pinerunner

I run 100 ROP for higher power settings, which can get me close to the red line in my old E model so I only do that on very smooth days and if I'm in a hurry on a shorter trip. For medium cruise power setting I go LOP both to save fuel and because it's actually cooler on the CHT's for the same power/airspeed (once LOP MP and RPM do not tell you what power you have). I made a point of getting fuel flow added to my UBG-16 and use that to judge power when LOP. I use MP and RPM to judge power when ROP. At very low power settings I set mixture to get peak EGTs because I want to keep the temperatures up. I'll also use lower RPM's like 1900 (especially in the winter) to try to help keep the temperatures up at very low power settings. I'm getting ready for my instrument check ride so I've gone back to full rich on downwind to keep it simple and be ready for a go-around. When I'm not being judged by someone (like my new instrument instructor) I pull power until prop goes out of governance then lean until the RPMs drop a little and then add back to get the RPMs back. So at about 2550 RPM I'm at peak with a low power setting, less than 20" MP. From there on I just treat RPMs as the power reading making it simpler just like back in the Piper Cub. That's enough power to arrest descent. I tried going back to full rich on short final but that's a busy time and it's easy to forget and land with it still leaned so you would not have full power for a possible go around. I'm active enough on the mixture that I would think to add the mixture back if I needed to abort my landing at the last moment but it might take a second or two when I want power right now. That's part of why I went back to full rich in the pattern. I basically buy into everything John Deakins is saying in Pelican's Perch but come up against the question.. How complicated do I want to make it for myself?

I can't afford one so I haven't been watching it. I can afford my old M20E (barely, sorta) and I'm having a lot of fun with it. If you gave me a million... I'd trick it out and probably get a Lo Presti nose job. I'd add a C 180 on floats to my stable and a nice getaway place to take it to. Fishing trips with the 180 and cross country trips with the SUPER-21. Oh yeah and counseling for my wife so she'll dare to fly with me to the really cool places I'd be flying to. I'd probably have to bribe her somehow cause she has her own agenda. Spend half a million on a plane? That's nut's. Harrison Ford has the money and what do you see him flying for fun? A Husky. A Beaver. I don't think the newer more expensive planes offer as much fun per dollar. Of course that's just my opinion.

I agree with what Mooniac said. If you can afford that much airplane and with turbocharging to boot then taking the course would be best route to getting on top of how to run it best. Everyone that I've talked to says the Advanced Pilot Seminars was money well spent. Low power setting are where you can stay out of trouble easily and the best place to start is leaning for taxi. It sounds like you got into the middle of the red box with 28" of manifold pressure at a high power setting. I bet you did have some detonation going on. The big pull means pulling mixture smoothly and fairly quickly until you actually feel the plane slow due to the sharp drop in power on the lean side of peak EGT. By doing that you spend very little time in the dreaded red box at a high power setting. I suspect that people who approach LOP cautiously set themselves up for the worst possible outcome by stopping at peak instead on continuing on into actual LOP. I'd start with aggressive leaning for taxi and very low power settings where you can't hurt anything and stay ROP for everything else especially the higher power settings doing things just as you were taught the old-fashioned way. Then take the course and you'll be way ahead and confident in what you're doing as you advance your engine manegment savy into the higher power settings .

In my defense my numbers included my being here in the north where icing will be an issue in the winter months. I never want to learn first hand what icing is like so in the winter here there probably will be no real IFR. That said, I'd be scared of thunderstorms in Florida. Do you use a stormscope to get that 95% success rate or are Florida thunderstorms predictable enough that you avoid certain times and areas and don't get stuck.

The idea that VFR pilots should be barred from very long cross countries is absurd. You need to be mentally prepared though to stop and wait for weather but so should an IFR pilot. I like to tell myself that my newly minted IFR rating (when I get it) will get me 5 % more probability of getting through than I have right now VFR only. The airlines don't get 100% and I doubt that single engine IFR pilots approach 90% probability of getting through. (I'm making up the numbers so cut me a little slack) So we all need to be prepared with layover plans in case the weather doesn't play along with our agenda. Plenty of room on the credit card and some checking out good of places to "hole-up" should help alleviate the get-there-itis that puts pressure on pilots to push on into a bad situation. If you're prepared to call home and tell them you'll be a couple days late and then have fun playing golf in the rain in Ohio you should be in great shape putting what you learned getting your private to work. You have to build up the cross-country miles to get the IFR rating anyway. I'm not advising you to start out across the Atlantic without an IFR rating of course. There aren't enough places to stop and play golf.

