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You really don’t I promise you. A trick that I use to slow down is to reduce power to just above the horn, descend to 100 ft or so below pattern altitude, then slowly climb back to pattern altitude, even converting kinetic energy to just 100 ft of potential energy really slows you down, then I lower the gear and increase power to 20” (I have a restriction between 15 and 20 inches). Yes I’m sure that adds a minute or two to landing as I’m slower in the pattern, but what’s another minute or two? Land gear up and besides the money, your out of an airplane for very likely a year. Faced with that I can understand why some want the insurence to pay out so they can buy another airplane. Personally I like to get the gear at pattern entry not in the pattern in the belief that once in the pattern other things may have me forget them. My Wife often flies with me, she has been briefed that her one job is to make sure I don’t forget the gear

What is 1 GR? IFR? I tell people the day they get their PVT start instrument training, the insurence break pays for the training and of course makes you much safer and makes the aircraft a whole lot more usable. Having said that I don’t fly IFR anymore since retirement.

Silly question but say my engine went bang as in threw a rod or something, I successfully glide it to a landing with no damage at an airport, insurence isn’t involved. But what if same bang but I put it in a field with some but not enough to total damage, does insurence pay for the engine?

I would like contact info of the insurence guy, a telephone number or Email if possible, anyone have it? I’m up for renewal and think my quote maybe a little high so I’d like to get a second opinion.

I got that. I also understand that a gear up will total this C, and that will be one less C in existence, every day the fleet dwindles. I’d like to see the rate slow down. A LOT of people love and cherish their C, nothing wrong with one, pretty easy to argue the advantages actually. Training and experience will slow that rate. There is a reason insurence rates for the young AND the old are as high as they are. I know younger people now even more than ever desire immediate satisfaction, but really is one year to gain experience and training really to much to ask? Maybe two if the desire is Commercial / Instrument although personally I don’t see the need to be Commercial before buying a Mooney, but do think it ought to be an eventual goal. A kids first car shouldn’t be a 911, even an old one. Besides I can almost guarantee you that what WILL happen is that he will buy this cheap Mooney and in the first year get to fly it very little because it will live in the shop and both not be available but also eating up the funds that he could use to fly. IF he has enough money he will then be paying for a rental AND fixing his Mooney, but as he’s balking at the insurence rate for a newer J/K it’s likely he doesn’t have those kinds of funds. The really big difference between a beater car is you’re allowed to fix it yourself, and you can use coat hanger wire to tie the exhaust up etc. But you can’t a Certified airplane, it must be maintained by a Certified mechanic and to a set of standards. Yes I know there is sloppy work out there, but it’s not legal.

I’m not assuming it, he says it has excessive oil consumption In order for a cylinder to get to excess oil consumption from wear and be saved by a light hone and new rings means almost all of the wear has to happen in the rings, which is possible but unlikely if the cylinder has enough wear for the cross hatching to be gone. ”Overhauling” anything means different things to different people. To simply put a light hone in a cylinder and fit new rings isn’t in my book an overhaul, it’s a repair. One thing we don’t know is was the exh valve and guides replaced or not? Which should be done in my opinion to call it an overhaul. As I have posted before all that’s required to overhaul is disassemble, clean inspect and reassemble if everything meets serviceable limits. Then there are quality overhauls. Cylinders aren’t black magic, they are actually simple things. I’d bet money the rings didn’t seat due to sloppy clearances and or guides worn excessively and oil is coming in through there. The fix will be a good cylinder. Many cylinders are “freshened up” from prop strike inspections etc, ones that were good when disassembled but the wise decision was made to put a few bucks into one and greatly extend its life, often insurence money. These are the cylinders that can get a light hone and new rings, but the ones that are worn down to a smooth bore it’s unlikely that’s going to save one. I understand the attempt for cylinders like our angle valve Lycoming ones that aren’t available, but the Conti ones are readily available aren’t they? I’m afraid that the money that’s been spent on this one may be wasted, unless the shop that did the work will stand behind it

