Victory Lap around the Rockies in our C

[0TreeLemur]

My co-pilot and I have gotten to know our 1967 M20C well since we acquired her last October.   With the help and supervision of our A&P plus a good instrument shop, we took a tired example of a Mooney M20C and brought her panel up to modernity thanks in no small part to some advice given by MS members.  She now has an 8-pack panel layout, JPI900 EDM, GNS430W, and Appareo transponder with ADS-B in/out.   To celebrate we took her out on a "victory lap" around the Rockies in August, covering 2838 nm in 26.2 h flight time.  We really spread her wings with max. cruise at 12,500, and 208 mph g.s. at top of descent approaching Amarillo thanks to some ridiculous winds.  We faced headwinds more often than not, even on some eastbound legs!  The haze from the numerous forest fires out west severely limited visibility particularly in the northern portion of our trip into Colorado front range and into southern Wyoming. 

We visited friends and family, plus toured Bryce Canyon Nat'l Park, Cedar Breaks, Nat.'l Mon., drove down the Moki Dugway and across Monument Valley, overflew the Grand Canyon N-S via the "Tuckup" VFR corridor at 10,500 ft., and orbited meteor crater near Winslow, AZ.  "Little Sister" as we call her performed admirably.

[gsxrpilot]

Well done @Fred_2O Who says you need a turbo to fly west! Very nice of you to let the little girl stretch her legs. That's what she was made to do.

[Bartman]

Little Sister's coming of age....

[Mooney-Mark]

Looks like it was a great trip!  How many days? Any enroute pics, pics of the new panel?

[0TreeLemur]

On 8/29/2018 at 2:10 AM, Mooney-Mark said:

Looks like it was a great trip!  How many days? Any enroute pics, pics of the new panel?

It was really a really cool trip.  The trip took 15 days, we have a lot of family out in that part of the country.  I'll post a few enroute photos soon after I get them downloaded.  The thread and before/after photos of the new panel is  here.

[Mooney-Mark]

Great looking panel and love the EDM-900!  Wish I had one in my C.  Looking forward to seeing the enroute pics when you post them.

[0TreeLemur]

On 8/28/2018 at 9:51 AM, gsxrpilot said:

Well done @Fred_2O Who says you need a turbo to fly west! Very nice of you to let the little girl stretch her legs. That's what she was made to do.

Thanks @gsxrpilot.  We picked late August because the weather out west is usually the nicest that time of year.   This year the monsoon flow of moisture up from the southwest was still switched on so we had to dodge some storms.  

It would have been nice to have a turbo.   The density altitude the morning we departed Laramie, which has field elev. of nearly 7300', was 10,400'.   Takeoff took a long time chewing up a LOT of runway.  Kind of like a 747 takeoff from LAX to SYD.  I'd guess the takeoff roll took probably about 45 seconds consuming about 2500' of runway, and the climb out was not breathtakingly fast.   About 300-400 fpm was about all we could muster with full tanks, and my co-pilot is really light.   Together we average out to about two standard Mooney 170 lb humans.

[0TreeLemur]

The Grand Canyon photographed by my co-Pilot, looking west from approximately the north entrance of the Tuckup VFR corridor at 10.5kf, August 26, 2018.

[0TreeLemur]

Meteor Crater near Winslow, AZ, August 26, 2018.   San Francisco peaks/Flagstaff, AZ, in distance.

[0TreeLemur]

The eroded volcanic necks near Indian Wells, Arizona, in the painted desert.

[0TreeLemur]

Junction of the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers, 27 August, 2018. 

[Mooney-Mark]

What a cool trip!