I noticed a funny difference to the sound last time I flew. The sound made me uneasy and finally when I shut her down and went to put the step down; it already was.

I've left mine down by mistake and not seen any damage, except to my self esteem.

I think the long distance neurosis is a bit similar to "get-there-itis". If you're prepared to go to plan B then get you're less likely to push on through bad weather or with a plane that's having a problem, just to get back home. If you've got a solid plan B then you won't be afraid to strike out on longer cross-country flights. Plenty of credit helps so you can take commercial flight home or hole up in a hotel. Friends in the right places to help hook you up with a good mechanic far from home might make a difference. I wonder how many have died just because they felt they had to get home.

I use a dipstick before takeoff. I've never really trusted the fuel gauges on a GA aircraft but have always used dipsticks, fuel added to refill, and a really big cushion. This thread makes me think it might be a good idea to see how close the fuel gauge comes to predicting when I'll run dry. It's been a while since I had that "suddenly a glider at 5000ft" feeling. Better than two cups of coffee.

I especially like the classic rounded rear window look. Apparently there was a fad in the early 60's to make everything possible look squared off.

On my first long cross-country with my new Mooney M20E I scared myself. I taken much longer coming up from north Carolina than expected (battery ran down and needed recharge in Virginina). They were having a heat wave and I'm sure I got a little dehydrated. Any way I cut the flight short and landed in Lawrence, Massachusetts coming from Central Jersey (47N), instead of going all the way home to Maine. The next morning I checked the fuel tanks and realized one was nearly empty and the other full; I had done it all on one tank and landed on the nearly empty tank instead of switching to the most full tank. Lawrence (LWM) is one of those tabletop airports with a steep dropoff at the end of the runway. If i had lost it on short final it would have been a bad setup. I can still remember what I call the "stone cold sober" feeling I had when I looked into that tank and saw almost no gas. It's very easy to revert to previous training. The Cessna's I grew up with had a "both" setting and I usually just used that all the time. In the Mooneys we have to actually think a bit more about fuel management.

I wish my wife was as open minded as your fiancee. She tends to put the brakes on anything that looks like it might be too much fun.

One thought I'd add to this. I tried the traditional soft field take-off with my M20E and didn't like the way it acted. I started off with enough back pressure so the nose lifted up. I lost contact with the ground prematurely before takeoff speed and kind of slipped sideways but didn't really climb away from the ground. I think ground effect got me off just a few inches at too low an airspeed to fly out of it. Nothing bad came of it. the speed soon built up so I could fly away. but I want solid contact and then solid climb so I didn't try that again. I don't want to be drifting sideways three inches off the ground. An honest to gosh soft field takeoff in a Mooney? I guess you lift the nose just enough to be sure you're lightening it but no more. I've toyed with the idea of leaving the flaps up and then giving two pumps just before rotating, but that's making things more complicated. I wanted a complex aircraft when I bought the Mooney but I like my complexity as simple as possible.

I haven't gone into a grass strip yet, but I intend to with my older M20E. My read on it is that Mooney pilots should be picky about the grass strips they go into. The Mooney sits so low that a prop strike happens more easily. A pot hole that would be a nonissue for a Bonanza might be a prop strike in a Mooney. With a bit of care to that issue there's no reason to stay away from grass strips. I'm not so sure about gravel. Check with other pilots going in there. Check your prop before and after. A few chips can be filed out; seaplane pilots have to put up with that. I know the older E model can get out of a pretty short place but we're not going to compete with super cubs. I've heard it said multiple times that a well maintained grass strip is just as good to fly out of as a paved runway. They're much harder to find than Mooneys but you might like a Swift. I know an old friend of the family that flies one out of a 1700 ft grass strip on his old farm. Check out East Sumner in Maine. He's a mechanic and an inspector too so he does his own work. It's a sweet looking complex taildragger.

How long did it take them? I've heard that installation can be more expensive than the actual avionics.

Congratulations. Maybe I'll be next in a couple months.

I'm not a fan of the "Privatization makes everything better" argument. I'm suspicious that there's someone out there waiting to step in and make big bucks with some executive slots. Some things do seem to get hung up needlessly at the FAA (I'm thinking of GAMI G100 UL).

