Used Avionics

Jeff wrote:

Mooney, dont know much about them except the cockpit looks awful small.

I have to chime in here with my standard response to this frequent comment...

It's not as small as it looks, but it's not as big as some claim. There is a
claim floating around that it's as wide as a Bo, or something like that. I
haven't measured, but it doesn't feel all that wide. The space between the
shoulders of the occupants of the front seat is limited.

Your seating position is more like a sports car, with your legs straight out in
front of you. There is *plenty* of leg room and head room. I'm 6 ft. tall and I
adjust the seat to the second-from-full-forward position. I was skeptical about
this seating position, but I find that I can fly for longer periods of time
without back pain than I used to be able to in my Archer.

The rear seat legroom is even quite good, once the front seat pax get in and
slide the seats forward (they'll slide the seats back for ingress/egress, but
the seats have a lot of travel).

The windscreen looks like a tank-slit from the outside, so you might think
visibility is compromised. In fact, the seating position is quite close to the
windscreen so your angle of vision is quite good.

The Mooney's speed with the relatively low horsepower and low fuel flow was
achieved to some extent by making the cabin a little smaller. Everything's a
compromise. It's a compromise I happen to like. Try it on before you decide. The
combination of speed and economy is addictive.

The crashworthiness of the Mooney, with steel tubing construction like a "roll
cage" is legendary.

Used Mooneys frequently have very well equipped panels. People who fly Mooneys
choose them because they want to go somewhere, not just to fly around the patch.

The most annoying thing to me about the cabin size is trying to maneuver my
oversize flight bag between the front seat headrests to put it on the back seat.
Otherwise, I'm OK with it.

Remove SHIRT to reply directly.
Dave

In article ,
O. Sami Saydjari wrote:
Jeff, I have "narrowed it down" to three planes:

1965 Piper Comanche PA-24-260
1978 Mooney "201" M20J
1977 Piper Arrow III

The Arrow doesn't get as much advantage from being complex as the other
two planes. If you want something in the Cherokee series the 235s are
faster and carry more without the added maintenance costs of retractable
gear. They're popular with flight schools, though.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

Yes I think the retractable gear does help alot, at 150 kts, with only 200
HP, is pretty good. You cant put a turbo arrow with the normally aspirated
ones. Their performance is alot different.

the cherokee 235 is a 235 hp plane, is slower then a Turbo Arrow, but about
the same as a normally aspirated Arrow and has a lower ceiling then a Turbo
Arrow.
you can see some performance specs for a bunch of planes here
http://www.ferryflight.info/perfs.html
they have speed and range for most planes by the look of it.

Jeff

Ben Jackson wrote:


The Arrow doesn't get as much advantage from being complex as the other
two planes. If you want something in the Cherokee series the 235s are
faster and carry more without the added maintenance costs of retractable
gear. They're popular with flight schools, though.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

In article ,
Jeff wrote:
Yes I think the retractable gear does help alot, at 150 kts, with only 200
HP, is pretty good. You cant put a turbo arrow with the normally aspirated
ones.

He didn't say Turbo Arrow III, did he? Or did all Arrow IIIs come with
TIO-360s? If he's talking turbo that makes some sense, since the numbers
are similar to the Comanche and the M20J. The big difference will be
that the optimal altitudes will be higher in the turbo. That's a win if
you're in Colorado but probably a lose on the coasts or in the midwest.
The Comanche peaks at ~160KTAS @ 7000' @ 75%, like all non-turbos it
can't hold 75% beyond that, dropping back to ~155KTAS @ 10000 @ 65%.
The Turbo Arrow probably doesn't even hit its peak until the low teens,
but I don't have a chart for it.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

Sami,

I've had a bit of success acquiring used avionics on e-bay. If you'd rather
not mess with it, you might try www.avionix.com (as someone else suggested),
which has just about everything. For GPS units in particular, you should
also take a look at www.avionicsgps.com aka Joliet Avionics (JA). These
guys regularly sell direct and on e-bay. My avionics guy told me that JA
regularly buys up all the reconditioned units coming out of Garmin. As a
result, they usually have a good selection.

Our needs are probably different, but my PA28-140 had a pretty pathetic
avionics stack when I bought it (all Narco radios, an original piper "audio
panel", and a no-name Loran, about the only thing I recognized was the
PM-1000 intercom). My number one goal was to get more reliable but cheap
(read: older) radios into the plane. For this purpose, e-bay worked fine.
I picked up a KX-175B, indicator, KMA-20 audio and KR86 with antenna all for
about $1500. These avionics are cheap enough that I felt it was worth the
risk of possibly getting a bum unit. However, if you're going this route,
make sure everything has a RECENT yellow tag and make sure you understand
e-bay's feedback system. Also, unless you have some hidden backchannel,
installation is going to be a major expense and is not terribly dependent on
the age of the avionics (unless you get something really old or strange).
That's something else to consider when thinking about installing older and
cheaper stuff.

Someone else mentioned buying a handheld GPS and reselling it when you
decide to upgrade. That's actually worked out great for me. Several months
ago I purchased a Garmin 196 for $1000. For various reasons, I'm now
installing a Garmin GNC-300XL in the plane and I've already sold the 196 on
e-bay for $930. So I paid about $70 to "rent" the unit for about 6 months.
Not a bad deal.

best of luck,
mark

"O. Sami Saydjari" wrote in message
...
I plan to buy my first airplane and "trade-up" in about 3-4 years. I
expect my initial investment will be around $75K. At that price, it
does not seem to be worth putting in brand new avionics to the tune of
$12-$15K (thinking specifically about a Garmin 430/MX-20 combo, or a
GX-50/MX-20 combo). At the sametime, I really would like the
situational awareness benefits of such avionics. Is it practical to
consider buying used avionics? If so, where might I get used avionics
(web site pointers, phone numbers, or email addresses would be helpful
in addition to names of places).

By the way, thanks for all the great help I have been getting on this
forum. It really helps me make some hard decisions about my first
purchase.

-Sami