Used Avionics

Jeff wrote:

Mooney, dont know much about them except the cockpit looks awful small.

I have to chime in here with my standard response to this frequent comment...

It's not as small as it looks, but it's not as big as some claim. There is a
claim floating around that it's as wide as a Bo, or something like that. I
haven't measured, but it doesn't feel all that wide. The space between the
shoulders of the occupants of the front seat is limited.

Your seating position is more like a sports car, with your legs straight out in
front of you. There is *plenty* of leg room and head room. I'm 6 ft. tall and I
adjust the seat to the second-from-full-forward position. I was skeptical about
this seating position, but I find that I can fly for longer periods of time
without back pain than I used to be able to in my Archer.

The rear seat legroom is even quite good, once the front seat pax get in and
slide the seats forward (they'll slide the seats back for ingress/egress, but
the seats have a lot of travel).

The windscreen looks like a tank-slit from the outside, so you might think
visibility is compromised. In fact, the seating position is quite close to the
windscreen so your angle of vision is quite good.

The Mooney's speed with the relatively low horsepower and low fuel flow was
achieved to some extent by making the cabin a little smaller. Everything's a
compromise. It's a compromise I happen to like. Try it on before you decide. The
combination of speed and economy is addictive.

The crashworthiness of the Mooney, with steel tubing construction like a "roll
cage" is legendary.

Used Mooneys frequently have very well equipped panels. People who fly Mooneys
choose them because they want to go somewhere, not just to fly around the patch.

The most annoying thing to me about the cabin size is trying to maneuver my
oversize flight bag between the front seat headrests to put it on the back seat.
Otherwise, I'm OK with it.

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Dave