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Anyone successfully using a Ram Twist Lock ball mount? I have a nice clean painted panel - smooth with no imperfections. I *THINK* it will hold really well. These things cling to glass like nobody's business. It will need to hold tight enough to support a full size iPad. I'm not 100% sure of the mounting spot yet, so I don't want to drill the panel just yet, and this seems like a nice way to try out a location before I commit with a dril.

I have a windshield strip and a pilot's side upper strip that I made with the cling stuff from Walmart. They've both held up for years with no issues. They're easy to replace if something does happen to them.

Looks nice, tint does make a big difference in heat. I just use Gila static cling tint on my rear windows and keep a few extra pieces to put wherever the sun is coming in. I wrote a post on how to tint windows, it's pretty easy and inexpensive. The Gila tint starts to get a little blurry after a few years so I replace it as needed. https://intothesky.com/2020/06/02/window-tinting/

Yes, it does have a pump for condensation. I’ve since cut a small length of 1/2 in tubing and run it into a hole I drilled in a small tuber ware container. I didn’t like how long the hose that came with it was, it never slid over the piece that comes out of back of the unit for drainage quite right. I also found the pump would stay running because the hose was too long. The water would sit in the bends and never be able to get out because the pump wasn’t strong enough to overcome gravity and the little water. This wasn’t an issue at all when I tested it at home. I had it sitting on top of the box it came in and the drainage hose running down into a bucket. The gravity and humid air made it easy for the unit to expel the water. There was however a shit ton of water still left in the unit when I removed it a day later, so be ware of that if you use this unit as intended like for camping or something else. Mind you, the unit ran straight for 24hrs without an issue so the water build up makes sense. Non of these drainage things are in issue in the plane. It just doesn’t create literally any water for the unit to expel any. Since it’s also dehumidifying the air and it’s basically on recirculate mode like a car, it makes sense. I do open the vents up when I turn it on so it can sort of get fresh air. Not sure if does anything or not. I drilled the hole as high up on my baggage wall as I could get it. I can feel the hot air coming out of the tail with the louvred inspection plates I made. I used this from Home Depot as the exhaust hose hook up. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-4-in-Dryer-Vent-Duct-to-Wall-Connector-EZCNHD/203626503 It’s the same one @Lancecasper used. He was a big help in answering all my questions I had and what he found worked best. I used a 4in flex foil duct from Home Depot to screw into that dryer vent adapter. I cut it to the shortest possible length once everything was set up. You will need that adapter from Etsy and a 4inch hose clamp since it doesn’t fit tightly on the adapter just loosely. Without the adapter, you can’t connect any hose other than Eco flows to the unit. They have a locking mechanism which allows the hoses to be attached securely. I would compare the air flow to feel just like your household air conditioning vents. That’s if you were inch’s away from them. The unit doesn’t blow as hard as a car does, but it does blow more than enough considering the long run of 5in hose. I would like some sort of adapter to split the airflow between me and the co pilot seat. I fly alone mainly but it would be nice to have. That’s something for you to figure out with your 3d printing skills. The easing hose does get warm but I don’t think insulating the hose would help all that much. I made my hose as short as I could for that sole purpose. One think I don’t like is there isn’t a complete seal of the exhaust adapter that comes with the unit. So a bit of warm arm doesn’t go into the hose just out from the one side of the adapter. It’s almost like it could use a little rubber door sill to keep it tight. It’s so minute that it doesn’t matter. My ice chest ac couldn’t even compete so I’m very happy with the results. I bought some of the Gila tint and put it in my front passenger window. I don’t like the bluish hue and distortion it gives off. I would like to get a set of https://wingviewtint.com/products/mooney-plane-tint-kits?_pos=1&_sid=82e5ba593&_ss=r They are half the price of jet shades but still a lot for tint. It’ll be well worth it though. I like the idea of them being easily removable and not being stuck like the static cling. I need to email them because I want both the back and front windows in the dark shade. They only offer the mid shade for the fronts. I agree it does help a ton with just simple tint. I also have the plane covered with one of Bruce’s covers even under the shade hangar. Your windows and interior will look years better than any other plane that isn’t. There’s a 2011 182 right in front of me and he doesn’t have anything on his plane…

Absolutely, and yes. It’s static cling so the only trouble I’ve ever had is when the oat gets too cold it is harder to make it stick.

