What's your Useful Load?

[skyking]

Its nice to know that my little old M20A can out-do something all the newer more expensive mooneys can.

I love the fact i can get 2 adults 2 kids and full gas tanks and still get more than a pair of shoes in the luggage bin and not be over gross.

[RJBrown]

[scottfromiowa]

Great post RJ.  Thank you for correcting my "Rocket" error regarding PFM conversion.  I believe I remember Coy talking about the Punta Gorda Hurricane and the demise of the PFM's in his magazine several years ago.  Thank you also for your discussion on the PFM vs. modern Ovation's etc. regarding gear and weights.  Exactly the info/discussion I was looking for.  That's a nice useful load you have in your MSE too!

[piperpainter]

1000.2Lbs useful with a payload of 688lbs Can't complain!

[crxcte]

68 M20F useful load is 1042 lb.  No A/P, manual gear, no mods.  

[Jerry 5TJ]

My 1965C has a useful load of 989 pounds out of a 2575 pound gross.  That figure is after correcting some errors in W/B sheets entered in the logs in decades past. 

My previous T210 would haul 1000 pounds in the cabin even with all 90 gallons of fuel aboard.  But flying it ate AMUs at a fierce rate.  

[Stefanovm]

2575 - 1658 = 917 M20E. I have a boat anchor for a DME.

My wife wanted a 210 or another 182. She had grown accustomed to a high wing, '69 C150 (10 years), '74 C182 (4 years), '69 C310 (not really a high wing, but we had it for only two years '83-'85), and a '78  C152 (7 years). We are both happy with the M20E (2 months), low wing and all. I am barely able to afford it, so a 210 would have been eliminated for the same reason as the 310, flying costs.

Mooney has this category, flying costs, hands down! As our mission is just normally my wife and I, the 260+/- pound payload with her, I, and full fuel is more than adequate. This is especially true when compared to my C152 at 20 pounds payload, sold two months ago in exchange for moving up to a Mooney. The 100 +/- pound difference between a Mooney and 210 or 182 means nothing to us, except once in a blue moon when she has wanted to carry 6 people. In my 100+ hours per year the opportunity for more than 2 being flown is less than 5 hours, so the extra costs would be wasted. The Mooney has almost the same range for our normal mission. When we have carried passengers, the mission is usually very short at less than 100 miles.

[Gone]

955 lbs on my '65 E model. With the lightweight starter but still the old generator. Only boat ancher in the cockpit is my Bendix T12C. Want to keep the ADF capability here in Canada, but not quite enough sheckels in the fund to spring for the either the Meggit/Collins, Narco, or King digital ADFs with flip-flop. 

Tuning that old Bendix on missed approach can be a real pain.  I bought the Davtron 701 frequency counter that goes into its system but it's not installed yet. Ran out of panel real estate.

[mjc]

My 1969 M20C has a useful load of 1006 lbs.

According to the posts in this thread, here are the following average useful load values:

M20A: 1050

M20C: 991 (range 940-1018)

M20E: 937 (range 917-955)

M20F: 1031

M20J: 959 (range 883-1035)

M20K: 890

M20R: 1051

The differences between the A, C, and E models make sense; the E's engine is about 50 lbs. heavier (see http://www.aviator.cc/aircraft_engine_weights.html). M20J weights are all over the map, due to their gradual bulking up, until the increase to 2900 lbs, which yields the highest useful loads.

[scottfromiowa]

Thank's Mike!  Great summation.  Thanks for everyone's contributions.  I continue to learn from this site...