Do you fly xcountry or local?

[201er]

Do you consider yourself more of a cross country or local flying pilot? How does the Mooney play into that role?

 

You can interpret the poll either way you'd like. By overall hours, flights, or experiences.

[DrBill]

Definitely cross country.  I need a reason to fly and Pilots N Paws gives me the reason.  The only local flying I do is for currency. 3 approaches, hold and tracking every 3 months.

BILL

[Bob_Belville]

Cross country. I'm pretty sure I have more hours, 3000, than landings. I guess if local flying was my interest I would own a Super Cub or a Pitts, not a Mooney.

[kerry]

I have 2 planes.  The Mooney is for cross country and the Duce is for flying local.

[bnicolette]

Hmmmm.  Does Cross State count?  I also do a fair amount of local flying.  I still have just a fascination & love of flying and I need to get my "fix" a couple times per week.  Often times through the week since I live only 15 minutes from the airport I will on a whim hop up and go strap on the Mooney for a 1/2 hour flight, then I'm content.  It's mostly just to commute (well at least that's the justification for owning it) but the fantastic thing about the Mooney is it economical to just go out and play with too!  

[Hank]

I fly locally for food, currency, airport community days, etc. (~30 nm or less)

I fly XC mostly to visit family, cousins and the beach. (> 250 nm)

Those in-between flights are more food (Lunken), friends, Sporty's, etc. Guess they count as XC. Living far from family helped justify buying the Mooney.

[Joe Zuffoletto]

I used to fly XC exclusively except for local IFR currency flights with my flight instructor because the Acclaim is a terrible "buzz around the patch" bird.

 

But I really missed doing pattern work and tooling around locally on weekends, so I bought an RV-8 a few months ago and now I do both about equally.

 

Except that I still can't land the 8 without bouncing down the runway... still trying to master that tailwheel thingie. 

 

[201er]

Hey Joe, I can watch your Acclaim for you while you punch holes in the sky with your new toy

[Joe Zuffoletto]

Hey Joe, I can watch your Acclaim for you while you punch holes in the sky with your new toy

 

201er, that's a mighty generous offer. Let me think about it!

[mooney389]

Cross country in the Mooney and local in my Christavia.

[Marauder]

I used to fly a lot more cross countries until this stuff starting happening. Not worth the hassle to see my family and contend with this...

[aviatoreb]

How far do you need to go to call it cross country?

[Hector]

Probably 70/30 split for me between x-country and local, but it depends what we are defining as a x-country. If I fly more than 100 miles to go get the proverbial $100 burger is that a X-country? I take the Mooney on work related travel as often as I can, specially since my employer is picking up the cost, travel to south Florida to see my parents, central Florida to see my brother-in-law (owns a Cherokee 6 and is an AME), and if I don't have a place to go, then will often grab one of the hanger buddies and go somewhere just to fly

[201er]

^Well you gotta fly further in a Mooney for the hamburger to be $100 cause they're just so damned fast and efficient!

[aviatoreb]

A landing at least 50 miles from the point of departure, according to the FARs, I believe. Of course most of us hotshot Mooney pilots would just characterize this as a local flight.

Jim

 

Aha - I flew to Saranac Lake this weekend - 36 miles away - so not officially XC!  And I saw Bruce Springstein there getting into his jet.

 

Ah - so mostly I fly proper XC except for sometimes I practice IFR procedures locally.

[Gone]

I bought my Mooney to be a cross country machine. My typical flight profile is to "get up, get over, and get down." I want the challenge of IFR cross country and the capability of getting to places with better facility than driving or commercial. These are "second best" options.

 

My E model allows me to do just that, within my own known capabilities and budget.

 

If I want to go putzing around our local Gatineau hills, or go sightseeing, I will rent a Cessna from the local club. That does not happen often.

 

Sent from my iPad

[Jeff_S]

The thing I like about my J is that it works for both local and x-country.  For local outings where I'm really just going for the thrill and joy of traipsing around among the clouds, I can dial the power back and cruise around at a leisurely pace. On the other hand, my panel is equipped to take me through the IFR system anywhere I want to go for x-country trips, although mostly this has meant my wife and I going to beachfront locales within a 2.5 hour range from Atlanta--which opens up most of the southeast areas.

