pinerunner

I'll have to check my logbook to be sure since the bisquits were changed when I had my first annual. No other airport has given me the little jolt when I crossed a seam and I only have felt it at that airport with the Mooney.

One of the things the Mooney isn't famous for is rugged landing gear. Its relatively simple to maintain if you don't mind spending a grand for a bunch of hockey pucks but its very stiff. As a short field exercise I went into an airport in Maine (Twitchell's) that I knew well for almost my whole life. I had flown a 172 there a couple months previous working toward my biannual. When I touched down I started hearing (and feeling) a bang, bang, bang. Every seam in the runway which I had never particularly noticed before. Despite my desire to show off my "flying Porsche" I've never gone back there. At the smoother airports I've been flying into I've never noticed just how stiff the Mooney gear is. So I'm sure if you start dropping it hard on the mains it's not a good idea. Despite what some others have said it probably speeds up the formation of fuel leaks. Our tough wing structure can't be completely rigid; there has to be some flex. Drop it hard on the nose and get a prop strike; you gotta set down on the mains. It's one of the things those B-plane owners trumpet about as an advantage of their utility planes with rugged landing gear. I didn't get my Mooney to be a bush plane. I wouldn't be afraid of a grass strip but I'd be very picky about which one I went into. Mooneys are for pilots.

I have a UBG-16 and am very happy with it. I haven't bothered learning all the in-flight tricks it can do and instead make heavy use of the data dump capability. I do my deep thinking over the data on the ground. I have files covering right back to the day it was installed. Besides EGT and CHT on all cylinders I added in fuel flow which makes it easy to get my GAMI spread. Data-dumping is the feature I wouldn't want to do without and fuel flow is right up there for me as important to have. Cute tricks in the air? I think its better to look out the window than putz with electronics. Keep it as simple as possible.

One thing that will give King a bit more staying power than other GA challengers to Garmin is their existing market in the larger bizjets. I don't know much about that but I would assume that most of the technology in the 770 comes from its big brother avionics just repackaged. Why reinvent the wheel? They may be able to afford to be patient.

Noone is stepping forward and admitting to ownership of a King 770 and how much they like it. I'm starting to be converted. So along the same line of questioning; Is the new Garmin GTN 650/750 series the best choice in terms of both resale value and funtionality. I'm leaning towards the smaller GTN 650 both due to size in my panel and price. It's less expensive than the King 770 and takes up less panel real estate. I'm also starting to believe my mechanic. Maybe a couple of years from now anyone thinking of buying a Mooney (or any other plane) will look in trade a plane and make up two lists: planes for sale with Garmin GTN technology and those without. I'm looking at training publications to help me settle in to my final decision. Got plenty of time.

I suspect these are asking prices gleaned from trade a plane. Since I easily talked my seller down by $4000 from $39,000 to $35,000, I suspect that actual selling prices might be a bit lower. The fellow I bought from had been trying to sell for a year.

I like this kind of thinking. You can add quite an extra margin of safety by scoping out the places you fly to and from and considering what plan B might be in an emergency. Note: I was trying to quote ryoder. There seems to be a disconnect between my wife's browser and this website.

I'm planning on upgrading my Nav capabilities to WAAS GPS in about a year. I've been getting by happily with an old KSN 80 VOR/DME/RNAV but with ADS-B coming GPS is in order and I don't want to bother with a non-WAAS capable installation. I like what I've been reading about the King KSN-770, especially that it has physical knobs as well as touchscreen. My mechanic basicly told me that no matter how good it is, how well it performs, or how much it fits my preferences, it would be dumb to buy it or anything from King because of the hit I'd take on resale. He believes King has lost the respect they once had, can't get it back, and I should only look at Garmin if I care about the dollars and sense of it. I'd be looking at a Garmin 430W (gotta have WAAS) or 650. Opinions? Can King come back to general aviation? Is touchscreen-only control just fine, even when it's a little bumpy? I'm old-fashioned and like knobs but could change. I don't, however, change just for the sake of changing.

I'd have to throw in a caveat though. On that same cold winter day with a low density altitude allowing you to generate 100% of rated HP LOP you could probably get 110%-120% ROP.

