Official 6th Annual Mudspike Christmas Flight 2020 - Discussion & AAR Thread

You could always put your Global on autopilot, go to bed, wake up and land and be finished… :rofl:

We did a trip to FACT a couple of years ago from Austin. We did a fuel stop and crew swap in Rio de Janeiro both ways. I ended up spending the week in Rio.

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Can the Mooney make that southern cross-atlantic jaunt?

The single engine Beach that comes with MFS2020 has a range of 900nm, which is why I am considering the small twins. I may just ‘pretend’ that I loaded the baggage compartment with an extra fuel tank that gets pumped in to the main tanks about half way :slight_smile:

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Well…according to the specs it can ~ 1860 nm range according to some Googlepedia… I’m bringing a lifejacket regardless…!

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Have some Ferry tanks installed.

Mooney M20K (231)

This 231 came to us several months ago in need of paint and interior. The owner was torn between two options: 1) sell it as is or 2) have it painted, replace the interior, and install ferry tanks and fly it back to Italy. We’re happy that the owner went with option 2 and below are the results.

The owner was on a tight time-frame – needing to get the airplane back to Italy in August. Fortunately, Reese Aircraft/KD Aviation, Inc . just happened to have an opening. We got the airplane in the paint shop and Reese turned it around on-schedule as promised.

Ferry Tank Installations – Air-Mods

According to FlightAware N107MG made it to Italy.

Wheels

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I’m certainly OK with anyone using a simulated ferry tank, if that’s possible.

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Way back when I was working at North Myrtle Beach airport…we had a gal there that was a based pilot that had a gorgeous all aluminum Mooney. She used to compete in air races and had this beautiful welded fuel/ferry tank installed behind the seats. Pretty cool feat of engineering…and it gave her M20 some ridiculous range.

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I’m tempted to fly this year in FSX as I have so many more interesting options in the hangar than MSFS. On the other hands it feels rather silly to have shelled out for MSFS and not use it. The next question is what to fly? The MSFS option with almost everything having a glass cockpit do not excite me. The Mooney that @BeachAV8R is taking was certainly an option, but hearing everything is broken doesn’t help. I may pickup the MB-339 just to have something with a bit of speed and steam gauges. Barring that I’m thinking the X Cub, as it’s a great little bush plane, with reasonable speed if I sacrifice endurance.

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You have the same dilemma as me. I have decided on the TBM930 and MSFS. The airplane has decent legs and is quite fast. Right now I’m heading from Austin to Key West. It’s a nice enough airplane, but the glass panel is not my first choice for a trek like this. I will be quite time limited this year as I have to head off for training this week, and then I will quite likely be away from home over the Thanksgiving week. That means I have to get going if I want to knock this out before Christmas.

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Next hop logged yesterday.
LYVR (Serbia) - LYNI (Serbia) - LW68 (Macedonia)
Weather was not that better but again I decided to give it a go

Spot landing at LYNI was a challenge because of wind but managed it eventually

But it was nothing compared to canyon run to Macedonia. At this point, climbing to mountain pass, I thought that this is the end to this flight. Every second I expected to flew into the clouds and hit the ground. Was surprised there was a hole in the cloud layer directly above the pass

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The drama continues.
LW68 (Macedonia) - LGAX (Greece) [ - planned for LGTS (Greece)]

No suitable job for me in Macedonia, what was worse that even no fuel!

Inspired by @BeachAV8R Moony did some paint job :slight_smile:

Crossed the mountain range to Greece and hopped for good winds (it was actually no winds VRB02KT to headwind 4KT to the S :sweat_smile: )

This was all I squeezed out of the machine and me. I run out of fuel just prior to touchdown. Almost crashed. I should flew much higher and autorotate… or land before the fuel did run out :innocent:
Didnt know what to do after landing. Reposition via xplane map is not possible as it will cancel the FSE assignment. Decided to click the ‘Finish flight’ anyway and hopped that I am close enough to the airport. Lucky me!

“… Still 0 gallons of fuel onboard.” LOL!

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On my way once again in the Mooney. So the aforementioned squawks still hold true…no clicking of rotary knobs or CTD. Also another one I came across today - I used my mouse wheel to move the transponder knob to ALT and it made my altimeter wind all the way to the bottom of the scale - 28.10". And now it is stuck there. Thus…my indicated altitude is showing about 2,000’ lower than my actual altitude. I dare not click around trying to fix it…and rolling the mouse wheel to try to set it higher does nothing.

Also - the Mooney suffers the same problem that I think most of the MSFS flight models face in that leaning the mixture seems to actually make fuel flow go UP! :man_shrugging:

That said, I’m sitting at about 10,000’ on the way down to Jekyll Island, Georgia and with power set according to the POH…I’m actually getting fairly reasonably close fuel flow. I have 21" of MP, 2280 RPM, and FF 12.2 GPH (equates to 65% power…max attainable by manifold pressure). Airspeed is 145 knots indicated, but the rotating bezel where I should be able to put my pressure altitude and temperature correction (7C…warmer than standard) does not rotate…so I can’t figure my TAS without finding a whiz wheel in my attic. The Interweb E6-B calculator says that should work out to 172 knots TAS which is dead on to the Mooney POH…

Climbing out of Mountain Air in IFR is no joke (and not legal) with 6,000+ mountains nearby…was a bit of a hold your breathe moment since I didn’t have TAWS screens or anything cool like that…

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So also of interest…not sure if Carenado actually models unusable fuel (I doubt it)…but the standard M20R fuel load is 95 gal. with 89 gal. usable. Based on 89 gal. usable at around 12 GPH (can probably shave that down a bit by going even higher…only at 10K right now) gives an endurance of around 7 1/2 hours x 172 knots = 1275 nm, zero wind, no reserve.

SAXMAS-026

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Not much in the way of scenery this morning over the Carolinas…a fairly steady high overcast is blocking the views below. I might shoot the old school VOR approach into Jekyll Island when I get down there… EDIT - Hmm…but I do have an altimetery issue to reckon with…might have to make some adjustments to my letdown altitudes…haha…

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Clouds are breaking up over Georgia…hooray…!

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Getting a bit stormy down in south Georgia…

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How are you (the general community encompassing you) adding the Mudspike text to the paint schemes? I need a quick tutorial :slight_smile:

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In XP there is PNG file format for textures. So I use GIMP free software to manipulate these files. Eg. I dowloaded MS logo (png format) , cut out MS text and pasted it into the texture after I have ‘masked’ the original reg no.
GIMP allows you to stretch, rotate and variously manipulate the pics/pasted layers.
We can elaborate further in some related thread.

Definitely MSFS vs XP vs FSX/P3D thats the dilemma these days. What MSFS offers with beautiful terrain and sky, lacks in plane department.
My only wish actually is not helos in MSFS, but rather procedural grass/bushes in XP :slight_smile:

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I think that I may have found a blender tutorial that will work. I really don’t want to learn all that painting stuff. An artist I am not.

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Talking about steam gauge planes for MSFS, how about Rutan Long-EZ from IndiaFoxtEcho?

Seems like it has also solid range

https://m.facebook.com/594476197232512/posts/the-long-ez-project-for-microsoft-flight-simulator-has-reached-a-level-of-qualit/3797953516884748/

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