Carrying a heavy weight is the same as a heavy pax, but I think it might be prudent to put it on a piece of plywood to distribute the weight and protect the seat rails in the future. Pretty sure no harm was done just cheap insurence

I think your probably a younger less experienced pilot, those of us that are Commercial / instrument or higher rated for decades don’t see any of that, even with decades of no accidents / incidents. In the beginning insurence has always gone down with experience, no claims and higher Certifications, but it didn’t on average increase in cost like it has in recent years. That’s new. I just bought a Motorhome and was surprised to find that it’s insurance if based on hull value was more expensive than my Mooney insurance, additionally as others have posted my house insurance has increased greatly since 2020 or so. Go look at your Auto insurence I bet if you run the numbers on the value of the car you may find the aircraft insurence is cheaper. Of course you can’t really compare the two because collision claims between aircraft are rare while they may be the norm for auto’s. In my opinion what the cause of these increased prices in everything is inflation. It’s a fantasy to believe we only experienced 8% inflation for one year or that it’s “transitory”. As long as the price of everything is increasing I think inflation is in play, that is the definition of inflation isn’t it? If I add up the cost of insurence I pay yearly, it’s phenomenal. Based on all the crooked Lawyer ads I carry a 2 Mil umbrella coverage that I’m sure exempts Aviation, but I think I pay monthly as much for insurence as a house payment. So yes for me it’s definitely a drag on my finances, if the Mooney wasn’t a retract I’d go “naked” insurence wise

That’s it in a nutshell, it’s why I have insurence, to cover me. Of course my insurence company will pay me and make me “whole” then go after whoever they can to recover expenses, but hopefully not to try to make a profit. No need to involve Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe ambulance chasers, listening right now to one of their TV ads on how “I got in a wreck and Dan Newlin got me 1,000,000 dollars on TV” so ambulance chasing has gotten out of control, making lawyers rich and costing the rest of us a not insignificant amount of money, it’s time for reform, but guess who’s in charge of that? Lawyers, so it’s kind of the fox watching the hen house. For the younger crowd Dewey, Cheatem and Howe were make believe crooked Lawyers the three stooges would threaten others with. As that was roughly 80 years ago it seems crooked lawyers are nothing new, but I do think it’s gotten out of control. I’ve looked it up, the ambulance chasers usually get about 40%, and almost never go to court as that takes time and effort, almost always they settle for what they can get without putting much effort in it, their model is many, many settlements end up being a significant amount of money. I’m extremely suspicious with these excessive reward amounts you hear about continuously on TV and every billboard. 90% of people just don’t have either large insurence amounts nor large assets, the million dollars just doesn’t exist in most cases, so where do these large awards come from? Only 8.8 % in the US have 1 mil in assets or more. Actually Google says it’s somewhere between 2% and 8.8% different sites quote different numbers.

So how would a Union help? Is it for part time workers who work for small business? I don’t think so or at least I’ve never seen it, Unions exist when Employers are at least multi million dollar corporations like Auto manufacturing or Airlines where there are deep pockets Worker would be better off if he took his Union dues money and put it into insurence, if there is a Union he could join which I suspect there isn’t because as I said Unions only exist where there are employers with deep pockets. Union dues are on average about 2.5 hours of salary per month, (Google it) so for that Ft Rucker job that had 5,000 employees I think “International” meaning the big Union received about a half million dollars per month in Union dues, so I asked my rep for a breakdown of where the money went, because we never saw any of it, the Union hall was an old convince store in a mostly abandoned strip mall so I wanted to know what was it spent on, and they got ugly about it. Only thing I ever saw was abuse and some of it mind boggling. When we inprocessed into the job there were of course safety classes, this was an Army contract after all. One I remember well as we got that class more than once and had to sign that we had read and understood it meaning of course that there had been issues with it was for vehicles on the flight line, everyone took it, not just drivers, but the gist of it was to get out of the vehicle it had to be placed in park, emergency brake set, ignition turned off key removed and driver took it with them. There were big yellow stickers on the dash outlining each step, I mean glove compt sized stickers. So one day a Senior Union member was driving a pick up truck on Hanchey’s flight line, he came to a stop threw it into park and got out engine still running, except it didn’t make it to park, it was in reverse so off it went into a tied down AH-64, it open tail gate cut a large hole into the tail boom. Damage exceeded 1 million dollars, which made it a Class A accident, any class A you go to the hospital and pee and bleed, Class A is a death or damage exceeding 1 Million or was 20 years ago. So this guy had the gall to file a grievance. His grievance? Sitting in the hospital took him past quitting time and he wasn’t paid overtime so he wanted his overtime. Normal person would have been praying they still had a job. He got his overtime and wasn’t fired and the taxpayer picked up the over million dollars for repair and went without the aircraft for likely a year, but the Union member got his overtime. Had you had seniority I assure you that your Union would have gotten you that seat as I’m sure you know. Oh, and the Union Retirement which is pretty good, but the Employer not the Union funds it. There it was $1 for every hour we worked was set aside in I assume some kind of 401K