I would watch all the Savy Aviator (Mike Busch) vids and Pelican Perch (John Deakins) articles listed which cover it all pretty well. While they are certainly are proponents of LOP they also point out that you need ROP during takeoff which combines high power with poor cooling. I've seen advice that you insist that your mechanic set it a little RICHER that the published setting to give extra protection on takeoff; I think that implies that you'll be pretty active with the mixture control in all phases of flight and not just run it full rich all the time. In my experience I can get the same speed with lower fuel burn and lower CHT's using LOP up to the point where I hit the max power possible LOP. Maximum power from our engines isn't even possible with LOP so if I really want to see how close I can get to my M20E's annoyingly low redline it'll be full throttle, maximum RPM, and 100 ROP ( and watch the CHT's like a hawk). Since it often a little choppy where I fly I like to stay in the green and so am normally LOP in cruise. My EI UBG-16 will do data dumps which I use a lot. I think it's better to do your deep thinking on the ground and just fly the plane when in the air. Once I had experimented with LOP at lower power settings where you can do little harm I basicly do a "big pull" from a given MP RPM setting and set the fuel flow (my favorites is 8 GPH for local and 10 GPH when on a trip which gets me closer to the yellow). We have a lot of choices with respect to speed vs fuel efficiency and its worth the trouble to learn as much as you can and then put it to the test in the air. You may be able to skip one fuel stop by going a little slower and save the time you would have been putzing around on the ground. Many like it as simple as possible and some like it more complicated.

I think I'll try this. It's a lot like what McGee described.

When I first got my M20E I had already found HOT STARTS M20E Interview with David McGee on the www.mooneypilots.com website. I followed the advice there and usually get it to start on the second try. If I let it sit too long (about 20 min or more) then I flood it on purpose and use the flooded start from the same interview. Never had a problem with the cold start. One key piece of advice there is on shut down set the throttle so you have 1000 RPM (I use 1100 RPM) and then pull the mixture. Don't change the throttle before the next start.

If what you're literally after is greatest time in the air per gallon then I believe you want to fly at the best glide speed. Someone else said that and it made sense to me. I've read a couple of stories of Mooneys staying aloft for some crazy amount of time like 10 hours or so. I think you might be on the back side of the power curve too, so if you get in a bit of a downdraft you'll HAVE to add power and not just lift the nose to maintain altitude. Now if you're really nuts about stretching your time in the air you might hunt for an updraft and pull the power back even further. You then need a good pee pot, which I haven't wanted to bother with.

It sounds a lot like my E model only a year newer. I'm happy with mine and don't have J model envy (much). Ditto what they all said about prepurchase. I'm glad to have the fuel injection and option to go LOP but was looking at C's too back when I was shopping. I get comments when I take off about how fast it climbs out (often alone and tanks half full). Apparently it makes the C172's look sad.

Does anyone have curtains?

Has anyone flown into this little airport. Reports mention numerous cracks in the runway and one other little airport really made me cringe when I crossed the cracks there. The identifier is RIchmond 08R.

I forget the name but the Harley Davison shop sells something specifically for cleaning bugs off plexiglass.

The precision piloting skills are amazing but I doubt that its more difficult in the larger aircraft than in F-16's, just a lot more expensive. What was even more amazing to me was their different backgrounds having served in different branch's of the military and from different countries too. Their professionalism and communication to put it all together was the most impressive thing to me.

I agree with the NTSB; it took two pilots in error to have this accident. Both assuming that since they had called it the airspace it was theirs and not paying enough attention out the window. Both with opportunities to see and avoid up to the point where they were established in each others blind spot. There's an automotive rule I've heard where the last one with an opportunity to avoid an accident is at fault. I can't decide which of these two had the last chance to avoid this accident. I find it hard to pin the fault (for all the good pinning fault ever did).

What I like about all these responses is the degree to which they seem to disagree, which I think reflects the real world situation. I'm working on my instrument rating and wonder about this stuff. It seems pretty clear to me that ATC is responsible for providing you with clearance from other instrument traffic but if you're in VFR conditions there can easily be other aircraft around that are uncontrolled and you have to see and avoid. I haven't seen anything in the FAR's that gave a plane with an IFR approach clearance the "right-of-way" over existing VFR traffic at a small, uncontrolled airport (at a controlled airport of course the tower sorts this stuff out for you). Would calling a straight-in approach from 10 miles out entitle you to shut down traffic while there might have been time for a couple of landings or take-offs by others? I don't think so. Etiquette is the right word I think. I've understood for a long time that a piper cub (or even a Mooney) shouldn't cut off a Lear jet or small airliner at an uncontrolled airport even if they technically have the right of way. The expense of making big iron circle around makes it sensible in my mind to try help them and not hinder them with my behavior. Flying a much more complex airplane on an IFR clearance they might not be watching as close as they should in VFR conditions and so turning in front of them could be setting yourself up. My rule of thumb is "try not to surprise the other pilots"

