New Mooney Sales - M20 Upgrades?

[CaptainAB]

Here is a K.I.S.S  noteworthy idea:

 

The New Mooney. We are starting where we left off. Introducing the new 205 (knots), 231(knots) and the 252(knots)

 

The challenge would be how to get to the acclaim type S to 252 knots. Or would it? 

Getting them to 3600-3800 lbs gross based on the feedback I've seen is critical. 

Whats a BRS cost for cirrus per install? 35k?

seems like for that you could offer a fancy CPU/AP upgrade that can guarantee a surviveable deadstick landing when activated at 1000 ft agl or greater. Maybe partner with Tesla for the sensors to grease the landing.

it would be a salesmans dream because unlike BRS it could be demonstrated on every test flight.

 

 

[FoxMike]

I voted for other. Here are the suggestions for M models.

Put a coil spring around the gear donuts.  Idea is to provide more support and maybe a higher gross weight (3550 gross would be an acceptable).  Probably would take some tweaking to keep airplane from bouncing.  Hopefully would help the donuts last a few more years (I get about 6 years on a set now).  Beech Staggerwing could serve as an example.

Put the Acclaim wing tips on the M20Ms.  Lower the stall speed a few knots so the flap gap seals could be installed and the gross weight increased.  Need more lift to reduce stall? Use the Mustang flaps.  Mooney should have the drawing around.  

Maybe look at some of the later prop designs.  Consider that almost all of the users cruise in the high teens or low 20's.  More takeoff thrust and better ROC would be better than higher cruise speed at 25k.  

Why would Mooney want to compete with the Acclaim?  It would not but a few M owners might be able to sell their M's for a higher price and be able to purchase a new Acclaim.

[thinwing]

On October 5, 2016 at 6:28 PM, Piloto said:

Pilot relief tube. Turboprops and jets have it. Why not the Mooney. The joy of using it is priceless. Best upgrade I have in my M20J.

José

Hey!..That taking a whizz thingie looks awful draggie!

[Piloto]

Actually the venturi tube is smaller than what it appears on the picture. I didn't notice any drag effect. The purpose of the venturi tube is to provide suction and narrow fluid dispersion. Unlike when using a container were you need to aim down to avoid spilling, with suction you can aim up into the funnel with no spilling. This makes it easier and cleaner than using a container. It assures that the last drop will not be on your boxers.

José

[Mcstealth]

The 737 and our Moonies have the same problem. Boeing is at its max in 737 design because the gear are the same as its 1960's design, and they can't put anymore weight, or put bigger engines on the wings. Same for Mooney when it comes to weight.

My vote, if the M20 is to be continued, is a parachute without a loss of UL.

[gsengle]

I suspect a minor wing redesign (any such thing as minor wing redesign?) would be required to accommodate a taller stronger gear redesign. Our gear is super compact but as I understand it maxed out on weight. And besides the wing is maxed out on stall speed at max gross.

So, tweak the wing and gear to make it stronger and improve flaps enough to make higher gross weights possible. Add the chute. And since you have to retest anyway, redesign the new double doors to bubble smoothly out enough to add say 4 inches of cabin width...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Urs_Wildermuth]

The case for the parashute is overwhelming looking at todays sales figures. Basically, only Cirrus sells airplanes in real numbers today. Everyone else doesn't.

The parashute is comparable to the sugarless chewing gum many years ago. It became a hit with kids, not because they liked it, but because it was the one gum mummy allowed. Today, if flying partners are confronted with the idea that they should fly on a small plane, they will have the parashute any time over a non equipped plane.

Look at the time when Cirrus came out with the idea. There were several other designs around, all superior in speed, economy and performance, but all of them lost out to Cirrus.

Since then, Cirrus have managed to keep the pressure on the market by bringing up new versions regularly, by upgrading their product and by keeping a real good marketing going all these years. The Columbia/Corvalis is basically a dead product today and the Mooneys we see sell to people who have had Mooneys before because only they know what a wonderful product they really are. Wifes (ok, spouses) won't care for that, they see the parashute and say IF they have to put up with a wannabe airline captain who only recently hit his thumb hanging a picture on the wall, then hand me a parashute please!

