You've got me beat. I fly an F model, so I'm a bit heavier, but about 800 is the shortest I get. I can hit my 1400' turnoff with very light braking though. Looks like I need to go out and practice more!
Great video - I think the biggest thing is hitting your mark as you did. No sense worrying about how quick it stops until you can stop floating half a mile down the runway.
Nice video. I have a 1961 Mooney and I can easily make the first turnoff at our 2,465ft runway. The short body Mooney is a pretty great plane. Especially when light.
Awesome man! Welcome back! I was gonna say, the plane is looking better. You should start Patreon or something - I wouldn't mind chipping in a few bucks for your plane and gas.
Thank you so much for the support! I will keep that in the back pocket but I think I need to make sure I can commit to making videos more consistently before I look to that step.
I bought my first airplane in 1968 a new 1965 Mooney M 20 C with electric gear it was a beautiful airplane and would go long distances very efficiently I flew from Los Angeles to big Bear over 200 times but that was within one of my three Rockwell commanders which also we’re great airplanes but by far my favorite plane was the Marvelous Mooney mark 21!!!! I am now 85 years old but stopped flying short of any accidents about 10 years ago!!!! It was a wonderful life being able to get around efficiently with laminar flow long distance airplanes!!!!!!
I used to fly a 1964 M20C, similar to yours. I put 2700 hours on it. Sold it 20 years ago and have not flown since. I often landed on grass, including a golf course and a buffalo pasture in South Dakota. (Emergency landing to avoid a storm). I found I could control the touchdown best by approaching with about 10" of power. This meant a nose high approach (lots of drag). When I cut the throttle, the plane touched down immediately. No floating. The manual gear is very fast, so in an engine out dead stick, you can delay the gear until the field is made. Plane comes down very quickly once the gear goes down. The wing is very close to the ground, so lots of ground effect to get the plane off and to cushion a landing.
Hi Travis - greetings from 🇿🇦, as a Mooney 1969 M20G owner = long fuse version of your M20C with electric LG - I love your real, practical and proven insights into Mooney flight performance - especially on the slow speed ops side 👍. Lots of comments by the “What I’ve heard crowd”, as opposed to our “What I’ve personally experienced” commentators. Fly the POH numbers to the real weight - and gain proficiency until you and your bird are “one” and build your mastery of control, just like you have done ✅. You must have had a really switched on instructor somewhere in your training or conversion to type = Good Man I fly out if a 850m x 11m asphalt strip with some slope - always has a x-wind - look up FAKR, South Africa Keep up the great content 👍
I'm actually making my next video on my cross country trip from PA to some Idaho Backcountry strips this summer. I wish I had been able to film more of it but I had to really focus on flying!
A Pittsburgh area Amateur radio club held their annual Hamfest at the Farm Show fairgrounds for 25 years. I never flew in but I did go to an Airshow there once too.
heard you mention you transitioned from a 172 to a Mooney. Just curious how it went and what the pros and cons of the two planes. I fly a 172M and am thinking about upgrading to possibly a Mooney.
The transition took me literally 2.5 hours, but it depends on how you fly the Cessna. If you are used to flying the Cessna on airspeed and being able to put it exactly where you want it, the Mooney should be no challenge to you. The Mooney, (keep in mind when I say "Mooney" I mean specifically my 63' J-Bar C model) despite it's reputation, is really just another airplane. It doesn't have anything too crazy about it, but it does maintain energy a bit more than the 172. Perhaps I should make a video about this subject as there are many pros and cons, but if you are considering getting a Mooney, I'd say do it! I've owned both and for me, the Mooney was by far more enjoyable and just an all around better experience. Plus, with the cost of 172's you could easily get a very nice Mooney for the same value.
@@tractor9080 every flight school in the country needs 172s. There tough, parts easy to come by. I love my Mooney though. Way faster than any 172, I can actually go places across the country.
Yes, love my m20a. Imagine lighter than an e or b,c. 100ft a min better climb. Take the seats out And you wouldn'believe. And that b's about a Mooney floating down the runway into the next county.. Well morron try closing the throttle. I never use flaps but yes to fwd slips. Grass strips got a love 'em. I'm in Texas would love to go flying n8335e. Trick to landing is to roll the trim All the way aft on base to final . forces speed control and eases the flair to like flying a stearman. Few will if/ever get it. Glad to see you do, brother. Best of all is that manual gear. Nothing better to get the adrenal flowing with the 100LL whipping that prop. I see you fly a McCauley. If it had been 3 blade I wdnt a watched. Mooney on. Sorry, but I don't do NY. Do a video , maybe it needs to done in Texas how getting down in Mooney from 8k takes time. How recovering all of the climb energy is possible. That wing is "..a Mooney pilot's key to the aerial Kingdom ..." Per my POH.