OK I'll risk getting flamed. I'd rather not use power settings that get me into that propeller restriction zone (2000-2350 with my newer prop according to Hartzell). Up to now I have been in that range a bit on down wind. The solution is to use lower RPM's but that's not how I was taught. It's pretty much what Deakins reccomends in Pelican Perch. So I'm considering this. As you drop the MP and the propeller comes out of governance and less power brings it into the restricted zone I'm figuring on dropping the RPM to 1900 and then adding MP if I need more power. Oversquare, yep. Of course I need to decide on an upper limit for that MP; I don't think the warning against going oversquare is totally bogus. I'll sort that out at altitude by watching CHT's. Of course this will make my engine management more complicated during landing and that's an issue. My whole impetus to getting a Mooney was I wanted a complex, efficient, airplane. Guess I'm getting complex. Deakin makes the point that you should think of all three engine controls (mixture, prop, MP) whenever you make any power change. That's complicated though and retraining yourself can be tricky. I don't think he's technically wrong but I'm on the fence implementing some of his advice cause I'm not sure I trust myself when doing something different. I've caught myself getting stuck in old habits before so I know there's a training phase.

Sure but you can't expect it to be an all or nothing thing. The closer you get the wing to the ground the stronger the effect.

It didn't look as bad as I was expecting, given the comments from others. It looked like you were trying to touch all three at the same time and as everyone has been saying you want to touch down on the mains first. If you really push to get it on and touch decidedly nose first then you're setting up for a prop strike. With a high wing cessna I like to start flairing about 10 feet up, passing through straight and level at about 3-5 feet up (wheels to runway of course). From there I want to be at least a little nose high. As I get closer I make slight adjustments to keep it about a foot off the ground until I get the touchdown attitude I like (not quite a full stall) and then let it settle on. With the Mooney it goes similar until it gets close to the ground. Because of the strong ground effect, any "adjustments" I make when close to the ground seem to get an exaggerated result. Imagine: my senses and judgement (good or not so good) tell me I'm approaching the ground too fast so I pull back a bit to get a little more lift; but its also going deeper into ground effect so I get more lift from that too!! The result is over-correction if I treat it the same as almost any other plane. I haven' got it perfected yet but I think with a Mooney if you bleed off speed about four feet up until you're a bit nose high and then hold the attiltude it'll settle into ground effect and get closer and closer as the speed bleeds off and touch down nicely on the mains. I'm pretty sure you'll over correct if you try to fly it like a Cessna and why but as to the ideal technique I'm still working on it. Get approach speed right and don't over-correct as you approach to a mains first touch down. I'd also throw in the caveat that my perceived distances are probably a bit different from the real distances.

I don't think I would value it at all even if it were free. I wouldn't want the extra weight. I generally land on runways that are long enough that I only need a gentle tap on the brakes to slow down when I make the turn-off. Back when I was younger and landing on a very icey, slippery, run-way I found that an airplane was more controllable than a car (the aerodynamic surfaces helped). Only one time had problem when strong cross-wind was turning the plane into the wind and off the runway and only applying power would cure the tendancy; you can't very well stop a plane on ice while giving it power so I gave up on the landing, full throttle and took off again. Could have been a bad outcome if I had waited too long to make the decision. I can't imagine ABS system would have made a difference. ABS systems on cars annoy me but I grew up without them and learned how to handle ice in Maine where we had plenty.

I have a prop upgrade on my M20E and was able to get the RPM restriction from Hartzell via e-mail. I gave them all the serial number, model number information via email and they (Hartzell representative) got back to me with RPM restriction info and why (harmonic oscillations at certain RPM's with the more powerful 4-bangers like our IO-360). Hartzell was very helpful. Mine had been upgraded to a prop model that didn't require 100-hour inspections but still had a slightly different prop RPM restriction.