Help With Power Settings For Upcoming X-Country

[GeneralT001]

2 hours ago, takair said:

Unfortunately transition training and engine break in can be two of the most incompatible combinations.  I didn’t see anybody mention the Lycoming break in instructions.  

https://www.lycoming.com/sites/default/files/Lycoming Reciprocating engine Break-In and Oil Consumption.pdf

I most recently followed this explicitly on my new cylinders and was very pleased with the results.  Many of the on line instructions and shop instructions are really an attempt to summarize and shorten what is in here.  The reason I say that transition training is incompatible is because you are often flying with power settings not conducive to a proper break in.  In fact, those settings are often conducive to glazing.  Anyway, if you could get the shop to do a few hours of break in, it would be beneficial if you were to do some transition time before the long cross country, which will actually be great for break in…but a little nerve wracking with a new engine.

Thats been my plan all along. The aircraft is to be flown from 2 - 5 hrs to "break the engine in and confirm that all is good. At that point I will fly it - under instruction for another 2-5hrs - and then possibly an oil change before heading West. Pretty straight forward.

[LANCECASPER]

20 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

Thats been my plan all along. The aircraft is to be flown from 2 - 5 hrs to "break the engine in and confirm that all is good. At that point I will fly it - under instruction for another 2-5hrs - and then possibly an oil change before heading West. Pretty straight forward.

Sounds like a much better plan but that hasn't been your plan all along.

 

Possibly an oil change before heading West? You really want all of the break-in metal circulating through your just-overhauled engine during your cross country flight home?

[1980Mooney]

11 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

Sounds like a much better plan but that hasn't been your plan all along.

Possibly an oil change before heading West? You really want all of the break-in metal circulating through your just-overhauled engine during your cross country flight home?

How would "all that break-in metal" be circulating through any just overhauled engine?  Have you heard of an oil filter?  This is not a 1965 VW Beatle 1500 or lawnmower engine with either no filter or only a screen.

Let's not lose touch with reality here.  It does not "circulate" - it makes one trip to the filter.

Edited December 15, 2021 by 1980Mooney

[GeneralT001]

13 hours ago, GeneralT001 said:

I'll definitely put a few hours on it after the test flight and before heading west. Sounds like I should keep it fairly low though?

A number of my posts mention having the test flight done (ideally 5hrs worth) as well as me getting some training before heading West. Sometimes people miss things I guess?

[1980Mooney]

37 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

A number of my posts mention having the test flight done (ideally 5hrs worth) as well as me getting some training before heading West. Sometimes people miss things I guess?

True.  In your very first post you said, "Before I get out there the aircraft is to be test flown to ensure that all is well with the engine/prop."  If the shop test flies it for several hours before you arrive then they will have conducted the initial and most aggressive break-in of the engine.

Everyone seems to be losing their minds with the idea of flying a newly overhauled engine on a cross-country.  Think about it - what do you think the odds are that a newly overhauled Lycoming IO360 engine from a reputable shop will throw metal apart and fail in flight?  Now compare it to the odds of a 15 year old Lycoming that may have been sitting outside for some time with more than a thousand hours - Which do you think is more likely to fail on a long cross country?

We don't have the data but I bet it is safer to fly the newly overhauled engine.  People have noted here that they have purchased "new to them" airplanes and flown them home cross country.  The engines may seem ok on paper and in the prebuy but you never really know.  At least with the overhauled engine from a reputable shop everything has been done to a higher level of consistency than an engine maintained in the field.

Edited December 15, 2021 by 1980Mooney

[GeneralT001]

6 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

True.  In your very first post you said, "Before I get out there the aircraft is to be test flown to ensure that all is well with the engine/prop."  If the shop test flies it for several hours before you arrive then they will have conducted the initial and most aggressive break-in of the engine.

Everyone seems to be losing their minds with the idea of flying a newly overhauled engine on a cross-country.  Think about it - what do you think the odds are that a newly overhauled Lycoming IO360 engine from a reputable shop with throw metal and fail in flight?  Now compare it to the odds of a 15 year old Lycoming that may have been sitting outside for some time with more than a thousand hours - Which do you think is more likely to fail on a long cross country?

We don't have the data but I bet it is safer to fly the newly overhauled engine.  People have noted here that they have purchased "new to them" airplanes and flown them home cross country.  The engines may seem ok on paper and in the prebuy but you never really know.  At least with the overhauled engine from a reputable shop everything has been done to a higher level of consistency than an engine maintained in the field.

For sure. There are no guarantees given. Odds and stats are in our favor. Personally, if it runs fine for 5-10 hrs then most likely it will keep running just fine as long as its treated correctly.

[GeneralT001]

1 minute ago, bluehighwayflyer said:

All true enough.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but it wasn’t just the idea of flying a freshly overhauled engine cross country for me.  You can read the other links in the chain yourself in this thread. Chances are they won’t end in an accident, but folks here were just pointing out that a lot of the links were already established.  

My personal concern was and still is that the OP, although apparently a highly accomplished pilot, lacks GA experience, and as we seen here before things can end poorly when pilots with experience in “heavier metal” don’t understand the inherit limitations of this segment of owner-flown and maintained GA.  