So what would Mooney have to do?

1 to 10 th priority: Get all their planes equipped with a BRS system.

2nd: The M10 is a good new start, but the M20 cell is outdated for new customers. Even while it is wider than Cessnas and Pipers, today in the day and age of the 50" cabin width a Cirrus or even TB20 has, people want to sit like in a car, not a sportster, especcially if that plane has an endurance of 6+ hours.

3rd: Go back to the efficiency sales argument which did sell them a lot of airplanes before. The Mooneys easily are the fastest and most economical planes around even now, but they could be better if the philosophy of the 201-252 series were revived more vigorously. That will mean digging into new propulsion systems, as they do with the M10. A 200 kt airplane which will do those 200 kts on a 5 gph diesel and which will have truely intercontinental range even with current tanks would rise an eyebrow or two. And be prepared for the post fossile fuel area. In the car market, people like Tesla own the future, while the rest are on a dying battle. Germany and some other countries have now decided to ban petrol fuelled cars by 2030. What is your bet they won't ban not only cars but airplanes as well? So we need to be ready.

Short term I agree with Mooney however that putting the 2nd door in is a great design choice. It does make the cabin more accessible and it does give the airplane something it has been lacking for ever. It should have been done in 1960 or latest when the 201 came out. But it's never too late.

 

For me, the M10 is a step in the right direction but it lacks that all important parashute. The M10 would have had the possibility to include it, it wasn't done, which imho will break this design in the European and US market. It may still work in China. I still think especcially the M10J is a wonderful airplane and I'd be in the market for one to replace my C model if I ever win the lottery, as it does  exactly what I think Mooney should be all about: Economy, efficiency and performance. Maybe, as a two and 3 seater, it can get away without the shute, because Cirrus doesn't have a comparable plane, we'll see. Price and bang for buck might still win this one.

 

[Alain B]

The Lancair Evolution Piston is the Cirrus competitor now :  faster , cabin is much bigger , it has pressurisation , longer range and about the same price . Chute included ! 

Edited October 16, 2016 by Alain B

[Urs_Wildermuth]

Yes, but it is an experimental, isn't it? Which means, certified it would cost at least twice that much. And as an experimental, that means, Day VFR only in Europe. And that makes a plane like that useless.

Maybe what this does show however is that the certification process worldwide is quite fatally flawed. It can't be that people have to resort to kit planes in order to satisfy their needs for new designs, because just about any company trying to certify a new GA plane goes bust over it and needs to be rescued by foreign money or simply vanish. Certification should not become a reason why there is no more innovation in that market and what is there is totally unreasonably expensive.

I do hope this will not put an end to the M10 project though, even though I keep reading that the process of certification is much slower than anticipated... now there's a surprise.

 

[Alain B]

Yes it is , there is no restriction in north america about flying conditions except for Flight Into Know Ice , but Inadvertand Ice is OK , as the plane can de constructed  with a de-icing system . There is a simple way around this however. 

[DaV8or]

I think basically there we have it four pages later. The only thing that really will help eek the M20 along for another decade while we wait for a replacement would be a parachute and a gross weight increase to accommodate that equipment. Of course the added weight of the parachute and whatever they have to do to gain an increase in GW will ultimately slow the plane down and hurt it's performance, but that is likely acceptable to buyers as long as it's still faster than the Cirrus.

Of course all of this would require lots and lots of money and time for certification. I still say it's throwing good money after bad. Spend the money on a new design instead.

[AndyFromCB]

On 10/11/2016 at 1:37 PM, CaptainAB said:

Here is a K.I.S.S  noteworthy idea:

 

The New Mooney. We are starting where we left off. Introducing the new 205 (knots), 231(knots) and the 252(knots)

 

The challenge would be how to get to the acclaim type S to 252 knots. Or would it? 

Getting them to 3600-3800 lbs gross based on the feedback I've seen is critical. 

