I have to think of some reason not to be jealous of your Mooney ... let's
see ... with good airspeed control and full flaps in my Warrior, I can often
make a turnoff at the approach end of the runway, saving me maybe 5 minutes
in taxiing time. That will have to be my compensation for the hour you
saved in your Mooney during cruise.

Seriously, with all the hype about the Cirrus and Lancair composite planes,
I'm still not all that impressed -- for all the new materials and techniques
no one (except maybe Diamond with their TwinStar) seems to come close to a
1970's Mooney aircraft's combination of speed and efficiency.

You may have something, although if one is familiar with the airplane and
controls airspeed brfore going into the flare, , Mooneys can stop pretty short
too w/o burning up breaks. There aren't too many airports I fly into where the
first turn off is less than 1000 feet or so from the approach end. In fact,
it's fairly common for me to plan my touchdown pretty far down the runway to
get close to the turn off, since I'd rather fly over the centerline than taxi
on it.

A lot of this discussion isn't really fair, though -- as I mentioned, I'm a
fairly high time pilot (for not having been taught to fy in one of the
services) and lots of that time is in the same aircraft. I read its mind, and
it reads mine, pretty well.

You can say the same thing about your airplane, can't you?

One thing about the Mooney -- in fairly stiff cross winds, it's easy to run out
of rudder authority before you'd like, so sometimes it has to be flown onto the
runway. I hate touching down before the airplane doesn't have enough airspeed
to fly!

OTOH, if you start adding power in the flare, you can actually make the tail
skid touch down before the mains. that's won me a few hamburgers when flying
with pilots who don't like their tail backwards.

But Warrier or M20, we're among the lucky ones.