I’m no insurence guy but as I understand it no-fault means that in smaller and or difficult to determine fault like parking lots accidents for instance and to prevent the expense of court that my insurence fixes my car and you yours. That’s cheaper than going to court for the insurence companies. My point was that I believe mandated insurence actually does little to nothing for the driving public, but in fact was lobbied for by the insurence companies in order to increase their profits, it’s not to protect the public. I don’t want mandated aircraft insurence to protect me, I’ll buy better and cheaper insurence myself to protect me from others without it. ‘Many things are like that for instance I learned in school many years ago that at least in some States if you want to be cremated you must first be embalmed before you’re cremated. That was lobbied for by embalmers I’m sure and so,d as some kind of way to protect the public.

And yet I bet over 90% of autos carry the min required insurence, because people shop for the cheapest, and I’ll bet when you get hit by an idiot that the odds go up to about 99% they only carry min insurence. In Florida the requirement is $10,000 https://www.flhsmv.gov/insurance/ That 10K in insurence cost them $878 a year, https://www.carinsurance.com/state/Florida-car-insurance.aspx Really great rate isn’t it? State mandated insurence is a rip off, way overpriced, we don’t need mandated overpriced insurence for our aircraft. ‘Our car got hail damage a couple of months ago, no broken glass etc and you couldn’t tell it from 20 ft away, yet it was a $14,000 repair, sort of puts that $10,000 into perspective. Most people like that are “judgement proof” that is to say they have no assets, sure you’ll win the case but you won’t recover anything, because you can’t get blood from a turnip. Best to carry your own insurence if your counting on insurence. Flying must be dangerous, if you don’t believe that price life insurence, then tell them your a pilot and see what happens to the rates, and I don’t think how many hours or years accident and incident free flying you have or your ratings mean anything at all, but they do ask what type aircraft you own.

I think your numbers are close, people still do XM WX? ADSB in gets you that. I think your overhaul number is low by at least 10K myself, but I also think it sort of evens out, your high a little here and low a little there but overall I think you’ve got it figured out. Insurence wise I think we are in the same boat, I don’t think it’s coming down, at some point I think hours don’t matter, it is what it is. I expected mine to go down year two and it went up I think 10%. In truth I don’t track expenses, in part I guess because I don’t want to know, but also as I own my hangar and am an A&P/IA that helps too of course. I’m convinced from what I hear hangars cost that buying in a fly-in community saves money in the long run, at first I thought it would be way more expensive, but after I think about hangar rent, driving back and forth etc. I think it’s the opposite. I was paying $125 a month for a brand new T hangar in Camilla Ga., and to be honest the tax man never bothered, so in the Country is WAY cheaper.

