first site screwed up the system somehow.

No but I could describe.

I forgot to mention. I also went to the correct site and reattempted request with the same result, no GAIRS report.

So yesterday I installed a SkyBeacon on my M20C. The first test flight failed requiring an adjustment to the transponder monitor threshold. The second flight passed, at least I think so since there were no red flagged areas in the PAPR report. The problem is apparently I requested the report from the wrong redirect and it didn’t email me a GAIRS report. Since there are no humans at the FAA it sounds like I’ll be waiting a while to resolve this. Any ideas???

Thanks guys for the helpful info and yes I lube and clean the gear religiously since I operate from a grass field and things get dirty quick. Once The J-bar gets to the point where it starts to build resistance, I am able to latch it with one hand without much trouble and I don’t consider my arm to be particularly strong. It might be interesting to measure with a scale for reference sake. If I had to guess I’d say it takes maybe 25 pounds to reach the latch point but I’d just be guessing.