Corvus Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 I wanted to have a little fun and see what your ultimate mooney looked like. Maybe a few rules to keep it sane. Basically we are talking about this plane plopping itself in front of you. Now with that being said, you gotta still pay to maintain it. And let's keep the world of physics in check. for example, a useful load of 2500lbs....well...that's gonna be a stretch, but if you think it realistic, say at STC to approve the MGW up a little. Maybe your ultimate mooney has an STC/kit for a second cockpit door. Maybe you want a manual E model with all the speed mods and a G500. Maybe you want a Rocket with FIKI....you get the idea. Have fun, go nuts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Zuffoletto Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 My Acclaim with 400lbs more useful load, a bigger baggage door, pressurization and a turboprop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 Paint the one I have, all glass in the panel, black leather interior. Really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabremech Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 84 M20J for a little more room and comfort over my C model. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisH Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 +1 for pressurized acclaim, I'm ok with the piston engine, too poor for turboprop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cody Stallings Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 We use our plane for work. Hauling propellers...... F model with a larger door, an seats that were easy to strip out when it came time to load it up. TSIO-540, G1000 an factory plumbed O2 would be great....... Just dreaming Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bennett Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 In all candor, I'm flying her now Fits my current wants and needs, and is just about affordable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottfromiowa Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 Seth's Missile... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RocketAviator Posted June 23, 2013 Report Share Posted June 23, 2013 The Rocket I have.... with lets see, just a few small improvements like: easier in & out for pilot & luggage, something like my Saratoga with six seats (that could really haul six people & full fuel & luggage), FIKI, pressurized, restroom, radar. At this moment that's about all I can think of that my Rocket does not have now! oh I forgot what the rules Scott outlined were... so I guess I would just have to say the one I have because it really is my dream plane as far as I could afford in any case! Fly Safe, Rocket On Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HopePilot Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 Scramjet powered, capable of doing mach 24, with room for six, and nice cupholders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1964-M20E Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 OK here it goes 1. New Production J model 2. Manual gear 3. Manual flaps 4. 200HP Delta hawk turbo diesel 5. Two doors 4" longer 6. Baggage door 4" wider. 7. Avydine 540 8. Aspen pro 1000 and steam gauges 9. mode S XPONDER 10. and other miscellaneous goodies I can't think of now 11. all for under $160k ok maybe this part is a pipe dream 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teethdoc Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 Paint the one I have, all glass in the panel, black leather interior. Really. Black leather in Alabama? Are you crazy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefanovm Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 "you gotta still pay to maintain it" I can barely afford my E, which almost does everything I need. I own it and my total non-operating costs, are less than $7k per year, insurance, hanger, average annual, other periodic maintenance. Add in fuel and oil, $6K. The engine reserve "plan" is $3+K, but I do not bank that, so might get caught tapping personal savings. Wow, that is $16K+ per year. I had never wanted to look at my actual costs before this post question, but they are why I still work instead of retiring. Yup, airplanes are expensive enough to curtail my dreaming, but I wish I had an IFR certified GPS and a better second nav-comm. I do not currently wish to spend $16K+ to get it. This would be done by replacing my current Collins square nav-comms with something more maintainable, at least one Garmin 430 WAAS. The E panel lack of room assists to limit this. So, with the quote above ignored a good Rocket with up to date panel and less than 800 hours on the Rocket engine. At more than $150K, this is really only a dream. If it just plopped itself in my hanger, I would find a way to support the probable increased operating costs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcjohnst Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 I noticed how many people want pressurization. Amen! Are there any engineers in the house? Wouldn't it be possible to turn the interior plastic panels into carbon fibre panels with some high performance gap sealant between them? This would create a rigid interior balloon inside the aircraft. Then you pump up the balloon using exhaust to operate a hyperefficient linear pump drawing fresh air from a clean external air-scoop, humidify it somehow. This gives you, effectively, a double-hull with the interior carbon-fibre hull fully pressurized. I don't know enough about carbon-fiber, but seems like it should be able to handle the pressure without affecting the exterior hull just as a highly pressurized Coca-Cola can can stay in your refrigerator without bending it out of shape. Control rods, fuel lines, etc. would fit in the semicocque hull or in a pressure sealed locker under the floor. After you strip out the old plastic panels and replace them with carbons there might be some increase in weight (decreased load) but it might not be that much. The big problem is what to do about the windows. But given the size of the windows on the 787, there must be a solution. As for the door, this is the one circumstance where one door is actually an advantage because you would only have to retrofit that door with an air-lock. Am heading out to Seattle this week for my real job. Thought I might drop by Rocket Engineering and ask them about it. But if those brainiacs are working on it already, they would just tell me I'm nuts. It seems like a pretty obvious STC to me given the trend toward more altitude, power and avionics in GA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mschmuff Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 The tough thing here is "wish plane" for my current mission or if I got my wish - what would my mission change to?!?!? Currently my plane is perfect for the mission - 40 minute commute to work. 430W/696/340/327/GDL39 and CIII auto pilot is perfect on 9.75gph. Now give me an Acclaim/Encore/Ovation....on my time off I would be flying to FL, GA, SC...etc. If the plane was paid for I could afford the extra fuel and Mx....not too sure about the insurance though!