Marauder

You're such a smooth talker, got me right into the Christmas spirit! ⛄

http://www.mooneyland.com/1975-m20f/

I saw that plane advertised! Glad it went to a good home. Post some pictures when you get a chance! I was wondering the story behind it. I saw the repossession and wondered what they would have taken for it. The "make us an offer" thing attracted me.

Can you tell which is the one from eBay and which is my broken one? Hint, look for an ugly hand..

Here is what I know so far. Years ago Chief used to sell them. Not anymore. I know you can get a non breaker switch and put a breaker in the panel. I have one of these now. I believe it is a Piper version. But if you go that path, you will need a breaker for each switch. Not very easy to do with the limited space we have in our breaker panel. I have found that Klixon is still in business but under a new business name. They show distributors but some of them look like they are generic parts vendors. One of the distributors was approached by a Mooney member here last year but it doesn't look like he got enough interest to do a group buy. I will try to dig up that thread when I get back to my PC. My boost pump switch is starting to crack and other than the Nav switch, all of them are original equipment. I would like to update all of my remaining switches. I will keep searching, but if any of you are interested in trying a group buy, I will see if I can resurrect the one that was attempted last year.

I'm in my 4th day of a two week vacation and if this is what retirement feels like, I'm ready! Along with the newly updated "honey do" list staring me in the face, I decided to upgrade my plane's checklists. I have been an avid checklist user since my days of going through a 141 school for my private. In the older Mooney I fly, the POH checklist is, well err, dated... I created an updated version when i bought the pllane and revised it when things were added or removed from the plane. Of course, doing a number of updates over the years, you got to wonder if there is too much or not enough stuff on it. I know I got the "gotcha" items and the rest may not be needed. When I get back to my PC, I will post mine for comment. The big change was adding verbiage after the item to be checked. Previously, the check item was on the list, but no action item. I added them back this time around. Can any of you post your checklists so I can see if my new updates are missing anything? I'm also finding it interesting addressing the newer electronics pre-flight tasks (like databases, new experience for me).

I resemble that remark!

I transitioned to owning a Mooney fairly soon after getting my private. The biggest challenge was understanding everything that was happening a little bit sooner, otherwise you can truly consider yourself a back seat aviator. The only landing that really unnerved me was one that also surprised me. I had flown a couple hundred hours in my Mooney when this landing occurred. i was comfortable with the plane and knew nailing the airspeed was critical at getting a decent landing. I had flown up to Vermont to pick up my wife and for the sake of being politically correct, plus sized sister-in-law. I had calculated W&B and knew I would be in limits, although after a several hour flight, with my plus sized sister-in-law in back, I would be further aft CG than all of the previous flights I had made. It was a hot and humid day at my destination and as I was crossing the numbers, I found myself a bit nose higher and slower than normal. I elected to go around because the landing just didn't feel right. As I put in take-off power, I was surprised that I was in ground effect and not climbing at all. Still nose high and about 10 feet in the air, I retracted the gear which was enough to allow me to climb -- but not before I had covered almost the entire runway length. You hear about being behind the power curve or hanging off of the prop, but until you experience something like this, you realize that at anytime things can go wrong.

I'm sure like the rest of you with rocker switches, when one fails, you begin the quest for the Holy Grail. I found a thread from a year ago about a group buy for the Klixon rocker switches in our planes. Doesn't look like it went anywhere. There are some on eBay but I have a hard time paying $125 for a switch that looks like the condition of mine! I have just experienced my second switch failure within in a year and the rest are all beginning to show signs of their future demise. Has anyone found a good source for these? If not, have anyone of you found a suitable replacement strategy (like toggles)? I found one Mooney locally that started to use non breaker switches and having a breaker panel installed. Any thoughts? Merry Christmas!

BTW -- getting closer...

Hi Allsmiles. I guess I wasn't too clear on what I was getting at. I understand that the physical audio boxes are separate. My point was that the control of the audio panel was done within the 750. According to the avionics shop, when you lose the 750, you lose access to the control of the audio panel. And that was what I was talking about. What is the default mode when you lose the 750? Can you control the second radio with the 750 turned off?

After I read the ENTIRE thread I saw that it was happening on both tanks. It does sound like a selector valve issue.

The reason is simple, after you try to get into a 152 to do your primary, you learn quickly which can of sardines will work for you...