Great video! The plane is looking good too. It’s probably tedious getting the paint off but I think it’s definitely worth it. In the video I think it looks pretty badass where it sits!
Thanks for the suggestion! Most of the bad paint is stripped now but I am going to film a video on what I have learned about stripping the paint and polishing the metal in the next few days.
The older, shorter mooneys are lighter... and IIRC the prop clearance is less on the J-Models and onward. You can land a mooney short (we operate it out of a 1400ft field). One thing to consider is: Heavy breaking on uneven surfaces will kill your tires on a mooney quite fast.
My dad used to do the same in his 180 Comanche (uprated to 200) usually on/off grass. He would drag it in using power just off stall (same wing I guess)
Hi I have a 66C you can shorten the landing if you put Micro Aerodynamics VG’s on your aircraft the best thing is the aerloens are effective all the way to the stall.
Cool. Good video. The plane is looking much better with your paint stripping progress. Have you done any before and after weights -- wonder how much all that paint weighed. We just weighed my '62 (for the first time in at least 38 years) and it was about 70lbs heavier than the POH weight and balance.
I unfortunately did not get the chance to weigh the plane before I started stripping it but I can compare it to the last time it was weight which was not that long ago. I definitely noticed an increase in speed and decrease in fuel burn once I stripped the top surface of the wing as the paint there was chipping and seemed to me very similar to frost.
Last video I watched said 100 knots on downwind, 80 on the turns to final, and 71 knots on a stabilized approach. Don't force it on or it will porpoise and strike prop on second bounce. Sound right?
Maybe in a J model on a 5000ft runway, but in my C on a 2400ft runway I was doing 65 mph on final on calm days. Any faster and I'd eat up too much runway floating.
I bought my Mooney from an owner who operated off a turf runway. I ended up having to do a COMPLETE reseal at major cost / sacrifice! The donuts are harsh on the tanks. Even if the prop clearance is 9" are you willing to risk hitting that divot and then needing to apply power and sucking up rocks? Mooney's weren't designed with the general intent of grass/turf/raw runways
I always use flaps for takeoff and landing. My flaps are hydraulic so the technique I have for best performance on takeoff is to preload the system/pump handle and then pump the flaps twice for takeoff position right before I reach rotate speed. This helps accelerate the initial roll and pops the plane up into ground effect.
Nicely done! Even a fully loaded 201 , with smooth air , 65kts on short final - no float. If runway is a bit soft , rough or undulating , keep some back yoke in to minimize load on short coupled nosewheel . If badly unbalanced (slip/skid) at stall , the mooney will spin , l've heard 1500ft for recovery! Never tried it. However , keep habit of balanced , skid ball centred flight, mooneys are a pussy cat to stall
1500 feet sounds reasonable, but I never tried spinning the Mooney either. I do know that because of the height of the horizontal stab and elevator, the stall really buffets and lets you know wayyyy before it actually breaks, and when it breaks it was very gentle.
Thanks! I'm not sure what you mean by quite late. I extend the gear on downwind, or (during an overhead pattern) in the break. I know other people teach to extend the gear earlier (before they get to the airport) which may make sense for other retracts that take longer and have more complex systems, but my Mooney has manual gear that takes 1 second to lower and is very unlikely to fail, so I don't put the gear down any earlier than necessary.
@@AverageAviator At 9:08 the gear comes out in the middle of what looks like a fairly steep bank. Since there's a cut in the edit I'm not sure if that's the turn onto final or if it happens earlier, just seemed unusual. (Disclaimer - not a PPL yet :P )
@@FallLineJP No worries! In that shot, I'm doing what's called an overhead pattern which isn't exactly standard but is an accepted method of arriving at an airport and landing. I've found it's also a very efficient way to arrive at an airport while avoiding a long straight in final approach. Basically the procedure is to overfly the runway at pattern altitude and then at some point (typically approach end, midfield, or departure end) the power is reduced to idle and a 180 turn executed to join the downwind leg of a normal pattern. The turn is called the "break" and normally I break at the approach end of the runway and do a circling descent to land. The break allows me to keep speed up until I get right over the runway and use the turn to bleed off energy to get below the gear speed and then lower the gear. It's a technique that not many people use as they typically like to fly long straight in approaches, but I find those are slower and much more annoying to other planes in the pattern, but my technique isn't widely used. Hopefully that helps!
@@AverageAviator Thanks for that! Spent some time reading up on the overhead break, now it makes sense. Another question if you don't mind - when extending the gear in a bank, do you have to do anything at the controls to compensate for the increased drag? Are you letting off any backpressure etc?
