Locked in my Mooney! Send help…

[PT20J]

The later Mooneys have an emergency release installed on the inside of the baggage door under a rip-off plastic cover. The release will open the door even if the baggage door is locked from the outside. There are two protections against this mechanism being inadvertently activated and causing the door to open in flight: First, the plastic cover protects the release handle; second, there is a hitch pin that must be removed before the handle can be pulled. (The first design had a less positive method of locking the handle and these should have all be updated per SBM20-239A). 

If you modify the baggage door latch mechanism to incorporate some sort of emergency release, it would be prudent to somehow protect the mechanism from inadvertent release in flight should contents of the baggage compartment shift and become entangled with the mechanism, or should a passenger reaching back into the baggage compartment for something inadvertently activate it.

[A64Pilot]

Pardon me as I’ve not read the entire thread, but referencing kicking out a window, it may be a whole lot harder than you would think. I know, I too have seen where birds like a Duck or larger has broken one, my theory that’s due to the high velocity.

As a young OH-58 helicopter Crew Chief I had to help change the wind shields in the helicopter, same as Bell 206.

Anyway as we had the old ones out and being kids we decided to bust them to put them in the dumpster so I jumped on one, it bent down then popped back out and threw me off like it was a trampoline, next bigger guy jumped on it and it turned inside out, had serious white creases it it from being turned inside out, but it didn’t break, and these were old and crazed enough to require replacement.

About 15 years later we had to change a window in an AH-64, several actually as the sand from Iraq had abraded them, the det cord had expired so the Army’s answer was for us to use our survival knife for emergency egress (K-bar knife)

Anyway one pilot tried it, knocked pretty big pits in the window but broke off the K-bar’s blade.

I doubt Military plexiglass is any different, but those windows are much tougher than I thought.

I think maybe if you laid on your back in the seats you could kick the door out and maybe a window, just if you have to, expect to have to use a lot of force.

[Shadrach]

1 hour ago, A64Pilot said:

Pardon me as I’ve not read the entire thread, but referencing kicking out a window, it may be a whole lot harder than you would think. I know, I too have seen where birds like a Duck or larger has broken one, my theory that’s due to the high velocity.

As a young OH-58 helicopter Crew Chief I had to help change the wind shields in the helicopter, same as Bell 206.

Anyway as we had the old ones out and being kids we decided to bust them to put them in the dumpster so I jumped on one, it bent down then popped back out and threw me off like it was a trampoline, next bigger guy jumped on it and it turned inside out, had serious white creases it it from being turned inside out, but it didn’t break, and these were old and crazed enough to require replacement.

About 15 years later we had to change a window in an AH-64, several actually as the sand from Iraq had abraded them, the det cord had expired so the Army’s answer was for us to use our survival knife for emergency egress (K-bar knife)

Anyway one pilot tried it, knocked pretty big pits in the window but broke off the K-bar’s blade.

I doubt Military plexiglass is any different, but those windows are much tougher than I thought.

I think maybe if you laid on your back in the seats you could kick the door out and maybe a window, just if you have to, expect to have to use a lot of force.

I agree. That’s why I think that if you’re going to go after a window, you go after the pilot side window. It’s not going to flex as much as the frame as the door window and is already compromised because it has a cut out. It would be far easier for folks on the outside to break a window inward than for folks on the inside to break one outward.