I got one. The frame was too stiff and caused it to pop off and it didn’t work on the pilot’s side window because the latch for the storm window is in the way. I kept it in the plane an a trip through Texas and the heat while parked outside softened the glue and the frame slid out if position. I threw it out and used the case to keep a static cling shade in. The zipper on the case is now broken.

“Gila” static cling film. You can get on Amazon or at autozone. it’s about $35 per roll which is almost enough to do the whole plane. You can cut it into squares or rectangles, or install like regular tint. I actually applied it on the entire back windows, and carry four or five squares to put wherever I need it, you can double it up when the sun is really bad. it doesn’t get in the way like those useless factor visors, and folds away neatly when you don’t need it. even if you end up wanting something else you’re only out $35…

Ok. I believe you. It's still tar. The weatherstripping is not only easy to work with, it doesn't get all over you whenever you are elbows deep in the instrument bay after using it. It also doesn't cling to anything. The panels are easy to remove when you use the weatherstripping. And after you remove them, they don't have black gunk on them. Many upsides with using the weatherstripping. Oh, and it works really well at keeping water out.

The G5s are primary for attitude and the DG, we don't have those round gauges in the panel anymore or a vacuum system to run them. We aren't going to be removing any of the other four gauges from the original six pack, the turn coordinator, altimeter, airspeed, VSI are all staying--just a matter of deciding where to put them. Both G5s are AHRS capable, the HSI can be toggled to display attitude independently with its own battery. It also shows all of the same non-primary functions (alt, VSI, TC etc) so you have the non-primary backup of those as well. In the event of an electrical failure, in theory you would have the aircraft battery, and two G5 batteries to run through before you would loose the screen. I know these can fail, but each one is remarkably more reliable than a gyro and people used to fly these all the time IFR with just one gyro attitude. Obviously we're shooting for improvement and higher standards but it seems archaic to me to cling to these "primary" relics. A properly calibrated G5 runs off the same pitot static lines as the analog gauge, and the primary is still in the panel--albeit not right in front of you, but still available to verify. The iPad now contains a lot of information that seems more useful than staring at an analog altimeter while I already have two in front of me. ADSB traffic, real time weather, maps, charts, frequencies etc... basically an entire flight bag sitting right in front of you. I take the point of lacking an engine monitor. I agree. It's on the list. Also, regarding the autopilot location. I've flown a C182 with it mounted at the bottom right above the engine controls. My work plane with the G1000 has it mounted at the top centre and that feels more natural to me. It's more heads up, and easier to see the little lights beside which mode is active/armed. I'm sure its a matter of preference.

My guess, and that's all it is, would be that if there is already some air in the system/cylinder then rapid motion will cause, say a single air bubble, to break into many smaller bubbles that my persist and cling to interior surfaces and therefore make bleeding much more difficult.

Any idea when he dropped the price $10,000? Considering that it’s only flown 12 hours in 21 years (which includes the ferry flight, and whatever test flights were required to pass the Annual) - And considering that the paint and interior actually looks good - this is a proverbial “Hangar Queen”. The problem with trying to buy a hangar queen from an owner that is still alive is that he is generally stuck on fond memories and plans that he had for it, which never came to fruition. Logic may not prevail. When a widow sells a hangar queen, there is generally no emotional tie, and she usually wants to get rid of it as soon as possible. Think about it – considering the exterior condition this plane must’ve been in a hanger. If the owner paid a measly $200 a month for 21 years then he paid about $50,000 for it to sit. There may have been annuals in the early years that it was sitting may have been paying for some insurance the entire time. That could be another $25,000 or more. Now it’s been for sale for a year and a half and no PPI (likely no serious offers). The owner has no urgency to sell. He may cling to unrealistic expectations for another 10 years. And don’t spend any money on a thorough PPI thinking that you can use that as negotiating tool to get the price down to a realistic level. You might as well pile up a couple thousand dollars and set it on fire. You should only spend money on a PPI in order to confirm, your understanding of the likely condition and agreed upon terms of sale. The likely condition of this engine is run out and in need of overhaul.

So the theory is that when fuel is run through the injector, a tiny amount will cling to the bore of the injector when the engine is stopped. The oxygen will then oxidize it, and then fuel flow through it when the engine is run again, will not remove it? I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Thanks for the education.

