The Day Before Christmas (Hanukkah) – Mooney Style

During the Christmas exodus the Military goes into reduced work schedule. This is basically provides a little extra time off for soldiers. The week before Christmas (Chanukah), I begin looking for a place to go. After all with 4 days off and a Mooney in the hanger, I was chomping at the bit like a thoroughbred at the races. Originally, I planned a trip to Florida but plans fell through for a variety of reasons. Next, I considered a visit to my Cousin Larry in Memphis. Unfortunately, a phone revealed that he and his family were all suffering from a bad cold. Not a place for me to take my kids.  At this point I launched by Internet Brower and put the URL in http://www.funplacestofly.com. It provides some ideas. I sent Rachel and email about Pine Mountain, GA(PIM) - Callaway Gardens. She look at the website and noticed the snow and rather cold looking possibilities. Now to be fair they are known for the Christmas Lights and Gardens. Rachel reminded me of why we moved to California, No Snow. So back to the Internet I went and located Jekyll Island, GA (09J). Their know for a historic district tours and quaint shops. Rachel, my wife, agreed and I started planning. A visit to AOPA weather let me know that Sunday and Monday were expecting snow, rain or just generally bad weather. So I planned a day trip to Jekyll Island. I started telling the kids we would be going to the beach on Saturday. The one thing they really miss about San Diego and Los Angles is the ability to go to the beach in a few minutes. Thinking I was smart, Friday morning, I pulled the plane out of the hanger and taxied to fuel. I figured no one would be at the field on the 24^th of December to turn on the pumps. Now being real clever, I decided to put the plane in transient parking near the pilot shack for easy morning loading and pre-flight. I only forgot about one teensy, tiny detail. “Cold Weather”.  

Sunday morning was a fabulous flying day. Cool breeze, clear sky and not a cloud nor cross wind in sight. I was busy in the hanger installing my new Precision Vertical Compass, when one of the airport regulars walked up and asked if I wanted to go to Wetumpka. I said “Wetumpka, what?”. He said 08A, Wetumpka, AL. Then he told me one of the other guys is going to pick up his plane from the shop and a bunch of the regulars were going to see the work. I asked if that was TRI-D. TRI-D painted more than ½ the planes on my field and renovated many of the interiors as well. He said, “Yep” and I said “I was in”. Then he asked if I minded taking the Mooney. He explained he had never flown in one and did I mind. Mind, heck no, it was a great excuse to go somewhere. I put the avionics access panels back on and preflighted.  We took off about 30 minutes behind the caravan.

My copilot, Bob Martell owns a Cherokee Warrior on the field and I took great pleasure in demonstrating the climb capabilities of my little M20E. We shot up to 3000’ at 1200’ per minute and leveled off due to Atlanta’s class “B” shelf. I kept the throttle back to 20” and we achieved 130 knots or so. Bob was like “Wow” that’s fast. I said the Mooney really performs at altitude and we’re low right now. At the edge of the shelf I put in full throttle and we shot up to 6000’ like a homesick angel. That produced an Ahhh from the right seat. At this point I configured for cruise, 2500 RPM, about 26” of manifold and 25 LOP. We achieved 150 knots and 9.4 gallons per hour. Showing off the EI EGT and fuel computer along with the cruise speed got me another “Wow” from the right seat.  I let Bob take the controls and he appreciated the smooth and fast flying Mooney. As we approached Wetumpka, I heard the first of the caravan aircraft departing from home. I thought, lets see we left ½ after and arrived 5 minutes after. “I love owning a Mooney”.

We landed and headed over to refuel. The price for fuel was $3.75/gallon vs. the $4.80 I paid last week. After fueling the plane we taxied down to TRI-D’s hanger.

I had spoke to Richard about a year before about renovating my Mooney. I originally thought about getting it fixed up while I was overseas. He flies a 1963 M20C and shares an equal love of the speed and economy of the Mooney.

Bob and I spent about an hour talking about Mooneys, race cars and landing an M20C in a cotton field under high tension wires. He spent some time explaining the special needs of painting Mooneys. For instance painting the Mooney in neutral trim. This is a particularly interesting subject. He had me hop in the cockpit of 18S and trim all the way “Nose Down” and then go look at the stripes on the tail. They did not match up. Then I trimmed it to neutral pitch and the stripes matched. He explained that this was a common mistake people made when painting. He then explained at the current temperatures, he would have to wait at least a day between colors to avoid tape blurring. He explained that when I painted a plane, all of the fasteners, access plates, screws are all removed and replaced with new hardware. Then I asked about windows and speed kits. He highly recommended the Cowl Enclosure and a couple of the other LASAR speed kits. The conversation ended with a quote on renovating my Mooney with a new leather interior and an Ovation 60^th edition paint scheme. His price for both interior and exterior renovation was less than many quotes I’ve received for just the exterior.

If you visit Richard at Tri-D ask him about his adventures in crop dusting in a M20C. If you live in the Southeast then a trip to TRI-D for a quote is not a wasted trip. The trip only reinforced the idea that I don’t want anyone learning on my Mooney. There is no substitute for experience and Mooneys are different than aPiper, Cessna or Bonanza.

