Opinions on a M20J

"Julian Scarfe" wrote in message ...
"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
http://www.aso.com/i.aso/AircraftVie...craft_id=84399

I flew this yesterday and it was nice (but what the hell do I know) He
is asking 105k but Vref says it is worth $113k. That seemed high but
again what do I know. Any Mooney owners out there want to give an
opinion on the M20J? Thanks in advance.

If you're in the market for a fast, fuel-efficient single-engined tourer,
there are 4 reasons not to buy a Mooney:

1) It doesn't haul as much payload over short ranges as some comparable
tourers. On ours, one the IFR equipment was on board, it was 480 lb with
full fuel, which means 670 lb with half fuel. Of course half-fuel still
keeps you in the air for 3 hours at 160 KTAS. By the time you get to longer
range missions, it matters less because the others have to carry more weight
in fuel. If most of your missions are two up, no problem.

The useful load in a 201 will be right around 1000 lbs. Don't hold the
fact that the plane carries 7 hours of gas against it. I never fill
mine to the top.


2) It doesn't like rough surfaces. In my part of the world there are a much
greater proportion of grass runways than in the US. I've landed on grass,
it's OK, but I'd be very reluctant to base a Mooney at a grass field as I'd
be worried about the prop the whole time. If you don't intend to operate on
grass, it's not an issue.

Grass may not be very good (unless its very short). However, I've
landed my Mooney on the beach many times in Mexico.


3) Its landing distance is greater than many compatible tourers: because the
airframe is clean, it floats. So for short fields it tends to be the
landing distance that is limiting. I wouldn't want to operate a M20J
regularly out of much less than 2700 ft as you don't have much safety margin
at less than that. If you have that and don't visit short strips very
often, no problem.

Sounds like you are coming in too fast. My home field has about 2000
feet of landing runway (4000 available for take off). Even fully
loaded, it isn't too hard to stop in 1000 feet. Shoft final speed
should be around 70 mph.


4) Its crosswind performance is ugly, particularly for take-offs. The
undercarriage uses rubber disks for its springs, and the wing is very low to
the ground. Hence any bumps and you lose any side force from the wheels,
and you have a lot of lift relatively early in the take-off roll. If you
operate an M20J from a single runway airport in a windy part of the world,
this may be an issue. If you only rarely have to deal with 20 knot
crosswinds, no problem.

I fly around the Southwest. Take off and landing with 25-30 knots of
cross wind is no problem. The plane sit so low that you don't even
feel the cross wind in the flare.



If none of those things bother you, just buy the aircraft and spend 12
years, like me, enjoying 160 knots on 10 gallons per hour and trying to
figure out why anyone would buy anything else. :-)

The 201 is great. If you don't mind going 10 knots slower you can buy
an F model Mooney for about 1/2 the price. The laster F's have the
same panel, etc as the 201, just w/o the speed mods.

-Robert, Mooney owner and Mooney CFI

http://www.aso.com/i.aso/AircraftVie...craft_id=84399

I flew this yesterday and it was nice (but what the hell do I know) He
is asking 105k but Vref says it is worth $113k. That seemed high but
again what do I know. Any Mooney owners out there want to give an
opinion on the M20J? Thanks in advance.

If you're in the market for a fast, fuel-efficient single-engined
tourer,
there are 4 reasons not to buy a Mooney:

1) It doesn't haul as much payload over short ranges as some comparable
tourers. On ours, one the IFR equipment was on board, it was 480 lb
with
full fuel, which means 670 lb with half fuel. Of course half-fuel still
keeps you in the air for 3 hours at 160 KTAS. By the time you get to
longer
range missions, it matters less because the others have to carry more
weight
in fuel. If most of your missions are two up, no problem.

The useful load in a 201 will be right around 1000 lbs. Don't hold the
fact that the plane carries 7 hours of gas against it. I never fill
mine to the top.
[snip]

Doesn't leaving the tanks partially empty cause problems with condensation
or something along those lines?

Steven Barnes wrote:


Doesn't leaving the tanks partially empty cause problems with condensation
or something along those lines?

Maybe, but who wants to have full tanks all the time?

"Newps" wrote in message
...

Steven Barnes wrote:


Doesn't leaving the tanks partially empty cause problems with
condensation
or something along those lines?

Maybe, but who wants to have full tanks all the time?


I co-own with 2 other people. So, it's our policy to top-off after each
flight, so the next guy doesn't get stuck with it. Plus the fact I've heard
partially filled tanks can allow condensation. Water & rust in my fuel is no
fun.

