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Mooney Ovation 310 STC question


TheStig

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6 hours ago, Niko182 said:

If you are looking for useful load there are 2 models to look at. A 252 upgraded to an encore, and an eagle upgraded to an ovation. Both will result in useful loads of 1150+. 

No matter what you do, a factory Encore will never have 1150 usefull load.

Here's the W & B from the Encore that I owned. A month after it was built the Gross Weight increased was approved and it brought useful load up to 985. The owner before me then added a JPI and TKS which brought it back down to 902 useful load. A glass panel upgrade where both vacuum pumps were deleted might get it back close to 940 (or 1020 if it didn't have TKS).

 

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19 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

No matter what you do, a factory Encore will never have 1150 useful load.

Here's the W & B from the Encore that I owned. A month after it was built the Gross Weight increased was approved and it brought useful load up to 985. The owner before me then added a JPI and TKS which brought it back down to 902 useful load. A glass panel upgrade where both vacuum pumps were deleted might get it back close to 940 (or 1020 if it didn't have TKS).

I haven't pulled the vacuum pump yet, but I have replaced quite a bit of other stuff, pulled an ADF, KNS80, MX20, some old radios, all the strip engine gauges, and replaced them with 750 xi and other more modern instruments. Over the winter I hope to pull the pump and replace some vacuum operated instruments. Unfortunately I am finding that the newer electronic instruments are in most cases, a little heavier than the old, so there has been useful load creep in the wrong direction. The losses are not big, just a few pounds, but almost never in the direction you hoped. Not unless you start pulling redundancy out of the system, and then of course you have single-point-of-failure modes. If you already have two alternators you can go electronic and pull the vacuums, but if you only have one you are going to need two for safety, and there goes your UL gain.

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On 1/7/2021 at 10:56 AM, NJMac said:

Anyone think Ovation's will be able to buy a UL increase from the factory this year?  I heard it was possibly in the works 


NJ,

Anything is possible...

Unfortunately, from the outside... we don’t know what is involved physically...

Or if it is based on a new flight testing regime for the existing equipment...

Or both...

Lets see if @Davidv might have a guess at what may be needed...

PP thoughts only, I have no insight for what may be involved or who does the work...

Best regards,

-a-

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On 1/7/2021 at 9:56 AM, NJMac said:

Anyone think Ovation's will be able to buy a UL increase from the factory this year?  I heard it was possibly in the works 

I doubt it. the useful load is limited more by the landing gear than anything else. To re-engineer the landing gear would take a lot of resources and testing, which I doubt are available at the moment. 

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Seems like the issue Rocket had.

The gross weight increase to 3200# was take off weight.

The landing weight was still limited to 2900#.

The Rocket has the same basic airframe as, but more power than the TLS that has a take off weight of 3368# and a landing weight of 3200#.

With the additional power a Rocket or a TLS “could” fly safely at 3600# and tanked for long distance delivery many have.

 

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I doubt it. the useful load is limited more by the landing gear than anything else. To re-engineer the landing gear would take a lot of resources and testing, which I doubt are available at the moment. 

But this is exactly what they're working on - a new gear with pneumatic structs which sounds much like a Bonanza gear except it's got to be much lower on the ground. See the Mooney website forum for the description.


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1 hour ago, kortopates said:


But this is exactly what they're working on - a new gear with pneumatic structs which sounds much like a Bonanza gear except it's got to be much lower on the ground. See the Mooney website forum for the description.


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I am definitely hopeful, but these things always seem to take longer and more money that you ever expect. Whether it happens this year remains to be seen.

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I am definitely hopeful, but these things always seem to take longer and more money that you ever expect. Whether it happens this year remains to be seen.

Agreed, but one thing seems certain given a new gear design - it'll be an expensive upgrade by any measure.


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