But it’s on him and I do wish him well.  He will learn a lot on the flight home.  

I do have some...limited GA....got my PPL on a Cherokee way back and a bit of Mooney time in the 80's. But lets face it these smaller aircraft are like kites, which is fine...treat them as such...not planning on challenging any lenticular type clouds in them anytime soon...not planning on seeing how awesome the anti-ice/de-ice properties are on this Mooney  Bottom line though...it will glide just fine with enough airspeed should that possibility occur. Really don't want that experience though

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, 1980Mooney said:

How would "all that break-in metal" be circulating through any just overhauled engine?  Have you heard of an oil filter?  This is not a 1965 VW Beatle 1500 or lawnmower engine with either no filter or only a screen.

Let's not lose touch with reality here.  It does not "circulate" - it makes one trip to the filter.

I actually have heard of an oil filter, that's why I mentioned about changing it.

So I guess that Lycoming Service Instruction 1427C (Break-in instructions) which tells you in the Ground Test, Section B, point 13 to change the oil filter and inspect it for blockage after the ground test, and then in Flight Test, Section C, point 12 tells you again to change the oil filter after the flight test and inspect it for blockage, is telling you to do this since there is a worldwide excess of oil filters, no other reason.

Or could it possibly be that if the blockage was such that the oil pressure built up and the bypass in the filter adaptor activated that the contaminated oil could circulate through the engine and cause damage? Before you answer you might read through this (drop down to paragraph 7):  https://www.lycoming.com/content/understanding-oil-flow

 

[ZuluZulu]

42 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

I do have some...limited GA....got my PPL on a Cherokee way back and a bit of Mooney time in the 80's. But lets face it these smaller aircraft are like kites, which is fine...treat them as such...not planning on challenging any lenticular type clouds in them anytime soon...not planning on seeing how awesome the anti-ice/de-ice properties are on this Mooney  Bottom line though...it will glide just fine with enough airspeed should that possibility occur. Really don't want that experience though

That you have to keep bringing up very limited experience of 40 years ago to refute charges of being inexperienced in this realm is telling you something, if you care to listen. 

[ZuluZulu]

1 hour ago, 1980Mooney said:

Everyone seems to be losing their minds with the idea of flying a newly overhauled engine on a cross-country.  Think about it - what do you think the odds are that a newly overhauled Lycoming IO360 engine from a reputable shop will throw metal apart and fail in flight?  Now compare it to the odds of a 15 year old Lycoming that may have been sitting outside for some time with more than a thousand hours - Which do you think is more likely to fail on a long cross country?

We don't have the data but I bet it is safer to fly the newly overhauled engine.

Some have looked at the data, and your rhetorical thousand-hour-Lycoming might be a better bet than you’re trying to suggest.

https://www.avweb.com/ownership/the-savvy-aviator-45-how-risky-is-going-past-tbo/

[GeneralT001]

43 minutes ago, ZuluZulu said:

That you have to keep bringing up very limited experience of 40 years ago to refute charges of being inexperienced in this realm is telling you something, if you care to listen. 

I don't know...I've always kinda found flying straightforward its not something you magically just forget.

Edited December 15, 2021 by GeneralT001

[LANCECASPER]

6 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

I don't know...I've always kinda found flying straightforward its not something you magically just forget.

I think we all would have felt a little more comfortable with your GA knowledge if it wasn't for some of the posts you've made in the past week.

Two weeks ago was still looking for an airplane:

[GeneralT001]

Knowledge is power.

[jaylw314]

" Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect. "

You are getting the responses you are, because we are hearing a lot of the latter in your posts.  If your thought process is that you're willing to take those chances, I suppose that's your right.  If you are looking for confirmation bias from us, you won't get it.

While I think some of the peeps here may claim that we dislike it when people take unnecessary chances that drive our insurance rates up, the fact remains that most of us have lost friends or have had friends who have lost others in aviation accidents.  That experience, along with wondering if we could have said or done something to have prevented it, weighs heavily on human beings.

Pay a ferry pilot.  Better yet, get a ferry pilot who is a CFI and willing to do your transition training--he'll have time to familiarize himself with any equipment and foibles of the individual aircraft, and it will make your transition training more efficient.  

[GeneralT001]

Oh the friends I have lost through suicide and aviation accidents in my 35 yrs of military flying (Boxtop 22 comes to mind CC130322). The bodies I have flown back from Kandahar. No stranger to death...its a part of life. Risk management is a thing....should we all just hide?

Btw...I did my ATPL.

[jaylw314]

6 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

Oh the friends I have lost through suicide and aviation accidents in my 35 yrs of military flying (Boxtop 22 comes to mind CC130322). The bodies I have flown back from Kandahar. No stranger to death...its a part of life. Risk management is a thing....should we all just hide?

Btw...I did my ATPL.

Then you know as well as anyone that if anything happens to you after coming to ask people for advice, it will eat at us for not speaking out more strongly than we have so far. 