Our club has a 182 with long range tanks. I can't understand that. With full
fuel in each plane, I can carry more payload than the 182.

Steven,

With full
fuel in each plane, I can carry more payload than the 182.


Then your tanks are too small. Think about it: What you want is to be
able to have a choice between going with a lot of people/stuff for
short/medium distances or a long way with just you and someone else on
board.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Steven Barnes wrote:




I co-own with 2 other people. So, it's our policy to top-off after each
flight, so the next guy doesn't get stuck with it. Plus the fact I've heard
partially filled tanks can allow condensation. Water & rust in my fuel is no
fun.

If you want the reduced performance of carrying all that fuel then that
is a decision you have to make.



Our club has a 182 with long range tanks. I can't understand that. With full
fuel in each plane, I can carry more payload than the 182.

Apples and oranges. My 182 has the long range tanks too, 84 gallons.
With full tanks I have 650 pounds left over. I can fly for 11+ hours
with that fuel, although I can't imagine doing that. It's all about
options. For my normal flying around here I usually have 30-40 gallons
in the plane. If I'm going more than a couple hundred miles I'll fill
it up.

Steven,

Doesn't leaving the tanks partially empty cause problems with condensation
or something along those lines?


NO! That is another of the many OWTs in aviation (old wive's tales). Cessna
did extensive experiments in a clima chamber. They could NOT produce any
noticable amount of water in a fuel tank no matter what they did to the
temperature. There are only two ways to get water in your tanks:

1. it's coming in with the fuel from the truck or depot tank.

2. it's been raining and your fuel caps leak.

In any case, there are very, very few GA single engine planes where you
don't have to constantly work with the fuel vs. payload trade-off. Always
filling the tanks robs you of a lot of the potential the average GA plane
has. Or your cheat and fly overweight - which is not the smart alternative.


--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

"Thomas Borchert" wrote:

Doesn't leaving the tanks partially empty cause problems with
condensation or something along those lines?

NO! That is another of the many OWTs in aviation
(old wive's tales). Cessna did extensive experiments in
a clima chamber. They could NOT produce any noticable
amount of water in a fuel tank no matter what they did to the
temperature.

Right. Obvious, if you think about it:

How much water is there in 10 gallons of air? In extremely wet
conditions (saturated air at 20 deg. C) there are only 14.7 g/kg of
water in the air. A cubic foot of air at SLP weighs about 34 grams at
20 C, 10 gallons is 13.37 cu. ft., so that gives about 455 g. of air and
about 7 g. of water.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

"Steven Barnes" wrote in message om...
Doesn't leaving the tanks partially empty cause problems with condensation
or something along those lines?

The only time I've ever found water in my tanks was when an IA didn't
properly adjust the caps after replacing the O-rings. As a general
rule, my partner and I agree to never leave the plane with more than
15 gals per side. Sometimes we leave it will much less. My theory is
that if your flight is so full of danger that you need to land with 3
hours of fuel, you probably should consider not going. We also have an
on-board fuel computer. The performance of a Mooney with 30 gals of
gas is WAY better than a Mooney with 64 gals. Putting 64 gals of gas
in a Mooney is like using a Corvette to pull your boat. It just makes
it slow. We use a stick to measure the tanks, I've never found the
computer to be off by more than 0.2 gals.

-Robert

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
om...

4) Its crosswind performance is ugly, particularly for take-offs. The
undercarriage uses rubber disks for its springs, and the wing is very
low to
the ground. Hence any bumps and you lose any side force from the
wheels,
and you have a lot of lift relatively early in the take-off roll. If you
operate an M20J from a single runway airport in a windy part of the
world,
this may be an issue. If you only rarely have to deal with 20 knot
crosswinds, no problem.

I fly around the Southwest. Take off and landing with 25-30 knots of
cross wind is no problem.

That does surprise me. I'm coming to the conclusion that either:

a) you measure knots differently :-)
b) you accept different levels of risk
or
c) you have a technique that I will never master

I'm quite happy to accept that it's (c), but would still offer the caution
about xwind performance to a prospective M20J purchaser.

While many manufacturers choose to demonstrate 20 or 25 kt for
certification, Mooney gave the M20J the bare minimum 11 kt (0.2 Vso) max
demonstrated crosswind component. That suggests to me that crosswind
performance was not high on the list of selling features.

Julian