My adventure ended with another wonderful Mooney flight back to Berry Hill and another person wishing he owned a Mooney.

Until the next adventure.

Why a Mooney? Low cost to maintain, Fast Aircraft, 950 lbs useful load, ~15/MPG, and all time logged Complex.

When I started looking for a plane to own, I decided that what was important to me was getting there. I need a plane that I could take from Atlanta, GA (4A0) to Chambersburg, PA (N68) and get there in a reasonable amount of time.

I evaluated Cessna, Tiger, Diamond, Piper, (and last Mooney)

To be fair here, I am picking the same year from the performance tables except for Tiger and Diamond, I thought about Cirrus, but 400k was out of the budget. My original budget was 40-80k based on payments, insurance and other factors. I found for instance that the insurance of the plane is linear to the cost. On my AOPA policy it is about $140 per 10k of hull value per year. So 40k more of hull adds at least $560/year in insurance.

I looked into some other models like the Piper Lance and various make it yourself types. I learned that I had little interest in waiting a year or two to fly. The cost of the materials to build would have precluded any flying until the build was completed and I would give up every weekend for years.

Except for the new price tag on the Diamond, all of the prices were in the acceptable range. With the Diamond, I considered one of the leaseback options that would yield similar payments. Since then, I learned that private ownership, not partnership or leaseback is a very different experience in flying. Twice since owning my plane, my wife has said something on late Friday or Early Saturday morning like can we go to ... The best part was twice, the weather was perfect and I said yes. I did not have to find an available plane or check with a partner (who might beat you to the airport on a perfect day for a $100 hamburger). In each of those cases we went away for the weekend by air, more easily than by car. (2 hours in the Mooney is like 6-8 in the car)

Now just for the record, I routinely get 153 knts with normal load (4 passengers and some baggage at 10,000’). My rage of performance, what I can count on is an average of 138 knts for the trip. This of course is based on winds aloft and other factors. With some speed kits I expect to get close to 160 knts. My plane is still a very stock M20E.

The performance numbers below are from the Trade-A-Plane site. When I flew Cessna 172s I usually got about 110knts and pipers between 110 and 125. (True ground speed as measured by the GPS)

Now the story of how a Mooney M20E got on my list. There is always a story to any adventure. When I moved to Georgia renting a plane went from $65/hour wet in Los Angles area to $85 in Atlanta. At the fields near my house the new Diamonds were going for $125/hour and very little rented for under $100/hour with minimums for weekends. I did a little math and planned to fly between 50 and 100 hours a year which worked out to $6250 @ $125 to $12,500 @ $125. I wanted to get my instrument rating which is normally 40 hours at least and I hear many people wind up around 70 hours. I figured that at 70 hours times $125 hour that was about $8,750. Learning from my private pilot, were I spend a lot more than 40 hours learning to fly in Los Angles basin; I decided to purchase and thereby convince the wife that this was cheaper.

Now the rest of the story, I went to the small airport near my house (Berry Hill, 4A0) and got checkout in Von’s Piper PA28-180 (Note the 180). At the pilot shack, I noticed an add for a M20E Super 21 Executive (1966) for about 57k. I asked around a bit and found out that it was a Complex, 4 seater. I check the performance database and did a couple of Jeppesen plots on Piper vs Mooney and found 6 hours vs 4 hours for my longer voyages. So I called the owner and did a test flight. Wow, it was fun, fast and easy to fly. It was a bit more to deal with than the Pipers I normally flew, but what the heck. During the course of figuring out Aircraft financing the 1966, M20E sold, but I continued to search on Trade a Plane. I could not find a production aircraft that was as fast in the same price category. At this point, I decided Mooney was for me. After about 2 more months of searching and learning to get pre-qualified on the loan, I found N3218S a 1965, Mooney, M20E for 46k with a motivated seller. The long and the short, I should have purchased the Mooney, pre-buy kit from MooneyMart.Com. The annual revealed $3200.00 of issues and I received about $900.00 from the seller including a missing AD from the ‘70s. All in all it was not a bad annual and I had many small things that were not required but I considered necessary. I replaced the gaskets with Silicon, new o-rings for the tanks, new altimeter and VSI. I should have caught the 7 bad spark plugs and missing AD during the pre-buy and perhaps the need for a new altimeter for IFR certification. The second annual was much better $650.00, a rebuild on the DG for $275 and I got the Autopilot repaired at Brittain in OK, that cost another $375.00. I consider $375 cheap for a working 2 axis (B6) autopilot. Later in the year, I plan to go to the plant and get the autopilot upgraded to Altitude hold.

Colin’s performance matrix.

CESSNA 182H SKYLANE '65

PIPER PA28-181 ARCHER II ) usually a ‘70s model

GRUMMAN AMERICAN AA5B TIGER

 DIAMOND AIRCRAFT DA40-180 DIAMOND STAR
(Only new’ish models are available)

MOONEY M20E SUPER 21 CHAPARRAL