Same, I've got a B Kool and use block ice or frozen water bottles where I can. I don't have the remote, I plug it into my cigarette lighter and use a little switch on that plug. Using a Yeti cooler for this is dumb, you're not going to keep ice for a long time using it, the purpose of it is to thaw the ice and remove heat from the plane. We've used ours landing in 105 and it kept it comfortable in the plane. Last week I flew my wife from Kerrrille to Corpus Christi and back and she didn't complain at all about the heat. We had to stay low because of some cloud layers so we needed it for almost the entire trip. Her not complaining about being hot is about the highest praise this thing could get. It's an absolute game changer for summer flying. I also put the static cling window tint on my 4 side windows and that helped tremendously without negatively effecting visibility. I'd actually say I can see better now without the glare from the sun. ***EDIT TO ADD*** I like frozen water bottles or freezer packs in it best with just enough ice to circulate water because this provides cool air for the longest possible time. Regular or crushed ice will give you colder air but for a much shorter period of time and that's not really helpful for me. My plane lives on a tie down in Kerrville while I wait on a hangar, it's 104 as I type this so our summers are hot. I keep a Bruce's cover on the plane and that helps a lot in keeping the inside cooler. The tinted windows made a noticeable difference as well. I usually start early in the day but if it's in the mid 90's already and I do the exterior preflight before I take the cover off and get the engine running and the B Kool blowing, I can keep it cool enough that we're not sweating until I get to altitude. You've got to close all the exterior vents though, any hot air coming in from outside will compete with and usually overcome the cooler. Once we climb to about 65, I'll open my vents and at 55 - 60, I'll shut the cooler off. On descent, I close the vents and turn the cooler on at about 70 and it gets us onto the ground and to the terminal or tie downs. It's not an AC but, it is enough to make the hottest parts of the flight much more comfortable.

Exactly, it doesn't need to cool down the whole cabin. A stream of cool air blowing on the back of your neck and head does wonders for comfort. Seeing the prices of those things makes me love my homemade one even more. Add the static cling tint to your rear windows to help with the heat. Then take a few spare squares of the static cling, fold them up, and keep them in your seat back. You can pull them out and put them wherever you want on the front windows and up high on the windscreen in flight to block sun. When you need to just peel them back off in descent. If you put them on top of the dash for a couple minutes they become soft and easy to smooth out on the windows. Homemade AC DIY Window Tinting

My daughter and I flew from F37 to ERV Sunday. When we got to ERV, it was 105°, I turned on my B Kool at about 7500 and it kept it comfortable in the cockpit. Yeah, it could have been a few degrees cooler but, we weren't sweating. I do mine a little differently, I put just enough ice water in it to circulate through the pump and then add freezer packs and frozen water bottles to fill it the rest of the way. I have the water dump on top of the frozen water bottles so it runs down it to cool off before being pumped again. Since we had 55° at 11,500 and the cabin was cool, I would rather have a longer duration of cool air that keeps us comfortable than a short duration of ice cold air. We ran it for about an hour through our descent, landing and taxi and the water bottles were still cold enough that they were pleasant to drink. The biggest thing is to not let the cabin get super hot to begin with. I don't have a hangar but I do keep my plane covered, which makes a big difference. I also just added the cling tint, which I think will help as well. I do what I can if the pre-flight before removing the cover and get the B-Kool running once I do. If I can get 30 minutes from it on the ground and another 45 - 60 when we land, it covers the critical heat. Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

How did you put the new one in? With silicone? One of mine popped out accidentally above FL200. I heard a soft “cling” and took a while before I realized what it was…

As others have said, use the static cling. It is easy to use and easy to remove if you want to. I wrote up a step by step a few years back. After a couple years it gets a little hazy so I just remove and replace it. https://intothesky.com/window-tinting/

If you use anything but the cling (removable) tint or shades (https://justplanetint.com/collections/aircraft-kits), you risk that a mechanic down the road will not sign off. I had that happen in 2007 in an annual-gone-bad and ended up having to remove the auto-type tint to get the annual signed off. I paid to have it installed 6 months prior and I paid to have it removed. Airplane tuition is expensive education sometimes.

Two tires, some moving blankets, some shipping cling-wrap, and some bungee cords. Adjust as necessary for materials availability. The pool noodle/pipe insulation/bubble wrap idea isn't bad. You do want to cover up the back of the hub so that dirt/dust/crap doesn't get in the prop hub. If it's a three-bladed prop it gets trickier, but the idea is similar.