 

From time to time I do consider getting another little bug-smasher purely for local meandering, probably some type of taildragger where I can pop the windows open and enjoy the fresh air. Whenever I broach this topic with my wife, though, she says "we don't need TWO airplanes!"  To which I reply "but we have TWO cars!"  To which she replies "but we have TWO drivers." To which I reply "but I can help you take care of THAT too!"

 

The discussion usually stops about there with me retreating but always looking for my next opening.

[Bartman]

I looked at my logs and realized that my flying has changed over the years. I was once mostly a local pilot working on the IFR rating, with a couple of VFR trips to the beach each year. Now that I have the rating, we rarely fly local except if I need to get some holds, and maybe an approach logged for currency. Almost all of my flights for the past 2 years have been cross country at least 100NM and several in the 700 to 800NM range. My average mission is about 300NM.

The addition of oxygen to the IFR rating has increased my ability to cross the Appalachian Mountains as high as 15,000 ft in my 201. Now we are considering a turbocharged Mooney.

[Bennett]

Mix of both, with a current bias towards trips under 250 miles or so.

 

 

[kmyfm20s]

Commute to work 2-3 time per week with an average of 150 nautical miles round trip. I also do a long trip for fun about every 6 weeks with an average round trip greater than 1250 nautical miles.

[Robert C.]

The thing I like about my J is that it works for both local and x-country.  For local outings where I'm really just going for the thrill and joy of traipsing around among the clouds, I can dial the power back and cruise around at a leisurely pace. On the other hand, my panel is equipped to take me through the IFR system anywhere I want to go for x-country trips, although mostly this has meant my wife and I going to beachfront locales within a 2.5 hour range from Atlanta--which opens up most of the southeast areas.

 

 

 

Do other models also have that ability to be fun on local flights and X-C? Ned describes the Acclaim as "terrible around the patch" which doesn't surprise me of a turbo, but how about the Ovations and Eagles?

 

Am asking because I'm really torn between a Mooney and a DA40.

 

The reality is that my "mission" is mostly regional $100 hamburger and visits to fun locations like Lake Placid, MVY, Ticonderoga, etc. But with family and friends in Chicago and with daughters in Colorado and BC, Canada (I'm CT based) it is awfully tempting to have a long range cruiser and to fly ourselves a few times per year rather than going commercial.

 

There probably isn't an aircraft that will do both equally well. I get the impression that the Mooney is better/more fun in the cruising role and the DA40 in the local/regional putzing around role.

 

Your thoughts?

 

Robert

[Bob_Belville]

Not really, I can't speak for the long bodies but the short and medium body Mooneys are fun to take folks for airplane rides in. With the power pulled back they certainly are about as economical as anything out there and certainly for short flights 4 adults or a mix of kids are very comfortable. Everyone has a window seat. And the pilot can have a ball driving a plane that feels like a sports car.

 

And then when you want to go from say NC to ME as we regularly do in our E just load her up and see 150 k or more on 10 gallons or less.

 

(Admittedly, as a complex plane with constant speed prop, retractable gear, and cowl flaps, a Mooney is a little more work landing and taking off but once you're out of the pattern the complexity does not matter much.)

[tomn]

I used to fly a lot more cross countries until this stuff starting happening. Not worth the hassle to see my family and contend with this...

Is it just me or are others getting some strange re-routes lately? I had one last week flying just west of DC airspace that ended up being six waypoints in probably 150 miles - turns to the right, turns to the left, into DC airspace , then back out of their airspace. After two requests with the next controller, I finally got a direct route approved. Made no sense...

[Marauder]

I'm not sure it is any stranger than it has been since 9/11 but I do occasionally scratch my head wonder how they decided to give me what they did. This one wasn't bad at all. The points at the end are the approach waypoints I loaded in as back up.

[Skybrd]

I for one like to fly local sightseeing flights and xcountry ones. Recently we bought a second home about 300 miles away and the Mooney was one of the big decision points to do do this. It's about a 5 to 6 hour drive but in the Mooney it's about 1.5 hours. Unfortunately flying doesn't always work out. Yesterday we had to abort our flying trip due to having a unexpected flat tire on one of mains. I put some air in the tire with my compressor and it seemed to hold, but didn't trust the tube to hold up. The local repair shops were closed so we decided to drive.