Will do! I flew all the way out to Idaho last summer. I think my next long trip will be to Utah and Arizona, but it probably won't be for a little while.
I wouldn't take my Mooney to most unimproved strips. It depends on the depth of the gopher holes. Most of the fields I've taken the Aeronca I'd never consider taking a Mooney into just because of the depth of the gopher holes. But I have landed on the beach in Mexico.
Warning grass strips & rough fields will eventually loosen the sealant in the fuel tanks causing expensive fuel tank resealing bills. Especially when the tank sealer is old. Those hockey pucks in the Mooney landing gear are poor shock absorbers causing the wing to flex especially with hard landings.
Remember that day, I had about 10 hours of fly time, and I was flying the school plane, that rocket 152, and landed on this dirt road behind my house, I live on Sinaloa México,and wanted to take my girlfriend and a niece for a ride. I had landed and taken off from there, to practice short landings, and never had a problem Well, picked up my passengers, and started running down the road,at the end, there's this little creek, and this thing wouldn't go any faster than 45, I was thinking it would act like when I was by myself, but with the two extra people, it wouldn't move I couldn't stop, and since I apply the flaps until just before going up, I applied full flaps, it jumped into the air, made it across the creek, and started going down, on the other side, but it never touched the ground, but there were power lines on the other side, and I had to go under them Some how, this thing went up at around 45 mph, so I kept practicing it, and made it every time. But that time, it sure scared the hell out of me, and almost gut those girls killed. Never told them a thing, though, they said it had been an awesome ride. Since I am a dear devil, they thought it was something just to scare them. I was always doing crazy stuff, lucky never killed myself Now, I do crop spraying, which I love, and got pretty good at landing in short strips, but I do dive landing, which was also pretty scary at first, but now I do it with my eyes closed.
I'm lucky to get off the ground in 800' in my 62' C at negative density altitudes, although I'm never light. Toying with the idea of adding vg's but I need to stop the upgrades! The slippery comments do get old.... it's not hard to slow down when you pull up!
It would have been interesting to see what the numbers looked like at different weights. I'm guessing at max gross with 1000ft DA mine would be around 800-1000 feet.
Though come to think of it, I took off just 300lbs below max gross in Wyoming at 8000 DA and had the gear up before the first taxiway 2000 feet down, so perhaps it would do better than I expect.
Great video my friend! Excellent commentary while making your landings! As someone who only knows some of the basics about planes and flying, it was super interesting to hear exactly what you were doing to achieve your short landings.
What speeds are you using short final? I can’t hear much over the music overlay. Interesting flap technique on the short field takeoff. Was that deliberate to get speed up faster? Dropping them right before liftoff?
I apologize, I realize now that the music level was just a bit too high, but unfortunately I cant change it. On final for a short field landing without gusting wind I use 75 (mph indicated), slowing to 70 at about 100 feet above touchdown elevation, then 65 at 50 feet or right before I begin the flare. Dropping the flaps on rollout is deliberate, the flaps add drag while accelerating (though not a ton) and it helps pop the aircraft up into ground effect.
I definitely want to head back to Idaho! I am debating on whether or not to make a video on it as I was so focused on flying I didn't get to film much, and it would be mainly talking about what I wrote in my journal. But I'll definitely let you know if I ever make it back out!
4 adults and full fuel would likely exceed the max gross weight, but I'm guessing not more than 800-1000 feet at max gross. I've taken it into a 1400ft strip with nearly full fuel, 2 adults, and 2 children without issue.
@@AverageAviator Hello , thank you for your answer . The Mooney M20C is my dream-aeroplane . Could i ask another question ? The Mooney has a trimmable empannage . Is it therefore no problem (or is the trimmable empannage too vulnerable for that) to use side-slipping on short final approach to control speed in order to pin-point land on the spot aimed for touch-down , as also to not float and have a short landing distance ? Is this landing-technique not used regularly with the fast Mooney's ? Regards .
@@erwinb3412 I apologize for the late reply. The moveable empennage does not limit the Mooney in any way. It is built very strong. In this video I sideslip on a couple of the landings. No issues with it whatsoever!
I actually have twice as much prop clearance on M20E than my hangar mate has on his 182. The biggest problem I see with rough runways is what they're going to do to my wet tanks. I'm not using bladders. Of course it's only a question of when, not if the next re-seal is going to happen. But I'm hoping to push it off to the next owner :-)
@@Scott6113 If only those bladders were not so heavy. After 20 years I'm having my tanks resealed. I just couldn't lose the useful load the bladders cost.