Whats a BRS cost for cirrus per install? 35k?

seems like for that you could offer a fancy CPU/AP upgrade that can guarantee a surviveable deadstick landing when activated at 1000 ft agl or greater. Maybe partner with Tesla for the sensors to grease the landing.

it would be a salesmans dream because unlike BRS it could be demonstrated on every test flight.

 

 

Guaranteed survivable deadstick landing is something I would like to see ;-) How exactly do you propose this works? Greasing the landing it not an issue, you can code that in a few weeks (it has already been coded many times over). What you can't code for is 4inch steel pipe with 4ft of concrete foundation in the middle of a corn field holding sensors, or the fact that many areas of USA of A simply have no survivable options below let's say 35,000ft west of Denver short of flying very convoluted routing. Neither can you account for cows (being they are mobile), cars, farm equipment, etc.

[AndyFromCB]

1 hour ago, Hyett6420 said:

But you can't account for those with a parachute either.  A steel pole at speed through the belly of the plane will make an interesting surgical procedure later on the humans. 

Most ideas are not put into practice because people are so adept at seeing the 10% of what is wrong with a thing they fail to see the 90% of what is right.  

Volvo cars for instance have pledged that post 2020 no one will die inside of one of their vehicles and that will take into account trucks cutting the tops of the cars off etc.  Which is far more likely than hitting a steel pole in a field or a cow. 

It will make a considerably less interesting of a procedure at 17mph than at 80mph. Most ideas are not put into practice because they are terrible ideas in practice. Good ideas always succeed otherwise there were not good.

As much as I love Volvos (had a C30, S60 waiting for the V90 Wagon to arrive stateside), I don't see that happening. I don't care how well you design  a vehicle, there is not a damn thing you can do prevent me from doing 130mph in my C30 up north on I29 and slamming into a cow and unless the glass is 3 inches thick, that cow will go thru my windshield. There is also nothing you can do to prevent a flying car from landing on top of your windshield like an accident I witnessed this summer on I80. A car crossed a median at 80mph (wide median with a dip) over falling asleep and overcorrecting, became airborne, slammed into a top of a petrol tanker and landed on top of an Infinity killing the driver. Somehow I don't think Volvo is taking "projectiles" into account. So unless they plan on making their cars look like a tank, weight as much and achieve .25mpg, people will still die in Volvos. 

Edited October 19, 2016 by AndyFromCB

[Urs_Wildermuth]

There may be a way to do a deadstick landing automatically or manually and be reasonably safe in many cases.

http://xavion.com/

The answer to that may be Xavion or a similar app which would have to work with the avionic of the plane or be installed in such a way that it can drive the flight director and/or Autopilot.

What this does is that it calculates a safe flight path to either the nearest runway or the nearest flat piece of real estate in it's database and then guides the pilot there using "Windows in the sky" indicators. It works astonishingly well, of course the chances for success are much higher, the higher you fly. I've talked to people who tried it assuming it to be a toy and came away amazed.

 

Now, to make that a parashute replacement, it would have to be certified, would have to interface with most autopilots and glass cockpits. But if so, it would be one heck of a tool.

[Joe Zuffoletto]

I think the parachute is the single biggest reason that Cirrus has been killing it over the years. Comparing Cirrus SR22T sales to Cessna TTx sales is the best way to see that; the planes are otherwise almost identical. That, combined with the ridiculous useful load on the latest SR22T, make it a very appealing airplane.

I get depressed when I see the new Cirrus birds coming out with ADS-B in/out as standard equipment, yet I can't add it to my Acclaim because no one in Kerrville or China is writing software that will interface my G1000 to Garmin's ADS-B compatible transponder. I'm becoming concerned that come 2020 I'll have a plane that I can't fly or sell.

[aviatoreb]

1 hour ago, Joe Zuffoletto said:

I think the parachute is the single biggest reason that Cirrus has been killing it over the years. Comparing Cirrus SR22T sales to Cessna TTx sales is the best way to see that; the planes are otherwise almost identical. That, combined with the ridiculous useful load on the latest SR22T, make it a very appealing airplane.

