What airplane is overall better Bonanzas or Mooneys

Buick?.....na :lol:
Very much like a Buick compared to a Porsche. I should add here that the fellow who checked me out in the super 21, in later years often landed a machen Aerostar on this same 2000 ft runway. I've never met anyone like him before or since . Fantastic pilot.
 
IMG_1758.JPG Not sure I could call a mooney or a Bonanza a "Buick" (or brick as the iPhone keeps correcting me).

From the first 35 on, the V tails are (if nothing else) a work of art.
 
that....my friend, is no Bonanza. :no:

1975BuickLeSabre_01_1100-700x375.jpg
 
Meh.....maybe a Mazda Miata. Not a Porsche. lol :D
I agree, It really is a dumb question. To begin with, the bonanza is a Buick sedan, the Mooney is similar to a 911 Porsche. I've driven a Buick, I've owned a 911 and a Cayman. I'm six feet even and weigh 185 lbs. no problem at all with the Mooney concerning room. Plenty of room. It's what appeals to you which is why a person looking for a roomy Buick sedan would not buy a 911. I've flown both a bonanza ( probably 100 hours total in a 36 and about 400 hours in both a super 21 and later in a 201. ) all three are great aircraft for their specific missions and I agree 100 percent with those describing landing on grass in a Mooney. You must be very careful about the condition of the field and one must hold the yolk aaaallll the way back while taxiing. Easy to hit the prop. Slow and easy. Bonanza much better at this. 2000 feet of asphalt is good for either one depending on passenger load and gas. With just pilot either is fine with decent approach and half tanks on hot day. Years ago I went from 200 hours in an 85 champ to a super 21 and after a two hour checkout with a real Mooney pro I was turned loose and did well. All about speed on final, paying attention. ( the super 21 was based at the same 2000 ft. Asphalt strip. No problem.)
 
As I said , to quote another scribe, it's a real dumb question. The 911 Carrera and Cayman I owned were much different than a Mazda anything. The interior of an a36 is more like a Buick sedan than the " sports car type" interior of the Mooney. Incidentally, the lumbering Buick portrayed is far from the standard sedan. Lots of misinformation is posted on this site so I'm not at all surprised at the replies. I remember posting that I had leased a new Porsche Cayman and 90 percent of the replies concerning the model, the performance etc. were totally false. Just hot air b.s.
 
As I said , to quote another scribe, it's a real dumb question. The 911 Carrera and Cayman I owned were much different than a Mazda anything. The interior of an a36 is more like a Buick sedan than the " sports car type" interior of the Mooney. Incidentally, the lumbering Buick portrayed is far from the standard sedan. Lots of misinformation is posted on this site so I'm not at all surprised at the replies. I remember posting that I had leased a new Porsche Cayman and 90 percent of the replies concerning the model, the performance etc. were totally false. Just hot air b.s.
I wouldn't compare a 36 with a Mooney.....maybe a 35 not a 36. Different kettle of fish there pal.
 
I guess a Buick is a way to describe a non Mooney, but it would be more accurate if you described the non Mooney as a Buck with worn out shocks and steering linkage. You have to fly a Mooney to know why I use this as a comparison.

The difference in a Mooney that makes it seem that way is control rods instead of pulleys and cables. The control rods don't stretch like a cable, making for more precision control feel.

There are several things that are unique in a Mooney. The control rods are one thing, the others are the passenger compartment steel cage, the entire tail trim, the manual flaps and landing gear on some models, the decreased frontal area( a positive and a negative,) and possibly the most important is the laminar flow wing. The wing is not dissimilar to some other more modern planes.

I am not claiming that all these features are superior. Although I feel that the are all advantages, that judgment is to be made by the person selecting the plane. Maybe a Mooney is for you and maybe not. It is your money and your choice.
 
The Beech Buick is a Sundowner, er I mean the Beech Sundowner is a Buick. Some people like Buicks - sit up high, go slow, take a long time to do everything.

I like wearing an aircraft so I kind of like Mooneys, but I like single place sailplanes and Miatas. BTW, we're on our third Miata. The original fit my largess frame best but it's a lovable toy. The 2017 breathes some fire... I just wish I fit better but it is very nice. The Miatas are for my petite mate so my fit is incidental.


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possibly the most important is the laminar flow wing. The wing is not dissimilar to some other more modern planes.
Don't get caught up in the marketing hype for the "laminar flow" wing in light single-engine airplanes.

Despite claimed advantages in high-power, high-speed aircraft, with perfectly-conforming construction and uncontaminated surfaces (think North American P-51), it also has some disadvantages. Its primary benefit in 150-knot spam-can bugsmashers is not in aerodynamics, but in packaging.

The NACA 6-series (so-called "laminar flow" wing) has its maximum thickness -- and therefore its main spar -- further aft than conventional airfoils. That allows the designer of a low-wing airplane to stow the main spar carry-through out of the way under the second-row seat, as in the Mooney M20, Beech 23/24, Rockwell Commanders and Piper PA-24, PA-28 and PA-32 lines. By contrast, a Beech Bonanza has a NACA 23012 wing, and its spar carry-through goes under the front seats, where it interferes somewhat with forward-facing second-row passengers' legroom.