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Z W Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 I have also wondered why more small planes are not pressurized. I mean, it seems like with some industrial caulk and some elbow grease, plus a pressurization pump and a release valve, it would be possible. Easy, maybe not, but we see people spending 20k+ all the time on glass panels, and spending 800k on new airplanes that are not pressurized... I have no engineering qualifications. Can somebody who knows more than me explain this? I bet there is a good reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 Black leather in Alabama? Are you crazy? Apparently. I owned a black/black corvette in Florida for years, and now I have a black/black mustang. Park with the front glass facing the afternoon sun and use a sunshade. I never have understood all the fuss... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M016576 Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 Scramjet powered, capable of doing mach 24, with room for six, and nice cupholders. That one... With a M61A2 cannon and a couple thousand round capacity, 8 weapons stations, and an AESA radar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 After thinking about this a bit, it might LOOK like I didn't reach very far given the original poster's suggestions. Not true. Simon, set the way back machine to the year my plane was born (1981): Assume I got my all glass cockpit. A complete electronic AHRS, satellite (!) based navigation system whose database contains every bit of airspace and all approach procedures, information on every airport (frequencies, elevation, runway diagrams, etc), a computer generated view of the terrain from my current position, on board real time weather and traffic information (for free), no LORAN, no ADF, no DME, digital engine monitor showing CHT and EGT for each cylinder with downloadable data logging, etc. Oh, yeah. And while I'm dreaming, let's duplicate all of this and more on a thing the size and shape of an issue of National Geographic which has a full color display, It'll have 32 gigabytes of storage and 1 gigabyte of RAM, run an operating system a kid wrote and gave away for free, programmed in a language a company developed and gave away for free running on middleware another company wrote and gave away for free. It'll have its own satellite nav receiver and... wait.. sure, why not. IT HAS ALL MY MUSIC (all 500 albums worth) and hundreds of tv shows. Recorded, like on a VCR only different. You know what would make it perfect? If my headset were to somehow analyze, in real time, the ambient noise and emit a sound that would exactly cancel that sound so that it would be as quiet as a car. Oh, and it'll connect to the mini computer (let's call it a 'tablet') wirelessly so I can listen to all of my stored music and recorded movies in flight. I know, right? Never happen. Well, it's 2013, and while I don't have an all glass cockpit or synthetic vision, I have everything else. I'm living in my future. It's not quite what I hoped for (no jet packs), but it's not bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
201er Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 I'd love a FIKI, air conditioned, 301. But if I'm paying to maintain it? I'd stick with my 201 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Comatose Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 Pressurization in small planes sounds simple, til you do the math... A 10,000 ft cabin at 18,000 ft is about 3psi. That's about as little as could even be considered remotely useful. Take the windshield. Its about 4 feet by two feet of surface, You end up with about 3500 pounds of force, just on the windshield. That's gonna take some strong caulk. Me? I'd be content with a diesel on my C model and a new paint job for now. Maybe a fancier autopilot. Later, the ideal Mooney is a TBM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaV8or Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 I was going to go nuts and discribe my vision of the Mooney of the future including technological advances, but it seems the thread is more grounded in the here and now, so in that context, the ultimate Mooney for me and my mission would be the M20T Predator with a nice sized baggage door and a turbo normalized Lycoming IO-360 instead of the IO-540. That would do nicely. That and maybe a more traditional paint job! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seth Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 Seth's Missile... Scott- You made my day! If I wanted the ultimate Mooney, I'd add pressurization, more cabin room, and lower fuel burn. Avionics I figure are separate as you can upgrade, but a three axis autopilot and GPSS would be nice, but techincally, I can do that now (just have to add the GPSS). I can also work with the GAMI injectors to get the fuel flow a bit more uniform (cylinder #2 tends to be the hottest and peak first) thus allowing my LOP ops vs ROP ops and lower the fuel burn. FIKI would be nice but I'm not going to spend the money to add it. I'll get a longer distance 6 maybe 6+ seater pressurized with FIKI for those trips - maybe own a part of that as a group as mentioned on here before. For a perfect plane, I'd like the Mooney to look like a P-51 when flying it, have the interior of a PC-12, have the speed and dual engines of an Avanti II, the ruggedness to get in an out of fields similar to a C-180, It should have a stick when it's just me and a yoke when flying my family or friends, and have the range of 1800 miles plus an on board bathroom (even though I'd never want to use it). I'd also like FIKI. Actually, yesterday I got to meet the co-founder of Terrafugia. I'll start a new thread to not pull away from this one, but 200 MPH, four seats, VTOL, fly by wire, hybrid, not bad and 10-20 years out but now that they're nearing production, they have to thave the engineers continue to do "stuff." Their biggest issue is getting their product into production (the transition) as they have a three year backlog in orders - if you order a transition right now, you might see it in 2018. Here is the one I'm talking about however, the TF-X http://www.terrafugia.com/tfx-vision -Seth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvus Posted June 24, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 My intent with the limitations was not to keep it from being futuristic or exciting. It was just to keep it more of a fun thought exercise that would engage minds a little more than simply saying you would want an acclaim or a TBM 850. And also to keep it from turning into a bogus airplane that is outside of the realm of "reasonable" reality. ie 2500 lb useful load, 500 knot cruise on 3 gallons an hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seth Posted June 24, 2013 Report Share Posted June 24, 2013 I was going to go nuts and discribe my vision of the Mooney of the future including technological advances, but it seems the thread is more grounded in the here and now, so in that context, the ultimate Mooney for me and my mission would be the M20T Predator with a nice sized baggage door and a turbo normalized Lycoming IO-360 instead of the IO-540. That would do nicely. That and maybe a more traditional paint job! YES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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