[GeneralT001]

Just now, jaylw314 said:

Then you know as well as anyone that if anything happens to you after coming to ask people for advice, it will eat at us for not speaking out more strongly than we have so far. 

Not at all. We make our own decisions based on knowledge and comfort level...thats on no one but the guy behind the stick.

Remember...the only thing I was asking for was some numbers for power settings...that was it. Some people wanted to turn it into some sort of life lesson...still can't figure that out....but whatever

[jaylw314]

Just now, GeneralT001 said:

Not at all. We make our own decisions based on knowledge and comfort level...thats on no one but the guy behind the stick.

Remember...the only thing I was asking for was some numbers for power settings...that was it. Some people wanted to turn it into some sort of life lesson...still can't figure that out....but whatever

You don't get to make the call of how other people respond to your question when they perceive a potential safety issue.  If you are unable or unwilling to hear them, you may be talking to the wrong crowd--other pilots who fly these amazing Mooneys.  As an alternative, I'd suspect you probably have people within your smaller social and professional circles who will be better able to tell you what you want to hear.  Good luck!

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, GeneralT001 said:

Not at all. We make our own decisions based on knowledge and comfort level...thats on no one but the guy behind the stick.

Remember...the only thing I was asking for was some numbers for power settings...that was it. Some people wanted to turn it into some sort of life lesson...still can't figure that out....but whatever

Which are readily available in any POH.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Mooney+M20J+poh&oq=Mooney+M20J+poh&aqs=chrome..69i57.7997j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[Culver LFA]

42 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

Remember...the only thing I was asking for was some numbers for power settings...that was it. Some people wanted to turn it into some sort of life lesson...still can't figure that out....but whatever

I think a few us may have bypassed your power setting question because you are asking it twice. 

Good luck with your flight, be safe.

[N201MKTurbo]

Back in 86 when I rebuilt the engine on my M20F, the first flight was from Denver to Rapid City. A two hour high power flight, just like Lycoming recommends

When I did my current engine I just flew circles in the desert for 2 hours. At some points I was probably 40 miles from the airport. Either way it is still a long walk if you have to do an off airport landing.

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, GeneralT001 said:

Oh the friends I have lost through suicide and aviation accidents in my 35 yrs of military flying (Boxtop 22 comes to mind CC130322). The bodies I have flown back from Kandahar. No stranger to death...its a part of life. Risk management is a thing....should we all just hide?

Btw...I did my ATPL.

The accident that comes to a lot of our minds was the one posted below. If I remember correctly the guy had 180 hours as a civilian decades ago, then was in the military 30+ years, retired as a colonel, and first thing he did when he got out was buy an Mooney M20S. He didn't do transition training and on his first take-off the day of purchase he and his passenger died without going a mile past the airport property.

"A crash report from the Kansas Highway Patrol describes the fatal crash by stating:

"The aircraft ascended from the Johnson County Executive Airport runway. The aircraft went into the air and began to fall straight down. The aircraft landed in a field a short distance to the east of the runway. The aircraft caught fire. Two occupants were located deceased inside the aircraft."

Whatever other experience you've had in aviation probably won't hurt you unless you feel it exempts you from needing to do everything everyone else has to do to be safe.

 

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/01/mooney-m20s-eagle-n602tf-fatal-accident_9.html

[GeneralT001]

Something we all should have learned very early in our flying careers is...FLY THE AIRCRAFT...no matter what it does. ANC is pretty basic.

Accidents have happened and will continue to happen unless we all just ground ourselves.

[LANCECASPER]

23 minutes ago, GeneralT001 said:

Something we all should have learned very early in our flying careers is...FLY THE AIRCRAFT...no matter what it does. ANC is pretty basic.

Accidents have happened and will continue to happen unless we all just ground ourselves.

Not quite so easy. I bet he had heard of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate also.

It looks like there was a good chance that he wasn't familiar with how the Mooney seat slides and locks. It's a little hard to Aviate or Navigate when you've slid to the back seat on take-off and can't reach the yoke, the throttle or the rudders, although I'd guess he was doing a lot of Communicating those last few seconds.

It's a shame that didn't happen on his Mooney-specific transition flight. The instructor could have handled it and that would have been a lesson he never would have forgotten. Every airplane has gotchas. It's nice to find them out ahead of time from someone who regularly trains others in that specific airframe.

[GeneralT001]

9 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

Not quite so easy. I bet he had heard of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate also.

It looks like there was a good chance that he wasn't familiar with how the Mooney seat slides and locks. It's a little hard to Aviate or Navigate when you've slid to the back seat on take-off and can't reach the yoke, the throttle or the rudders, although I'd guess he was doing a lot of Communicating those last few seconds.

It's a shame that didn't happen on his Mooney-specific transition flight. The instructor could have handled it and that would have been a lesson he never would have forgotten. Every airplane has gotchas. It's nice to find them out ahead of time from someone who regularly trains others in that specific airframe.

Agreed...crap happens. The fact that a seat can slide rearward on its own is something that should have been addressed and fixed eons ago. Not exactly a complex issue to resolve.