Beautiful Café Crème interior on that Columbia 400, @Aviathor
Thanks, Adam. It is nice, and is holds up well too for a 12 yo airplane.
mmgreve wrote:
It would be great to compare notes and planes.
I would have loved that. I will however arrive in Roskilde on July 2nd. Or at least that is the plan. If I decide to go the Helsinki/Malmi fly-in, I may drop by earlier.
Let me know, it would be good to catch up.
Sam_Rutherford wrote:
N3999 at Aosta in March…
I came across you on flightradar24 yesterday in northern Germany, small world! I had to google the reg to see what aircraft it was, love the paint job. Where are you based?
mmgreve wrote:
It would be great to compare notes and planes.
I noticed you listed the Mooney M20K turbo as previous to your Lancair 400 – care to develop the differences and pro/cons ?
While they both fall under the same category of speedy distance travelers, they are very different beasts.
I really liked the Mooney. It is a very efficient plane that gives you a pretty good speed at altitude for the fuel flow, purchase price and maintenance cost. It is often debated if there is any advantage over the M20J, but the extra range and speed makes it an easy decision in my book. It also have the 6 cylinder continental that is much smoother and easier to live with that the IO360. It is though more expensive to operate and you should factor in a top-end overhaul halfway to TBO, regardless of how careful you are. I also really like way Mooneys fly. Very stable IFR platform, yet responsive in handling.
What I disliked about the Mooney was the fact that it is a 35yo plane. I had one vacuum failure, which was enough for me to look for a glass solution and the autopilot was notoriously unreliable in anything but very smooth air. You can spend months trying to sort the avionics out and have the 20 different components talk to each other. Having done my IR on G1000, I knew I needed an integrated solution. I would also point out that the seats in the old Mooneys are s**t. I just to have a back ache after every longer flight due to sitting in a bit of an angle. Lastly, you have to watch the engine very carefully on the earlier M20Ks. You quickly learn to carefully set take-off power to avoid overboosting, but I was most surprised about the effect of weight. On a hot day, you can struggle to get any climb above FL100 due to engine temperatures.
All of the above are age related and I was actually very close to buying an Ovation 3 when I bought (part of) the Cessna Corvalis
The Corvalis is much more modern by comparison. Twin doors, lots of room, integrated avionics with digital autopilot and an engine that is very easy to manage. It is also very easy to fly both IFR and visual by hand. I have also flown Cirrus and the Corvalis handles much much better with its push rods and there are no springs to overcome in the break-out. I had to get used to the idea of flying around with the gear out, but I have gotten used to that, and it does give you the option of flying into (nice) grass runways – something I would never do in a Mooney. The wing loading is relatively high, so it is very stable in turbulence and I would really recommend everyone to at least try flying with the GNC700 autopilot (or similar by Avidyne). I have found it to be super reliable and very intuitive.
The family love the roomy cabin, the climate control that you just set to preferred temp) and the synthetic vision. The main design issue is that the climate control takes the heating off the intercoolers and at low power setting that is not enough heat generated. It is a problem in a hold or on a long instrument approach, and there is an STC from Kelly Aerospace to take the heat from the turbo connector, but I am not sure that cost is warrant it (….and there is probably a reason for Cessna to take the heat from the intercoolers)
mmgrevemmgreve wrote:
Lastly, you have to watch the engine very carefully on the earlier M20Ks.
I have heard that many times. Which engine did you have, the LB or GB? In the end, I think Mooney finally got it right only with the 252 when it comes to turbo engines.
How is it with the upgrades to WAAS on the Corvalis? Or did yours come with WAAS already? I hear that Mooneyacs with the G1000 were taken to the cleaners brutally when they wanted to get WAAS installed… for that reason I am quite wary of those integrated systems, as they take away all flexibility and bind you to one manufacturer of avionics…
Other than that, I have heard a lot of good things about the Columbia 400, they operate one here locally and during the approach they really play with the big boys in terms of speed.