IF I had to leave one tied down I’d get me some new strong as in at least 2,000 lb or so ratchet straps and use them as opposed to ropes, I’d get the one meant to tie cars down on a trailer and if they wouldn’t fit I’d buy clevises to attach them to the airplane with, new ones not ones that have been in the sun, in fact go buy some now because if you wait until the Hurricane is coming it’s likely there may not be any, same for a generator, chainsaw etc. I’d also pull them snug, I see no logic at all in leaving ropes loose, and I think the cause of failure is often the airplane jerking and snatching against ropes with some slack, think if it as the airplane getting a running start to be suddenly and violently stopped, the snatch loads on the tie down point and the rope are huge. I’d also get good external gust locks for the flight controls, and fit spoilers on the wings, 2x4’s foam cushioned and strapped down on top of the wing about 25% back from the leading edge will spoil almost all lift a wing can produce. Take a look at the spoiler wing covers to get an idea. https://alaskawingcovers.com/aircraft-wing-and-tail-covers/#:~:text=THE SPOILER WING COVERS&text=The vent allows any wind,over at the tie-down. I think an airplane properly tied down and prepped can ride out almost anything, until the ramp tramp beside of you hits your airplane anyway. Other than maybe paying the FBO to park the fuel trucks around you I have no idea how to protect from that. Take a look at wing covers made for bush planes way up North like Alaska for an idea, in fact do some reading how they prepare for Winter storms, they have it figured out, seems most down South just say that’s what insurence is for. I think 90% or better of Fl Hurricane damaged aircraft pretty much nothing was done to prep the airplane, they are left tied with loose rotted ropes, and owners act surprised when it ends up against the fence or on its back, and no one holds them responsible for not properly tying down their aircraft. Odd thing is the Marina’s I’ve rode out Hurricanes in that’s not allowed, if you don’t secure boat 19 ways from Sunday the Marina does and sends you the bill for doing so, assuming your not there. As late as 24 to 48 hours before landfall you usually have very pretty VFR weather to leave in, based of course on size and speed of the Storm, a fast moving one gets here fast. It seems the Storm sucks all the energy from the air, after it’s gone usually there is beautiful Wx and often before the rain bands hit, once they get here your not going anywhere IFR rated or not Lastly as someone who has lived most of his life down South, you really, really, really don’t want to be part of the nightmare that is a Hurricane Evac on Fl highways, if you must land Evac leave EARLY. You really want to be flying and looking down at the 200 mile long parking lot that I-95 and I-75 are. If you have to Evac by car carry at least 10 gls of fuel plus drinking water and food, don’t have to buy anything, because you may not be able to. Fly and head North, by North Ga, Al, Tennessee etc your almost certainly far enough North, actually when you hit the Fl line head West some, Hurricanes seem to follow the East Coast pretty much, so don’t go up the Coast. I think so many stay and ride it out because they did the highway Evac once and decided to never do that again, the argument is if you go early it’s easy, and they are right, but most seem to wait until the highways are packed and then of course it goes down hill FAST. Everything is an opinion, but mine is it’s better to watch the hurricane on TV knowing your airplane is safe, it’s far more likely that your car can ride it out better in the garage than your airplane on the ramp, plus thousands of new cars are built every day.

You know you don’t have to quit flying just because you can’t get insurence. FAA doesn’t require it

If you’re going for short fields, numbers are irrelevant it’s completely pilot dependent. One person is comfortable with 1500 or less next guy sweats 2500. Be comfortable and practiced with go-arounds and don’t be embarrassed to go-around, I’d even say go-around once a week just to maintain proficiency. Go-arounds are free. Then don’t try to salvage an approach, if it’s doesn’t feel right simply go-around, if you adopt that ideology it’s very unlikely to have a landing incident, one that brakes the airplane and will take several months to repair, costs thousands of $$$ and not do your insurence any favors either. I stalled my Maule in on a downwind landing trying to make a turn off, broke the Oleo strut, prop strike, right aileron and wingtip, which precipitated an engine overhaul, new prop, new fabric covering, new transparencies, new interior etc, tens of thousands and probably a year without the airplane, all because I didn’t go-around.