I remember the old tale of how pre-heaters were the culprit. I think the culprit was actually the cycling of these pre-heaters. I have a vault and use a heating rod to keep the temperature a few degrees warmer in the vault than ambient air in both summer and winter. This prevents condensation inside of the vault on the contents. I believe the same theory would hold true for airplanes if you leave it on all the time -- winter AND summer. Rust is caused by the moisture reacting with the metal (by the way Mike Busch has a webinar in this topic). I would love to see a more definitive answer on this as well. As a side comment, I think there are several topics here. One being how best to pre-heat an airplane and the other if the pre-heater can cause rust. I can tell you from personal experience, when it is really cold, there is no moisture. It is all frozen. When you shut down in those kind of temperatures, any moisture freezes, including anything inside e engine. Using a pre-heater, especially if cycling, may introduce moisture by unfreezing it. The value of pre-heating is to prevent that wear that happens for a few minutes until the engine begins to warm. And I believe there are a number of ways to do that.

Not a ground speed record, but I remember once flying above the NYS Thruway in a 172 and seeing cars going faster than me. What added insult was when the controller called me up and told the world what my ground speed was (50 knots) and asked "you want to try another altitude?" all the while I could hear laughter in the background.

What is even funnier is that I have more headroom in my Mooney than I do in my full size pickup!

Was flying back into upstate NY on clear day. Weather was forecasted to have a possibility of scattered clouds at 2k near my arrival time. As I got close to my destination airport, I could see what appeared to be a layer of clouds moving in from Lake Ontario and headed towards my airport. As I begin entering the pattern, I could tell the "cloud" was actually a fog bank and was headed towards the departure end of my landing runway. As I lined up for final, the bank was closing in on the other end of the runway. I touched down and on my roll out I met the fog bank at mid field. I stopped completely in it and on a 50 foot wide runway I could not see the runway lights I turned on to full. I had to shut down on the runway and had someone walk out to me to help pull the plane to a taxiway. It was almost like a scene from the movie "The Fog". By far the strangest weather I have encountered.

Damn, that is nice! I'm coming over to your house, so you can do mine! Where do you live?!

You had to mention him by name, didn't you?! Now I gotta go take a shower! One experience, never, ever again...

There are two things going on here. The communication protocol is industry standard and I don't believe that is the issue. The issue appears to be control code specific to the Garmin products. It is the actual set of instructions telling your box how to do its thing. I can't fault Garmin for trying to protect their proprietary codes. They spent the money to develop it. Most companies however who operate in an environment where you provide a part of the overall solution will share their code -- for a price. If you have competing products like Garmin does in the case of Aspen, the motivation isn't as strong to share. I looked at the Garmin offering, bought the GTN because it was the only one I thought did a decent job of a GUI and passed on the G500/600 series because it was 1) not complete (would not work with all of my legacy hardware) and 2) one college tuition at a time is enough. Competition is good in our market, it gives us choices and helps keep the prices down. I don't want Garmin to go away, just want them to play nice in the sandbox.

I'm hoping that Aspen is correct and that more ADS-B players enter the market. Every time I hear about someone trying to corner the market, I think back to the Dan Akyroyd and Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places. "The Dukes (Garmin) are trying to corner the Oranges (Avionics) market". See where it got the Duke brothers

Welcome to the site! Your story is one that I could have told. People often ask why I didn't just sell my F and move up to a newer Mooney instead of updating it. Exactly for the reason you uncovered. I know my plane inside and out. I have owned it for 21 years and "upgrading" to a newer plane may mean doing nothing more than moving to a whole new set of problems.

Ah, that explains it. I was wondering why Garmin would have cut such a deal. Well, I have an answer for you on why someone would buy at $5,800 instead of new... A $1,000 savings believe it or not will influence a lot of people's decision. Since you kept the rack, the buyer will also need to buy the rack and the GPS antennae. But even if they put another $500 into that, they saved (at least in their mind), $1,200. Strange, but if you are on a tight budget, people make these kinds of decisions. I'm the kind of pilot that would rather save up for something new, but others don't view it that way. When I upgraded my AP I got a lot of requests for my old stuff, even though it was 23 years old at that time.

I wonder if Garmin is doing this for some reason? I know in the portfolio of electronic products we sell over time, we will run trade-in programs to help drive getting really old difficult to support products out of the market. I'm curious if they made engineering changes to these products over time that perhaps have new style boards introduced and they are willing to pay that kind of money to get back a 12 year old product either for parts to support equally as old products or just to get them out of the market. It's a lot of money for a trade-in.

It's actually a pretty common practice in propriety firmware. In my industry we charge money to allow access to our control codes. If it weren't for customer pressures, we probably wouldn't sell it. Falls under the intellectual property category. Garmin appears to be trying to protect their G500/G600 market by making it difficult for a competitor of that technology to get access to the code. Aspen has consistently pitched their open hierarchy and the interface capability with multiple platforms. They are in active collaboration with current or future competitors of Garmin for the GPS business. I suspect this also may be behind some of this. It is a shame because Garmin makes decent products, but being a bully in the market doesn't make me want to run out and buy more of their stuff.