The only high-wing Cessnas that have NACA 6-series airfoils are the 1968-69 C-177 Cardinal and 1967-86 C-210 Centurion. Why? They are also the only strutless high-wing Cessnas. A spar carry-through must pass through the cabin ceiling, and the designers wanted the carry-through to go behind the heads of the front-seat occupants. Had they just used the original NACA 2412 wing in a strutless configuration, the spar would be right at the pilot's head.

One characteristic of NACA 6-series airfoils is that drag increases rapidly at higher angles of attack. This is noticeable if the pilot attempts to rotate too early on takeoff; drag rises sharply and, if the airplane is at all underpowered, the takeoff becomes sluggish, or in extreme cases, impossible. It's not so much a problem if there is a surplus of power (e.g., P-51; to a lesser extent C-210) where the airplane can just power through the high-drag regime to a lower AOA, but in a lower-powered airplane (e.g., the original American AA-1 Yankee and 150 hp Cardinal) it's a problem. The sharp leading edge can also lead to more abrupt stalls.

As a result, the airfoils of several "laminar-flow" light airplanes were modified with more rounded leading edges, resulting in less drag at higher angles of attack, gentler stall characteristics, and little, if any, loss of cruising speed. Examples include the Cessna 177B Cardinal and 177RG Cardinal RG; Grumman-American AA-1A (and all Grumman-American two- and four-seaters thereafter); and the outer panels of the taper-winged Piper PA-28 and PA-32 series. Even Mooney fussed with the outboard leading edges in the "twisted-wing" M20F and M20G from 1966 to mid-1968.

Beech tried and rejected the "laminar" wing for the Bonanza -- twice. The first Bonanza prototype (1945) had a "laminar" wing, but after testing they went with the NACA 23 series for production. They tried again in 1961 with the experimental "Model O35", with a "laminar" wing and trailing-beam main gear. Cessna flew an experimental strutless 182 with "laminar" wing, as well as a proposed Cardinal-like 182 replacement, the Model 187. All of these were abandoned because they did not offer significant advantage over the originals.

At the end of WW2 North American Aviation built a four-seat lightplane (Navion) with obvious P-51-inspired styling cues ... but instead of a "laminar" wing it had a high-lift wing with concave lower camber. There is even some debate about how much the "laminar" airfoil contributed to the P-51's performance, or whether credit should go to "the very good manufacturing standards at NAA" (http://www.wp1113056.server-he.de/ABL/20-forschung/laminarfluegel/laminarfluegel_en.htm).

Is the so-called "laminar flow" wing common on "modern" lightplanes? Cirrus uses the new, non-symmetrical Roncz airfoil, as does the RV-9. All other two-seat RVs use the NACA 23012. Neither Cessna nor Beech currently builds anything propeller-driven with a NACA 6-series airfoil. Piper PA-46 has the NACA 23015.

Modern high-performance sailplanes do have laminar flow wings. Their smooth, precise composite wing construction allows them to actually maintain maximum laminar flow and reduced drag. In typical metal airplanes, on the other hand, slight surface imperfections, skin seams, oilcanning (from wide rib spacing and thin skins), rivets, bugs, fuel caps, hinges, landing lights, misrigging, etc., all tend to negate any aerodynamic advantage.
 
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and Miatas. BTW, we're on our third Miata. The original fit my largess frame

Had a '99 Miata for 11 years. Fun car, maintenance was really just wear and tear type stuff, great in traffic and twisty roads of course. Had it when I lived in the N Ga mountains, fun car up there. Then later got a '08 Honda S2000. World of difference w/ 100 more horsies. Wish I had that up in the N Ga mountains.
 
14 pages of opinions, and the energizer bunny keeps going...
 
The Ovation video is a marketing masterpiece. The plane is probably as nice as the video implies. Also a plane like that has almost certainly escaped being tied down outside to rot into the ground. Doesnt appear that they still have it for sale though.
 
Thanks for the advice thus far. The Cirrus is going to be sold on Wednesday of next week will have cash in hand and haven't decided on what to buy yet. I thought about Buying a Mooney but the useful load probably won't work for me.
 
Thanks for the advice thus far. The Cirrus is going to be sold on Wednesday of next week will have cash in hand and haven't decided on what to buy yet. I thought about Buying a Mooney but the useful load probably won't work for me.

If it'll work for you otherwise, consider the ability to trade fuel for payload.

If I have full fuel, I can take me, my wife, and bags for the weekend over 1,000nm nonstop. That puts me over water anywhere from ENE to SW, well into the Rockies westerly, or to the outer reaches of Canada in northerly directions. Translation: I don't really ever need to go that far.

OTOH, if I "only" take 4 hours of fuel (3 hour comfortable legs with pax plus an hour reserve), I can take four FAA-standard people plus bags and still be going over 500nm per leg. I've gone from my home base near Milwaukee to Houston, TX with my wife and in-laws with a single stop.