Going from C/E to G/F gets you more room in back but ups the weight. I've got an E and I'm a little short, especially in the legs and the one time I filled all the seats (with 6 foot teenagers) there was no problem (at least for a short flight. It's very rare that I have someone to put in back so I've never wished I had an F model. On the other hand if you and your hubby are tall AND expect to put friends in back and fly a long way then you'll need the stretch models. With me and my wife (both 5'7" and grandkids in there's no problem fitting in the E. I read the G model was a little slow in the climb, certainly the slowest of all the Mooneys. My old E model really gets up there quick but I'm almost never at gross so maybe its not a fair comparison.

I'm in a situation much like you describe and have been working on my IFR for a couple years. In part I started just because I wanted to get back in training and get one more rating. I like learning about new things in aviation and I've been having fun working on the IFR. I bought my old M20E to be an instrument trainer and wanted a complex plane, not just a loaded C172 and I've been happy with it. I'll admit that it tempts me to buy a bunch of very expensive upgrades but its possible to hold back on that urge and just go IFR light on the plane and still get some value over VFR only. I've had some days when I made a VFR flight of a hundred miles or so stuck scud-running just above pattern altitude under a thin layer of cumulous clouds that I could have slipped up between and just barely broke the clearance of clouds rule for VFR. An IFR clearance to VFR on top would have been just the ticket and wouldn't have strained the skills of a newly minted IFR pilot. The IFR training makes you learn more precisely what to expect from your plane and how to manage your time. I had no idea how much I waste putzing around. Also learning how to talk more efficiently to ATC and learning more about how to use all the resources is worth the trouble. Just keeping it right side up on instruments isn't a big deal. Most of us learn to do that OK when getting our private ticket. I remember thinking IFR didn't seem so tough back then. It's when you try to put it all together in an environment where you'll have to coordinate with others and not get burned that you realize how much there is to learn about aviation. Challenging and fun go together in my book. I'm having fun going after my IFR. I expect to take my check ride in a couple of months or so.

I'm ecstatic that Chuck is sharing this. I was watching the 770 for a while and wondering how well it would fare. Please keep posting as you shake out the bugs. Nice panel by the way.

Some of the articles I've been reading concerning Ford's taxiway incident really get me ticked. Use of words like catastrophic etc. just don't apply except maybe to the mob mentality displayed. I think he should get a good talking to of course and tough questions should be asked. I hope his license isn't revoked for this. I think if I had a bunch of different aircraft I might mix up a call sign. It's hard to imagine mistaking a taxiway for a runway but I've seen cases where someone got an idea in their head and the real situation was simply invisible to them until reality bit them and with young people too. Overflying by a hundred feet with a Husky wasn't a close call. I think the people in that jet were in close to zero danger from him. There are too many cases where clueless people freak out over an airplane. I hope cool heads prevail at the FAA.

If I need to lose a lot of altitude quick I use a bit of a forward slip, 90 MPH, and full flaps. I was shy about it at first; it's not a Piper Cub after all. When I was being checked out in the plane I was thinking of purchasing (the seller let me get my biannual in it; great sales strategy) the instructor had me practicing forced landings. In one instance I was too high for the field I had picked and was going pick another. Idling and full flaps we were clearly going to overshoot. His response was no; you picked it you got to make it. So I shifted the nose over and dropped the opposite wing and down we came. Since I knew I was flying one of those scary laminar flow wing airplanes I glanced at the airspeed and kept it close to 90 MPH. He grinned at me and said that was what he was looking for. It doesn't take an extreme slip to change our slippery profile and generate drag if you want it. I did watch a vid where an arobatic plane set up an extreme slip and stalled it. It flipped (as in rolled) a complete revolution in the opposite direction from what you'd get with a skid. So while I do believe slips are less dangerous than skids I don't think you should get too cozy with them. Speed control is the game with these planes, especially the older Mooneys like mine that don't give you much room between the stall speed and the maximum flap extension speed which is so easy to exceed. Don't be afraid of slips but do master your speed control.

Although I've expected to, I haven't yet had to land on one wheel in a cross-wind landing. The cross-wind always (so far) seems significantly less when I get to the point of flaring than it was during the final approach. So I've had to level the wings during the flare and not needed the side slip that I expected to need. I suspect Mooney's are one of the easiest aircraft with respect to cross-wind landings as long as your speed control is good. I think its cause we sit so low and are in slower air when the wheels touch. But maybe I've just been lucky.

How much does it cost to update the database for this GPS/Com

I've been looking for replacement for my old King 125 Nav Com and all I can find new is the Garmin GNC 255. This packs a lot into a nice little package and the price doesn't scare me off. What bugs me is no one seems to be competing with Garmin on this. Am I wrong? Have all the others written off the low end GA market?