"Peter Duniho" wrote in message ...
"Paul Sengupta" wrote in message
...
[...] So rather than just looking for one that
goes faster, you're looking for "a good one".

Which is fine. But since there are things that could hurt cruise speed
without affecting the stall, it just makes no sense to rely on stalling
behavior to "know" the cruise speed (even if you could actually determine
the actual cruise speed by stalling the airplane, which you can't).

If you care about cruise speed, you need to actually measure cruise speed.
As Julian already said, doing so is the reliable way to determine cruise
speed.

I think you are envisioning a situation where you are presented with 6
Mooneys on the ramp with your choice to buy. Of course in that
situation you can fly each and compare the price. But if you are
traveling 100 miles out to test fly a Mooney before buying it, I just
don't see how you are going to determine if it is well rigged and fast
just on its own. Unless you have several Mooneys ready to fly to
compare you just can't use a 4 course speed test. Stalling it will
give you a good idea of its rigged right (90% of the speed differences
between Mooneys).

From my experiences buying airplanes for personal use I can say that
you spend a lot of tired hours flying around the country looking at
planes that you are told are great only to find them a piece of crap.
Once you do find one that is good, you want to start spending money on
it (inspection, offers, etc). If you want to travel around teh country
test flying a dozen or so planes you'll end up putting in a lot of
time off work as well as a lot of money moving around.
I've considered buying a little Aeronca to knock around in as a second
airplane. I've already spent almost as much as the Vref of an Aeronca
traveling around for an Aeronca and have not yet found one that is
both airworthy and priced less than 150% of Vref. You can burn through
cash very, very, very fast just searching and inspecting planes.

-Robert