In Florida the required auto insurence is $10K https://www.flhsmv.gov/insurance/ It’s pretty obvious the reason why you must have auto insurence is because the insurance lobby got that law passed, I’m sure there is a lot of profit in writing millions of $10K policies. In 2015 Fl had over 15 millions registered vehicles, average cost for min legally required insurance in Fl is $1,000 per vehicle per year, it was actually $997 I rounded it up, what is it today? A lot more than $1,000 is my guess. That’s 15 Billion per year in just Florida, chicken scratch for the Federal Government, but to me it’s real money. Full coverage is on average $2,700 per year in Fl. I’m real low risk for insurance, haven’t had a claim in decades, only one I remember was 40 years ago, I insure three vehicles, only one full coverage, and my auto insurance is about what I pay for my house, which is about what I pay for the Mooney, so $6K a year in insurance, one claim in 40 years? Insurance is of course a rip off, it has to be, because there has to be a profit after all their expenses are paid, and they have a whole lot of employees and other expenses on top of the profit. Mooney is the only airplane I’ve insured, and only because of the **** NBS spring USAA isn’t nearly as good as they used to be, they are just another mainstream insurance company now, but they won’t write insurance for an antique car, a big boat, nor an airplane and they dropped motorcycle insurance years ago and push you off on Geico I believe

When I was working at the Army’s Test Activity I borrowed a friends PA-28-150 to fly to Savannah. I didn’t want to run it hard and so it was a 90 kt airplane, drove me nuts, took forever to get anywhere, the helicopter I flew cruised comfortably at 120 kts for Gods sake. I just couldn’t handle how slow it was. Other than that it was a fine little airplane, a Warrior though I believe is a much more Modern airplane without the Hersey bar wing, a good bit faster, and if someone is comfortable with it and the speed is fine, with good paint and interior, well IFR equipped and with a modern autopilot, heck that’s better than most J’s, plus no gear to spend money on, no constant speed prop and prop governor it’s cheaper to maintain, then as a mechanic I can tell you that a Piper is just so much easier to work on, a Mooney is a pilot’s airplane, not a mechanics. A Mooney at times reminds me of working on a watch, little hands would be a plus. Don’t get me wrong I love my Mooney, but as most will admit after a beer or two it took considerable time and money to get theirs where they wanted it after they bought it, and it’s not cheap to own, insurence alone can be expensive. I bet a fixed gear Piper would cost half or less to insure, and half or less to maintain, other than the engine it pretty much has no moving parts If your looking to buy, try to find an airplane that someone is selling because they want to upgrade to something bigger and faster, more comfortable etc., not from someone who’s getting out of flying for whatever reason. The one quitting flying is more likely to have been infrequently flown and more likely to have been sort of neglected maintenance wise

This, The Mooney will burn less fuel, but will cost you more, start looking at insurence costs to start with, if you don’t care for the speed then it’s not worth changing. People will argue but I think the Warrior is more comfortable, and you have worked the bugs out of it, the Mooney you haven’t. Mooney is more complex, and complexity cost more. What the Mooney brings that the Warrior doesn’t is speed and efficiency, but the Warrior is much simpler, easier to maintain and less expensive to own. So as your not lusting after the faster cruise, I don’t think you really want a Mooney, I think you would miss the Warrior

Actually you don't have insurence, you have insurance. You are almost the only person who spells it that way on Mooneyspace. (https://mooneyspace.com/search/?q=insurence&quick=1) Giving whoever comes after you the limits of your policy is usually enough to make them settle and go away, rather than them waging a long battle to come after your entire net worth. How about just the cost of defending yourself, which if you survive any accident is a huge cost? Your insurance company is obligated to defend you. What about the cost of retrieving a repairable airplane when you have to land engine-out in a field? That can run into 10's of 1000's of dollars. There is a provision in the policy to cover that. There are many reasons to carry insurance other that protecting the value of the hull. Self-insuring is definitely an option, but anyone that does it really needs to think out all of the possibilities and make sure it's the right choice for themselves and their estate.

