Antonio wrote:
We should stand united, not divided
I concur fully with that statement
So in a few months, I too will be able to answer the thread’s title question from first hand experience.
With the help of a very nice fellow forum member, who made me aware of the opportunity, that wasn’t even advertised anywhere, I’m very happy to report I recently became a 50 50 co-owner of a Mooney M20M TLS Bravo, and it comes with a hangar at my home airport!
You know how they say you buy the 3rd plane you go see and fly? Yeah, it was true in my case as well! 😅
Anyway, I’m ecstatic and can’t wait to start flying the thing. I’ll report back if it’s worth it or not to be an owner by the end of the summer, even though I have no doubt I already know what my report will say.
I’m ecstatic and can’t wait to start flying the thing
I can feel you 😆
And a Mooney M20M TLS Bravo is a superb machine which I’d sure have in my sights would I ever become crazy enough to move back in the certified world (nobody hold their breath here 😉).
Well done, all the best with that new toy, looking forward reading you 👍🏻
hazek wrote:
I’ll report back if it’s worth it or not to be an owner by the end of the summer
You can report anything you want and it will be interesting to hear. But your announced report by the end of the summer is not going to reflect a realistic “all in” experience. Only after a full year or more of ownership will you realize the total yearly costs and be able to see the overall full value.
Excited to hear that you found a great opportunity – sounds great. Best of luck with it all and enjoy. Looking forward to you updates en route. Cheers.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Good for you. But I enjoy flying myself to Copenhagen with my wife and – can you imagine – so does she!
Yes, and I guess my wife would too, especially in a reasonable fast and reasonable equipped aircraft like that brand new M700 with emergency autoland feature 
The only thing that scares my wife, is me getting a heart attack and she sitting there alone and incapable of doing anything. Now is that rational? is it a reasonable/probable event? doesn’t matter, but the probability of I getting a heart attack rather than she, or before she does, is statistically almost certain. I simply cannot argue that point with her in any case. The solution is simple. I remember the look of her face the first time in the Savannah, when I told her that if a would get a heart attack, she should just turn of the engine and pull hard on that handle to release the chute. It was like 10 tons off her shoulders.
This is another reason why ULs are more and more popular, and why a traditional 4 seat simply cannot compete. They all have BRS. The only exception is Cirrus, and now also that M700 with a very different, yet similar system in principle. What the BRS does, is to give your better half a way out, one that she understands and has full control of.
The “rational” way of thinking amongst pilot, is the BRS is an extra engine. As for myself, I know that in the event of an engine out, pulling that chute would not be high on my priority of things. Realistically I would only pull that chute if the wing broke, or I got completely lost in IMC. The main rationale for that chute is with the passenger(s). For them the chute is the second pilot, in particular this is so for your wife. That autoland feature on the M700 is the same thing, but much more specific to being the second pilot exclusively, than a more general rescue system.
For this reason, an aircraft with a BRS is much more “worth it” than an aircraft without a chute.
Airborne_Again wrote:
My experience is the opposite. But YMMV. Luftfartstilsynet may be more reasonable than Transportstyrelsen.
It didn’t use to be that way, and it certainly is not always that way. But what has happened in recent years (10 years perhaps) is many of the persons working there with GA, are GA pilots themselves. Who would have thought ? Actual and real first hand experience can be a good thing ?
LeSving wrote:
The only thing that scares my wife, is me getting a heart attack and she sitting there alone and incapable of doing anything. Now is that rational? is it a reasonable/probable event?
As you hint, it is not rational as it is much more likely that she would be killed if you had a heart attack while driving a car. But there we are.
My experience is the opposite. But YMMV. Luftfartstilsynet may be more reasonable than Transportstyrelsen.It didn’t use to be that way, and it certainly is not always that way. But what has happened in recent years (10 years perhaps) is many of the persons working there with GA, are GA pilots themselves. Who would have thought ? Actual and real first hand experience can be a good thing ?
That’s of course extremely important. Transportstyrelsen has become more and more legalistic the past 10 years, say. More influence by lawyers who read regulation text without understanding what’s behind it. One of the best and most GA positive guys among the rulemaking staff got fed up a year or two ago and moved to oversight. There he will visit clubs and schools and talk to the pilots who actually do light GA flying. That’s much more fun, of course, but it is a loss for the rest of us as he was a moderating force.
An example of how totally crazy things can be these days: A helicopter company was abusing the introduction flights concession to do what in practice was commercial sightseeing flights. This pissed off other operators who were spending a lot of money on an AOC. So Transportstyrelsen used its prerogative to regulate introduction flights. It first proposed a rule that would require introduction flights to be a minimum of 30 minutes in duration. I kid you not. All ostensibly for flight safety reasons….
This caused an uproar as it would actually be detrimental to flight safety by putting pressure on pilots to continue a flight even if pax became scared or nauseous – not to mention that 30 minutes is more than a typical beginner pax can meaningfully take in. The final rule said minimum 15 minutes, which is still completely stupid and without any flight safety benefit whatsoever, but we can live with it. (They introduced other nonsensical rules as well, but this one was the worst.)
Airborne_Again wrote:
As you hint, it is not rational as it is much more likely that she would be killed if you had a heart attack while driving a car. But there we are.
I didn’t mean it’s completely irrational. From a psychological point it is very rational, because the eventual outcome of things is very nightmarish. If I did have a heart attack, she would be left up there with no way of helping me, and no way of helping herself to survive. She probably could manage to keep the aircraft flying, which doesn’t exactly help the situation, because she couldn’t land it without the the risk of dying being very high, in most cases 100%.
With that chute, the situation is turned around. Now she becomes 100% in control of something she knows she can do (pull that handle). This would give me the best possibility of survival, and it would give her as good as 100% chance of survival. From a nightmare with an infinite possibilities that all ends in certain death to a concrete action that ends in survival is like night and day
The probability of me getting a heart attack or similar while she is on board, is small of course, but why do CAT fly with two pilots? A passenger with normal cognitive capabilities and given a bit time to think about it (typically your wife), will look at the chute as a “second pilot”. It will give her 100% chance of survival even if you should die up there. Thus, flying becomes business as usual (you will die from a heart attack many years before she does )
LeSving wrote:
The probability of me getting a heart attack or similar while she is on board, is small of course
Although it is not impossible, the chances – especially of someone who has a current medical – are very small.
Consider the number of HGV’s that career off the motorways each day due to a heart attack?
And from observation, they are far more obese and unfit than pilots.
The evidence seems to suggest that, surprisingly, people rarely have heart attacks whilst they are active/concentrating: More likely to collapse when they get out on to terra firma or in their sleep afterwards.
Congratulations hazek. The M20M is a 🚀
During my PPL, someone from a neighbouring club felt very unwell and landed in a field. In 17 years it’s the only inflight heart attack I’ve heard of, and the pilot got out ok.
Congratulations to a fellow Mooneyac! The TLS is a great machine, you’ll love flying her.