The lack of speed gains from wingtips on the Mooney square wing is well documented here. Bill Wheat explained " that the winglets were not necessarily a drag reduction component as much as they provided more air flow back on the ailerons creating more effectiveness. " Per @Blue on Top "Squared off tips are actually good. The reason is that one wants the wingtip vortices to depart the airplane cleanly. Any roundness will cause the vortices to cling to the airplane and be drawn inward ... slightly shortening the wingspan." He went to explain "Winglets were originally designed to allow for a gross weight increase without having to beef up the spar or re-wing the airplane. If airlines really wanted the highest efficiency airplanes they would have longer wings (not winglets) ... and then they would not fit at the gates." Winglets actually add drag under most flight circumstances. And @Blue on Top concluded "If you're cruising at 5-8K, you'll add drag." I think Rocket required them on mine because they increased my GW to 3,200 lbs. So yes the extra HP I have helps overcome the increased drag from my winglets. Granted they look nice - maybe they will make you feel like you are flying faster.

The oil film and higher storage temps are a red herring, reason is we shut down hot, close to 200 F or so and it stays hot for quite awhile, so any oil that’s going to drip off does so while it’s hot and thin, if it’s still there after cool down, it’s staying there, I don’t think anyone is preheating to shut down temps. People often say straight weight 50 is better cause it’s thicker when cold so it clings to engine parts better and longer, but it’s not thicker at shutdown, so it doesn’t really cling better. So all that we need to do to prevent engine corrosion is to keep it warm? Has to be more to it than that

When ever someone comes on this site and is new and looking for a Mooney we all seem to want them to find the "Holy Grail" We tell them to find a low time, good as new airplane. In reality a needle in a hay stack by the way many pilots treat their airplanes Yes spoiler alert! I'm going to make some comments not too well received by many. Let's look at how we operate our Mooneys. If you fly 75 hrs per year (or the airframe has 4,000 hrs since 1970) (and not many do) the airframe is actually being used less than 1% (0.008) of its time on the ramp. It has spent 99% of its time just sitting there rotting away. For those who tie down outside it spends realistically its entire life sitting out in the sun's heat in the summer and the snow rain and cold in the winter. How long would your NEW car last with that treatment? Would you even put your new car through that gauntlet? And here we have a half century old airplane under those conditions that we place our lives in its hands every time we take to the sky! YET- Many of us still cling to the CB Club and look for ways to get the quick and cheap annual, do minimal maintenance and have numerous items INOP in the airplane. What we have in many cases are in reality RUST BUCKETS that we go aloft in. And its us doing it to ourselves. Just walk around and look at your own airport. How many of you would go out to a 1970 Ford that has been sitting outside for 30 years and just jump in it and drive across the state let alone the country? Yet we do that all the time in airplanes that sit rotting away year after year. And many of us do nothing about it. What do you think it does to all the avionics in the panel? And yet many jump in and fly IFR with them. With no thought of testing or maintenance until something breaks in flight and then its likely to get deferred. Sure you say "we have annual inspections"! HA! How many times do we see airplanes that go 2 and 3 years between annuals? (with no flying) Here's a question I have asked a couple of times on here- HOW MANY INOPERATIVE ITEMS DO YOU HAVE ON YOUR AIRPLANE RIGHT NOW? If you can't say "NONE" then YOU are the problem. If you can't afford to fix what breaks on your airplane then you have more airplane than you can afford and YOU are the problem. Most accidents IMO are caused by incompetence or "too much airplane for the level of the pilot"(financial or skills). I've studied it for over 60 years. I've watched and read accident reports and most come out the same way. Too much airplane for the competency level of the pilot. When I see a plane come through the shop with differed maintenance I know the owner can't afford the plane he owns and his skill level for that airplane is probably lacking also. Look yourself in the mirror and ask if YOU are part of the problem! I've seen too many smoking holes and many are tired together with the same theme. If you can't afford to fix your airplane when it breaks then you can't afford the airplane. If you can't afford to fix your airplane when it breaks your own skill level is in question. One leads to the other. Too much airplane for the pilot to handle.

I don’t believe it’s prohibited because they sell front windows and even windshields that are tinted, but I do believe applying auto tint to plexiglass can cause thermal expansion issues. I’ve always used the Gila static cling tint. Works really well. input it on the back windows and leave it there, then I cut four or five 12x12 pieces and move them around as needed. Sometimes I put them three or four thick to bock certain points. works very well, just have to put them on before high altitude because they don’t stick so well when cold.

The GILA cling tint works well and can be cut to fit and @Skates97 has a link to it: https://intothesky.com/window-tinting/

I had a pair of don’s in one of my planes. Once I acclimated to them, I like them a lot. However, I still prefer just carrying several precut pieces of static cling tint. It never gets in the way, is easy to move, and stows very quickly and easily.