Using that logic, best way to avoid a lawsuit is to not have insurence, and supposedly they can’t find out how much insurence you have. I worried about raising my auto liability limits because I thought that would guarantee a TV Lawyer, but was told they don’t know how much insurence you have. Neighbor has rental property, renter slipped and fell on the sidewalk in the rain, had a nasty bruise that somehow got infected or something had to have an operation, pictures looked horrible, I mean the whole side of her leg was open and had no skin. So of course she got one of the TV lawyers to sue, my friend contacted his insurence to find out that he wasn’t covered. Insurence person said don’t worry about it, once they find your not covered it almost certain there will be no lawsuit. Insurence person was right. I figured at least he would lose his rental property, but with apparently no big cash settlement almost a slam dunk, TV Lawyer wasn’t interested. I carry insurence on the Mooney, because the possibility of gear failure concerns me, but I don’t on the 140 as it’s insurence is high for whatever reason, even though I have thousands of hours tailwheel and no claim history. Usually the answer people give is not what if you crash into a school, but what if you taxi into a business jet. I figure the times, places and wx I fly in makes crashing into a house or school or taxiing into a biz jet about as likely as being hit by a meteor. I don’t fly instruments anymore, not that I wasn’t good at it I was, but I know I wouldn’t do it enough to maintain proficiency, I’ve not flown nights in a long time even though I have thousands of hours night, and I don’t takeoff or land over houses or schools. The 140 doesn’t even have ADSB out so it’s not going into busy airports in towns with approach paths over neighborhoods, but it does visit lots of grass strips for pancake breakfasts etc. Guy with the V-35, now 182 is my neighbor, we fly the same places, I doubt he’s even instrument rated. His other airplane is a Legend Cub with glass cockpit and an Autopilot. I’m no Lawyer but I’m sure if I worried about my Wife being destitute because I crashed into a School, I’d transfer the assets to her.

Best some hours, at least your instrument ticket and decent complex time. Then start looking at a Mooney, your insurence rate and mine will thank you.

A&P’s are required to have hangar keepers insurence to cover customers aircraft. https://avioninsurance.com/what-is-hangar-keepers-insurance/ I’m sure just about any insurence we can think of exists. On the boat I had to have 1 Mil liability on the boat and the Marina as a named something of other so it’s not just aircraft.

As it should. If you don’t like it don’t purchase insurence. Not trying to be snarky I like having the choice as opposed to having to buy insurence I don’t want because it’s part of the package. Thankfully it’s not yet mandated. I keep considering dropping it myself, I’ve already gotten the letter that’s it’s going up again this year, this will be year three for me and every year has been more expensive than the year before. From a liability concern would “Umbrella” insurence cover you, are aircraft often excluded?

That’s just the one, and is it really “Social Media”? In the literal definition I guess it is, but I’m primarily here to learn maintenance issues and fixes, and some technical discussions, not for social interactions. I have been on other forums, I was a Moderator for years on the largest cruising boat website, but I went there initially because many books had been written about what I didn’t know about cruising, I had never sailed a boat before I bought our Island Packet for instance, then became a Moderator as a way of giving back. I’m also rarely on the C-120/ 140 assn web site, but only rarely, great club with many more resources than are available for a Mooney so I’m not at all knocking them, just a 140 is so simple and has been around for so long it’s pretty much a solved problem. On edit, but you have to watch forums though, many will convince you that there is a list of must have items, without them you can’t operate safely etc. Yet people have flown for decades without X and there is no statistical data to back up the safety claim, insurence neither require nor gives a discount for it etc. They have a natural tendency to get people to spend lots of money on items and forums have favorite equipment too, so many buy these items largely I believe to be accepted etc. Nothing I guess wrong with that, that is why so many Women carry brand name hand bags and why Men wear Rolex’s etc. Just before you start believing you must have X because everybody on the forum has one, sit down and consider what it will cost, whether that will cut down on your flying and how long you may be without your aircraft having it installed. One of the best pieces of advice I saw on that sailing forum was to cruise for a year before you start buying, then decide what you really have need for. I didn’t heed it as I was working and had plenty of money to buy stuff, so we ended up with way more than we needed equipment wise. But if was a fun few years before the knees gave out, or I would still be out there.