We generally aren't taught to think this way as pilots - We always have full tanks in our trainers, and many airplanes only carry 4 or so hours of fuel so trading fuel for payload quickly makes your legs too short. In the Ovation, I have about 7.5 hours to dry tanks, so there is LOTS of room to safely trade fuel for payload, and if I don't need the payload, it saves me lots of money on fuel because I can hold out for the cheap stuff. (I average well under $4/gal.)
 
Thanks for the advice thus far. The Cirrus is going to be sold on Wednesday of next week will have cash in hand and haven't decided on what to buy yet. I thought about Buying a Mooney but the useful load probably won't work for me.

The screaming eagles have the best useful load of all the models, 1120+ lbs, there was one for sale 1142 lbs, $165K that just sold a week or so ago on Mooneyspace.
 
I have a late model M20J with about 950 lbs useful as it has the 2900lb max gross. The thing is, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
In cool weather or at low altitudes, it's all great. But going from Oregon to Colorado a couple weeks ago at 2850+ I really wished I had left at least 100lbs of something on the ground... I was planning to leave some fuel on the ground coming back from Denver, but then decided against that due to building convective activity and a long trip to my planned fuel stop. The climb rate out of Denver was sad, but I made it to my fuel stop with plenty to spare and could have diverted even more than I had to with no issues.
 
The NACA 6-series (so-called "laminar flow" wing) has its maximum thickness -- and therefore its main spar -- further aft than conventional airfoils. That allows the designer of a low-wing airplane to stow the main spar carry-through out of the way under the second-row seat, as in the Mooney M20, Beech 23/24, Rockwell Commanders and Piper PA-24, PA-28 and PA-32 lines. By contrast, a Beech Bonanza has a NACA 23012 wing, and its spar carry-through goes under the front seats, where it interferes somewhat with forward-facing second-row passengers' legroom.

The only high-wing Cessnas that have NACA 6-series airfoils are the 1968-69 C-177 Cardinal and 1967-86 C-210 Centurion. Why? They are also the only strutless high-wing Cessnas. A spar carry-through must pass through the cabin ceiling, and the designers wanted the carry-through to go behind the heads of the front-seat occupants. Had they just used the original NACA 2412 wing in a strutless configuration, the spar would be right at the pilot's head.
Found some cutaway sketches that illustrate this.

If the Mooney had a different wing with the spar further forward, the back seat would have to be further forward as well. You don't want that in a Mooney:

M20C cutaway_600.jpg

Likewise the strutless Cessna 210:

Screen Shot 2017-09-16 at 10.10.44 AM.png
 
Thanks for the advice thus far. The Cirrus is going to be sold on Wednesday of next week will have cash in hand and haven't decided on what to buy yet. I thought about Buying a Mooney but the useful load probably won't work for me.

There is a screaming eagle just went for sale on Mooneyspace...1117lbs of useful load.
 
There is a screaming eagle just went for sale on Mooneyspace...1117lbs of useful load.

Thank you I will look into it. I also had to get some composite work done on the Cirrus. It's nothing I did with the airplane but rather how I found it when it was parked....long story. I recently got into a Mooney and a Bonanza and both are great airframes.
 
Thank you I will look into it. I also had to get some composite work done on the Cirrus. It's nothing I did with the airplane but rather how I found it when it was parked....long story. I recently got into a Mooney and a Bonanza and both are great airframes.

How long did that ground you for?
 
I flew a Bo yesterday to compare with my mooney. Im a low hour PPL with experience in only a few planes (about 150 hours in mooney), but here's my take

Bo
It has more than 100 more HP
Climbs MUCH better than my mooney
Smoother ride
I only landed it twice, with assistance from owner at touchdown (because I'd lose the runway not being able to see over panel), but it seems like it's easier to land than the mooney
You aren't sitting on the floor
Panel is a lot bigger
Room for a yoke mount iPad (I'm cramped with an iPhone in my mooney)
A little easier to get in and out
A lot more baggage room
A lot more room for back seat passengers
10 or 15 knots faster than my mooney
Smoother taxi
Higher prop clearance
Better visibility during cruise (bigger windows)

Mooney
Costs half as much
Bo has only about 100 pounds more useful load (this is a plus for the mooney since it's fuel burn is so much lower, you need that 100 pounds for fuel in the Bo)
Burns much less fuel
Cheaper overhaul cost
Simpler, less can go wrong
Visibility over the nose for short pilot much better
 
I like Mooneys. Although whenever I saw one with my cfi and commented, he always replied 'they are junk'.
 
Can you put a kayak (or two) in a Mooney?
The non-inflatable kind.
Is there any way to travel with a couple 10ft. kayaks in any of the smaller GA planes?

I mean other than this:

upload_2017-9-18_9-1-13.jpeg
 
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Can you put a kayak (or two) in a Mooney?
The non-inflatable kind.
Is there any way to travel with a couple kayaks in any of the smaller GA planes?

I mean other than this:

View attachment 56443

Ahhh, no. That's how you do it short of having a Pilatus.

I've been hauling around an inflatable 2 seat kayak, mainly for tidal flat access in the Bahamas. It works...


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Rent a kayak at your location, just like a car.
 
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