Gust Locks for Mooneys

[FloridaMan]

Bungee cord between the bar under each seat and around the inside of each yoke. 

[N201MKTurbo]

FWIW My old F was chained down at KTUS one day and a big storm came by. It unbent the hooks on the tie down chains, the plane got loose and went about 200 yards and was stopped by a King Air propeller. The only damage was a little bend in the trailing edge of the elevator where it hit the propeller.

The Mooney is a tough bird!

[FloridaMan]

Just now, N201MKTurbo said:

FWIW My old F was chained down at KTUS one day and a big storm came by. It unbent the hooks on the tie down chains, the plane got loose and went about 200 yards and was stopped by a King Air propeller. The only damage was a little bend in the trailing edge of the elevator where it hit the propeller.

The Mooney is a tough bird!

Mine did well off-road. No damage when I put her down after I lost my engine at 200ft. That was a terraced run-off field and it felt like I was racing Motocross going down it. 

Edited June 11, 2016 by Antares

[ArtVandelay]

Mine did well off-road. No damage when I put her down after I lost my engine at 200ft. That was a terraced run-off field and it felt like I was racing Motocross going down it. 

So what happens afterwards?

Do you call the insurance company and they take care of it?

Who do you call to get it out? You can't fly it out and the land owner probably wants it removed asap.

[Alan Fox]

I take a long bungee , hook it to the copilots left rudder pedal , wrap it over the copilots yoke , attach it to the pilots yoke ....  Done .. High tech too...

[bonal]

The problem with just locked controls is you have all the forces running through the whole system. What I used to do with my Cessna that lived outside was to take a length of stiff garden hose with a slit along its length that I would put between the aileron and the flaps on the trailing edge. This would stabilize the ailerons to the flaps and worked pretty well.

[Hank]

1 hour ago, bonal said:

The problem with just locked controls is you have all the forces running through the whole system. What I used to do with my Cessna that lived outside was to take a length of stiff garden hose with a slit along its length that I would put between the aileron and the flaps on the trailing edge. This would stabilize the ailerons to the flaps and worked pretty well.

Since our Mooneys use pushrods and not Cessna-style cables, and because my Owners Manual says to wrap the seatbelt around the yoke, I think the plane was designed to withstand the effects of weather in a locked control system (unlike thin braided cables that can stretch). The trainers I used to fly lived outdoors with a piece of wire stuck through a hole in the pilot's control column . . . 

[flyer7324]

I have used it for at least the last 15 years. Mine hooks around the Johnson Bar. Works great but it's so long ago I can't remember what I purchased it for.

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[bonal]

No big deal and since mine lives indoors I don't have the need to immobilize the ailerons and for the short outdoor stays I too just use the belt to yoke to hold them. But if you have forces moving through the links there will be some amount of wear. I'm sure you would not be happy if you locked your control and I was to go to your plane and start torquing on your flight surfaces "hey what's the problem dude I'm not hurting anything you've got you yoke locked" right. My solution is simple cheap and effective 

[Jim Peace]

This works perfect on my C.  The elevator does not move at all and the controls are locked solid.

 

[flyer7324]

Ridiculous

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[Bob_Belville]

9 hours ago, flyer7324 said:

Ridiculous

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Dave's kidding. Read his previous "contributions" to this thread.

[Bob_Belville]

It has been nearly 50 years since I trained in C150s but I believe I remember that those little planes had a gust lock that was a pin (actually a rod with a metal "remove before flight" panel) that went through the yoke shaft and a shoulder on the lower panel and stabilized both the elevator and the ailerons. But the C150's controls had no resistance when the plane was on the ground and it took very little wind to move them up and down. Our Mooneys are very, very different and I will again argue that Jury-rigged control locks are as likely to cause damage as they are to prevent it.  

[bonal]

Bob, you are correct on the c150 lock pin and you definitely wanted to immobilize the control surfaces and as Hank said the system is more fragile on the Cessna I will accept the premise that our planes are much stronger in that way but can't see the harm in reducing external forces on the control systems 

[Oldguy]

On 6/2/2016 at 7:10 AM, Bob_Belville said:

I doubt that our push pull rod system is very susceptible to being damaged by winds on the ramp.

I dutifully tie the plane down when it overnights out of the hangar but a Mooney is not a butterfly.

In < 50 kt winds it's going to behave more like a Cessna Citation than a Skyhawk. Mooneys might get damaged at Oshkosh when some othee brand gets blown on top of them.

Flame on.

Like this? Result of a tropical storm in Texas in the early 1980's.

Oh, yeah, the Mooney, N7010V, is flying out of Cobb County(KRYY) and looks beautiful! Check it out on http://flightaware.com/