I get depressed when I see the new Cirrus birds coming out with ADS-B in/out as standard equipment, yet I can't add it to my Acclaim because no one in Kerrville or China is writing software that will interface my G1000 to Garmin's ADS-B compatible transponder. I'm becoming concerned that come 2020 I'll have a plane that I can't fly or sell.

I thought you can install at least the Garmin 345 transponder.

[aviatoreb]

Diamond is supposedly working on an electronic auto land system that includes an auto seek and find and land at button - for there DA42/62.  Of course Diamond seems to have lots of ideas that don't get too far.  And also that is for a twin platform, but it would be very useful there for the no pilot copilot to bring down a bird with an incapacitated pilot, or a panicked pilot for whatever reason, maybe a loss of one of two engines.

[AndyFromCB]

1 hour ago, aviatoreb said:

Diamond is supposedly working on an electronic auto land system that includes an auto seek and find and land at button - for there DA42/62.  Of course Diamond seems to have lots of ideas that don't get too far.  And also that is for a twin platform, but it would be very useful there for the no pilot copilot to bring down a bird with an incapacitated pilot, or a panicked pilot for whatever reason, maybe a loss of one of two engines.

That idea is quite simple and like I said, already exists. Look at winds aloft, take best glide speed, see if any fields exist within glide distances - fudge factor, proceed to field and land. With WASS GPS, there really isn't much involved in creating an auto land system, especially an emegency auto land system that does not require the aircraft to fly again, only for the passengers to walk away. All the code required for that is more or less inside your typical G1000 system (Indicated airspeed hold, VNAV, Boeing banana, winds aloft and metar from XM, terrain and underspeed protection). The system does not even need to flare, or at least not much, simply slightly reduce the rate of decent starting at 20AGL and you have a system that will plant an aircraft on a runway, under 400fpm vertical impact in a crab if needed. Bet you a few folks at Garmin have written it already as a side project on a weekend or two. Actually I know they have, I have seen their G5000 auto throttle operate on a Cessna X and its smoother than anything I've ever seen a pilot be able to do, so there is a lot of predictive computation going on there).

Now as to landing in a field, from a 1000ft, that's a pipe dream for a long time to come. For that you will need LIDAR and 3D FLIR, a super computer on board for image processing and many times it will still not be able to come up with a calculate survivable "solution".

As a pilot of a single (even an SR22 with BRS), you simply must accept that there might come a time where your death is pretty much certain. Tiny, tiny chance, but it's there. Now, if Cirrus could integrate a solid boost rocket with enough power to accelerate the aircraft at Vx to BRS minimum deployment altitude from rotation speed and 0 AGL, you would more or less kill a need for a twin or a turbine.

Edited October 19, 2016 by AndyFromCB

[KSMooniac]

Thinking outside of the box as is my want, one way to sell more aeroplanes may be for Mooney to go the self build route, but with the requirement that the new owner has to have it "built" by one of those professional build shops.  Label it then as experimental. 
This would bring the cost down, in that insurance liability would be less, avionics would be less, build costs would be out sourced aka Ikea. 
Self Build 201s. With a range of engines perhaps?  
Just a thought. 

Biggest obstacle with this route is the 5000+ hours of labor that is still required to build an M20, minus whatever the factory does in such a scenario. A kit requiring that much labor would appeal to very few folks these days when many already have trouble completing 1000-2000 hour kits.

I hate to admit that the chute helps sales. It clearly does. I'd rather have the payload and less cost (initial and recurring), but the market says differently. Making it optional might be optimal, and retrofittable for future owners that get a used plane without one. (I don't see any way there will ever be an aftermarket chute option for our legacy planes.)

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

[ArtVandelay]

Having a radar altimeter I think would be a requirement for any autoland capability, as well as throttle control.

[bradp]

Autoland will come to GA --- eventually.  Sure enough as this digital driver can be programmed to drive like an a$$hole (he cut me off today).