An update from Mooney....sort of

[bcg]

1 hour ago, A64Pilot said:

That’s some kind of home built?

Google found this pretty quickly... 

 

https://slingaircraft.com/aircraft/sling-tsi/

[GeeBee]

I"ve been watching it and it is a nice airplane, but the numbers they put out are waaaaay optimistic. It's a 125-130 knot airplane.

 

[A64Pilot]

4 hours ago, bcg said:

Google found this pretty quickly... 

 

https://slingaircraft.com/aircraft/sling-tsi/

What I found was selling kits, I assume it’s now a factory build as well.

But looking at the page you linked to I don’t see how you could compare it to a Mooney, just at a glance I’d be concerned with an aircraft that cruised at 148 kts that had a VNE of 155 kts.

Just at a glance I think it compares to a J model Mooney about like a J model compares to a C-210.

But more power to them I guess as it seems the future is in some kind of Rotax powered little airplane.

[GeeBee]

2 hours ago, M20Doc said:

I don’t know what it’s true airspeed was, but here’s one of its legs from California to Ontario.  Not to bad for a small turbocharged Rotax.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N654DT/history/20230516/1345Z/KAAO/KPHN

Looking at the groundspeed and considering east bound with a tail wind I think I called it pretty close, maybe 135 knots but not much more.

[A64Pilot]

3 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

Looking at the groundspeed and considering east bound with a tail wind I think I called it pretty close, maybe 135 knots but not much more.

For fixed gear and that HP, that’s not bad.

‘But it has a critical altitude of what? was it 16,000? If so, it ought to scoot up high

[Ethan]

These Czech airplanes are much cheaper than Mooneys, faster and MORE fuel efficient. 
 

https://mmgmotorsports.com/vl3-aircraft/

I wish they could be anything but experimental exhibition category airplanes under our FAA rules.

[KSMooniac]

We’ve talked a lot about the “new J model” concept here on MS a bunch of times, and I’m still pretty well convinced that we have a demand problem, not a manufacturing problem. If Mooney had demand for 1000 airframes a year, they could optimize manufacturing processes to shorten the time-to-build, and they would have some real negotiating power to reduce costs on major components. The problem is that there aren’t buyers at any price. 
All that being said, most of the used airplanes I could buy with $750k would have operating costs I couldn’t afford. There isn’t much better than a J model bang-for-buck. 

I'm afraid there isn't much juice to squeeze there... Yes, Mooney used to build hundreds of planes a year, but at that time there was a skilled work force to do all of the little jobs that add up to thousands of man hours per Mooney. Machines were not available and/or way more expensive vs skilled humans. Today, that has flipped for some parts, but not all. There is no automation that I know of that could take raw tubes in one end of the building and spit out a proper welded Mooney frame, or landing gear. There are machines that can drill and fasten aluminum sheet, but I do not know if they would be suitable for an M20. I do expect they would never pay back, even at hundreds of units a year. Perhaps the Van's style pre-punch tech could be made to work and cut some hours out.

The root of the problem is the basic design is very labor intensive, and not well-suited to modern automation. Updating the design to meet the modern market (like wider cabin, chute) and make it faster and easier to produce would require a clean-sheet refresh, and new certification to Pt 23 standards. That's in the 100-150 million neighborhood, maybe more. Catch 22

I wish that were not the case. I wish the M10 had succeeded and generated a new positive cash flow, with enough revenue to fund an M30 or whatever might come next.

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