terbang

Thank you RM is 25-1230, in fact the last 252 built.

Thanks for all the replies and sorry for being late myself! Wifi was terrible in Lombok and it’s not much better here in Dili. Anyway, it’s only two and a half hours from here to Darwin and we‘ll be there the day after tomorrow. The Asic card we remembered from last time. We’ve applied for one and we should be able to collect it in Darwin. Concerning the throttle lock I think we‘ll take a rather relaxed approach And yes, we already got many invitations after Tina wrote to AMPA. It seems, that most of you are based in the East and South (well, not hard to guess when looking at a map of Australia ). We plan to visit the red center and Queensland first but we want to fly all the way down to Tasmania. I‘ll post updates here. Thanks again, Gunter

We are on the way from Europe to Australia with our 252. Actually we have made good progress, we’re currently in Lombok, Indonesia. If all goes well, we’ll arrive in Darwin by Thursday this week. Our plan is to fly around the country for a couple of weeks. I have some questions and I know there are Aussies here, at least @Mooney in Ozdoesn’t disguise his home base. I‘m not completely new to flying in Australia, we have been down under twice and rented an aircraft. Once out of Sydney and once out of Perth. Altogether I have about 50 hours VFR in Australia under the belt. From our previous visits I know that CASA mandates this (somewhat quirky) throttle lock and we don’t have one. Is there chance to get one that fits a 252 once we arrive in Darwin? We‘ll have to change the oil at some point. At home I do that myself, but away from base we’ll need a shop where we can cut open the filter, get rid of the oil and so on. A borescope to peek into the cylinders would also be good. Does anybody have a recommendation? And finally, more general: Where should we fly to? Is there a place we must visit besides the famous tourist destinations like Uluru? Or maybe we could even meet and have a beer?

Yes, exactly. With our 252 these were pop rivets. I’m not sure if they were original or there was work done before.

We’re based in Germany and had it done by a shop in Gera, Germany: Olaf Roth Aircraft Painting We are quite happy with the result and the way we worked with Olaf and his team. This will probably be of little interest to most here but maybe another European owner comes across this.

After the refurbishment of the interior of our 252 it was time for a paint job. Of course it's hard to post about a freshly painted Mooney after the Anomaly but anyway, here she is, still in the paint shop's hangar: Actually it’s almost the original scheme, except for the wings. We felt that a Mooney from the early nineties should look like a Mooney from the early nineties. That of course is just personal taste. The colors are a bit more modern (so we think): The white ("Snow White") is lighter and the brown ("Macadamia Metallic") is much darker than it used to be. However, the wings were solid brown when she left the factory and we thought this would be too much with the new dark brown. Therefore we tried to mimic the original scheme of the fuselage on the wings with a white center part. We had all control surfaces, inspections hole covers and gear doors removed. The cowl and many of the fibre glass fairings were removed an refurbished as they were in rather poor shape. Here are a few more details: Refurbished cowl New scheme on the wings Macadamia Metallic looks quite different in direct light The wing walk is brown, not black as usual. Scheme on the fuselage is exactly as it was Empennage hasn't changed Gear doors

Yes, countries in Europe are tiny compared to the US and there are many of them with different languages. Here is an example in French and Spanish:

For those of you who intend to cross the pond one day and then might end up in Germany

You could ask ACG in EDFQ. They know Mooneys and one of the guys there is really good with sheet matel.

Yes, it’s Alcantara, the same as the seat centerpieces. The backing is the original plastic part. It was covered with some sort of fabric but I’m not really sure that was original.

That’s a good idea, machine screws are always the better alternative! But how exactly did you do it? Did you glue the nuts in place beforehand? How did you manage to align them correctly? Am I too dim? Well, it’s winter here too, so let’s hope the best The upholsterer used really tiny screws to attach them. I’ll report how this goes…

A few things I didn't mention in my first post: I had many of the screw holes in the plastic panels closed, especially the ones around the windows. As has been suggested in another thread here on MS, I drilled new holes and used fewer screws around the windows as can be seen in the picture below. I sticked masking tape on the windows before I installed the plastic panels and marked with a pencil where I would have to drill, to be sure not to hit an existing hole. This worked quite well. Where panels had to be screwed to other panels like in the picture below, I made small aluminum sheet metal doublers to hopefully make the screws stay in place. Moreover, I used Tinnerman nuts where possible e.g. for the eye ball vents in the footwells. Unfortunately not everything went that well. A few of the cracks in the plastic panels reappeared after installation. The glass fibre patches work fine but there is some stress on the panels after installation and the epoxy didn't really bond within the cracks. All of the cracks are really minor and I can live with them except for one. It's below the oxygen outlets on the LH passenger side. I first stop drilled it but I don't think that was of much help. As has also been suggested here on MS I made kind of a putty by dissolving small plastic pieces in a little acetone and applied this to the crack. It's not perfect, but I'll have to live with it, see the picture below. I should have done this before the panel was sprayed, I could have sanded it properly as well.

Of course I checked MS before I tackled the headliner and I was a bit intimidated. It turned out to be not that difficult: remove everything but the two large center pieces. The switches, the speaker and the beepers are obvious to remove. After removing the clamps you can pull the air hoses at the very rear of the cabin. The two large center pieces of the headliner were screwed together with our plane and these screws can only be removed after the headliner is unfastened, therefore you definitely need a second pair of hands to uninstall it. You can see the four hoses in the picture, above. The narrow plastic piece in the rear was riveted to the skin of the cabin. It was the only piece that had to be drilled out. All the rest was held in place with sheet metal screws.

In fact they are of the inertia reel type. I don’t think they’re an after-marked solution, we bought her like this more than ten years ago. She’s the last 252 ever built and I think the factory used these at that time. The rear seats have conventional seatbelts installed.

We've completed the interior refurbishment project on our 252 just before Christmas and here is how it went. We had found a local upholsterer that works mainly on classic cars but had experience with aircraft as well, even N registered ones (we're in Germany). He told us, he would only use materials conforming with 14 CFR Part 25.853 and could provide a certification package for it. Moreover he was capable of fixing damages to the plastic panels and respray them. I asked my A&P if it was OK for him that I do the work under Appendix A to part 43 (c) privileges and he said no problem. We decided to do it together with this year's annual inspection and replace all windows at the same time. So I removed all the interior panels, carpets and the seats before the annual, and then, together with my A&P removed the old windows and he later reinstalled the new ones. In the meantime the upholsterer worked on the interior. After three weeks everything was finished and we could collect the parts at the upholsterer's shop. He had fixed damages to the plastic panels with small glass fibre patches and the paint looked really nice. We had the windlaces redone as well and when we collected the parts, he gave me a box with all the old material. In there I found the old windlaces cut open, so I asked if he reused the foam. He said he had to, as he couldn't find certified foam of that round shape. I thought to myself, let's hope that the factory was that anal 30 or forty years ago The dark brown parts are leather while the lighter is Alcantara. The carpet is actually surplus material usually used on airliners - the upholsterer had contacts where to obtain it including certificate. Reinstalling the panels was quite a chore, especially the headliners but in the end all went well and here is the result: Frontal view New windlace Pilot's seat The new carpet Rear seats RH rear seat Baggage compartment Rear seats removed