Hi all,
Long story short, I recently managed to recover logs from a Mooney 20E my great uncle originally purchased in 1965 and which he then based in Beirut.
This same Mooney was bought in October by a young German pilot, Marco, who was kind enough to send me the old logs.
I was amazed to see that the plane was delivered from Boston to Le Bourget via a single stop in Santa Maria, Azores (see log books below). Any idea of how one would manage the navigation back then for such a crossing ? Clock and Compass + NDB when getting closer to Santa Maria ?
Best,
Salim
Here is an interesting article in an old copy of Flying on this same pilot :
The two following pages have nothing to do with the crossing. It is still interesting to see what kind of flying one was able to do in the region back then !
Wow, thanks a lot for sharing this.
I know of several E models which have massively enhanced endurance. Obviously, for the ferry flights, they had to have quite a lot of additional fuel to the 52 USG’s the E-model usually has. The airplane can be equipped with Monroy tanks (36 USG) which would bring the grand total to 88 USG (probably some 84 usable). That usually means 10 hours endurance at 150 kts, so around 1500 NM with 45’ reserve….
16 hours 10 would mean something between 120 and 150 USG to do it safe. One airplane I know of had 123 USG installed and he quoted 15 hours at 148 kts.
This here is an E-model which has actually flown around the world.
Do you know the current registration? It would not be French registered by any chance? In which case I know the plane and the pilot.
Edit: Just read the article, wonderful read (the whole mag is like a time capsule…)
Mooney ARNA has flown 3300 miles with an average fuel consumption of 6.5 GPH …. and I did have enough fuel remaining to continue to Rome.
That was a C model like mine with a tad more tanks I suppose. Fun to read very much so.
That is an awesome post – thanks Salim!
It’s great to see him going to all those places, which today would be difficult or off-limits, or have no avgas.
Thanks Peter !
Indeed, looking at the logs travelling all around Europe and the middle east seemed so easy back then (there are also flights into Belgrade on other pages)
@ Mooney_Driver, the registration is still the original, French, one :
Love those log book pages without ICAO identifiers for airports! Come to think of it, my log book is pretty cool too, and includes many of those destinations (missed Damas though!). The problem is it’s all 4 letter identifiers which takes the poetry out of the log!
How did the plane get from Elba (first entry) to Beirut? By ship?
WhiskeyPapa wrote:
How did the plane get from Elba (first entry) to Beirut? By ship?
Actually it’s not Elba but OLBA the identifier for Beirut :)
Last line of the previous page you can see a Rhodes – Beirut flight
Holy crap! Oo
A whole lot of extra tanks needed. Boston to Santa Maria is a 2100NM great circle, in 16h that’s a 130kts-ish average in zero wind. Flying near land on the airways until Newfoundland is an extra 100NM, 136kts average.
Santa Maria to Le Bourget is “only” 1400NM GC.
Mr Moody must have felt very lonely for at least half of either leg.
If you want to see some (very) recent footage of this aircraft, taken by its new German owner, see here:
What great background for the new owner of the Mooney. For me, that sort of thing makes owning the plane much more interesting. It looks to be in nice shape today too, wonderful.
Re the video, I noticed the two Velocity canards tied down in the snow at Luxembourg. Wonder what brought them together there? Otherwise, I wonder how the radio chatter per hour would compare to all those VFR flights around the Mediterranean in the 60s! So much for the benefits of technology.
Funnily enough last night I picked-up a second-hand signed copy of a story of two people taking a Mooney around the world in late 2008. I have since seen that one of them had already been RTW in a Money in 2003 and possibly again since 2008. There are three books. I have the middle one:
