RoundTwo Posted September 27, 2021 Report Posted September 27, 2021 On 2/6/2021 at 8:11 PM, carusoam said: Some Mooneys make great retirement planes... The best Mooney is the one you own... Best regards, -a- Earlier in the thread you made this statement. Since I’m in the retirement group, is the J considered a good retirement Mooney? If not, which ones and what is your criteria for deciding? Quote
carusoam Posted September 28, 2021 Report Posted September 28, 2021 18 hours ago, RoundTwo said: Earlier in the thread you made this statement. Since I’m in the retirement group, is the J considered a good retirement Mooney? If not, which ones and what is your criteria for deciding? Speed and efficiency are always appreciated in retirement… Saving dough is extra helpful… So… the M20J is a nice plane for retirement…. But comes with some extras that are not that budget friendly…. Guess it all depends on what you want to do in your retirement… The M20E is often the shining star for retirees… Kind of a 2+2 kind of airplane… it has four seats, but space is pretty limited in the back… It has fuel injection and runs LOP extremely efficiently…. So… The cost to acquire the M20E is a bit lower than the M20J… The cost to operate the M20E is as low as can be for a Mooney… With many manual systems, the M20E is on the low end of annual maintenance costs… Being lighter and not very draggy… it’s speeds are top notch for a 200hp plane… when compared to Mooneys of the same era… The M20J has some aero improvements… that made it such a compelling plane to have… Many M20Es have been updated to include some of those M20J like aero improvements… cowling mods and wing tips… and seals all around… Technically, I’m in the retired group as well… but, I’ve had my M20R for over a decade already… and not losing my grip on it…. Oddly the insurance, hangar, and annual costs are very close together for many Mooneys… The drag… comes around age 80… where insurance costs and retract don’t go very well together… yet. When I have to step back… M20E is my next step…. I have used the metrics of other people… to form these opinions…. I like the finance aspects of machinery… PP thoughts only not a finance guy… Best regards, -a- 1 Quote
A64Pilot Posted September 29, 2021 Report Posted September 29, 2021 (edited) A few things I didn’t see mentioned, I just bought my J model. to be truthful I’ve wanted a J for over 20 years but when airplane shopping I looked at mostly other aircraft, what I really wanted was a Meyers 200D , which is faster than a Bo, without any truth stretching, but they are old, not many built and have a fwd CG issue due to the nose gear strength on the drop test. I couldn’t find one that was worth asking price. Well found one but it had an open lien still from forever ago and the seller wouldn’t get it cleared. So no Meyers. I looked at everything from Van’s RV’s to Bo’s. The Bo suffers from a CG problem, meaning that it can easily be loaded out of aft CG, and that’s dangerous, the Mooney on the other hand without running any real math seems that it would be very difficult to get out of CG without doing something stupid like heavy baggage and back seat pax an empty front seat. So the Bo ‘s on paper useful load may not be as much if you run out of CG before you do weight. I flew the neighbors V tail and has been said the cabin is narrow, but you have a lot more leg room, but there were things I couldn’t get over, the instrument layout was stupid. to shoot an ILS you have to look at the bottom of the panel. the control arm covers the lower switches so you can’t see them and someone though it OK to put the flaps switch close to the gear switch. which I guess wouldn’t have been so bad except you can’t see them, and if memory serves they feel the same. ‘But what really turned me off and I couldn’t get over was the yaw instability in even light turbulence, thing wags it’s tail constantly so bad that it makes you sick. especially for back seaters, I’ve been told a yaw dampener makes it better. I don’t believe you could get the thing Certified today, not with that yaw stability problem, yes it’s that bad in my opinion. Finally even though at a glance it seems that engine access is easy with they way the top opens up like my C-140, but apparently the bottom cowl isn’t removable, making cylinder removal a real challenge, and as a mechanic I like engines that you can get to everything by fully removable cowling. But to be honest the Bo is faster, which with 85 to 100 HP more it had better be. The older S model Bo is faster then the newer V tails. I’m sure however that a Mooney with the same HP is much faster. Edited September 29, 2021 by A64Pilot Quote
PT20J Posted September 29, 2021 Report Posted September 29, 2021 Another good thing about the M20J is it's range. You can fly it for six hours on full tanks -- longer than I care to sit in a little airplane. The bragging point seems to be speed, but the Mooney design is really about efficiency -- getting the most miles per gallon. The laminar flow wing seems to get undue credit. Cherokees also use a laminar flow airfoil and no one thinks of them as speed demons. Laminar flow airfoils demonstrate a "drag bucket", but laminar flow wings generally do not for a variety of reasons. The genius of Al Mooney was to design a fuselage that could provide room for four people, with a width equal (or better depending on whose measurements you use) to a Bonanza with a much smaller wetted area. Parasite drag is directly related to how much skin the airflow touches and parasite drag is predominant at cruise speeds. A convenient way to compare parasite drag is equivalent flat plate area which is the parasitic drag in lbs. divided by the dynamic pressure in lbs/feet^2. Using flat plate area, if you know the air density and TAS (and hence the dynamic pressure) you can easily calculate the drag. Dave Lednicer provided the following equivalent flat plate areas: Mooney M20J 2.81 feet^2 V35 Bonanza 3.50 feet^2 PA24 Comanche 4.24 feet^2 Note that while the Comanche is thought to be a copy of the Mooney (and if you lay the planforms on top of each other they match except for the tail), Piper seems to have missed the point. Skip 1 Quote
FloridaMan Posted September 30, 2021 Report Posted September 30, 2021 On 2/6/2021 at 8:42 PM, Hank said: Less drag from the airframe. P.S. @Confused, my little Mooney only has 180 hp, but I cruise at more than 145 KTAS. As speed increases, drag is squared. Less drag means less HP for speed. Quote
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