Mooney or Cardinal?

Rock Berube

Rock Berube

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Im pondering over a Mooney M20F or a Cardinal retractable, most of my flying is cross country including Canada to Southern Mexico and down to Panama. No not a drug runner. Recently sold my Cardinal 177B
 
Rock Berube said:
Im pondering over a Mooney M20F or a Cardinal retractable, most of my flying is cross country including Canada to Southern Mexico and down to Panama. No not a drug runner. Recently sold my Cardinal 177B
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Cardinal for getting in and out, HANDS DOWN. Mooney for speed and efficiency.

Which is more important to you?
 
Just find a MX willing to work on the very cramped Mooney. Not slamming Mooneys, just tougher to find a Mooney MX over a Cardinal.
 
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Salty said:
Cardinal for getting in and out, HANDS DOWN. Mooney for speed and efficiency.

Which is more important to you?
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Flying long legs burning as little as possible, Also comfort is a must.
 
Newer Mooney’s with the 550 are speedy and fuel sippers.... my hangar mate has one and I lust after his economy. He’s already on the beach and I’m still 30 min till destination.
 
Salty said:
Hard to beat the mooney for efficiency. My C model is getting 145 knots TAS with 11 gph fuel burn.
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I love Mooney's and would probably choose it in this scenario. Have to say though, I had a 177RG and put about 400 hours on it. I flight planned 140 knots at 11 gal/hr, so a C model isn't exactly kicking ass in this example.
I was disheartened when I asked a mechanic about his preference between the two. He said "Neither. If you want easy maintenance get an Arrow".
 
As a Cardinal RG operator I’d probably go with a Mooney for a personal machine, but they are indispensable for what we do and are good airplanes.
 
I owned a 1967 M20E for 9 years and would flight plan 155 KTAS on 9 gph running LOP between 8-9K. Never had an issue finding maintenance in any of the places I called home across the country. I miss that plane at times, usually when I pull up to the gas pump...:rolleyes:;)

Cheers,
Brian
 
Rock Berube said:
Im pondering over a Mooney M20F or a Cardinal retractable, most of my flying is cross country including Canada to Southern Mexico and down to Panama. No not a drug runner. Recently sold my Cardinal 177B
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Not enough information. Are you flying solo? Two of you only? Eight kids? 200 lbs of bags? Want comfort over speed, or the other way around?
 
aftCG said:
I love Mooney's and would probably choose it in this scenario. Have to say though, I had a 177RG and put about 400 hours on it. I flight planned 140 knots at 11 gal/hr, so a C model isn't exactly kicking ass in this example.
I was disheartened when I asked a mechanic about his preference between the two. He said "Neither. If you want easy maintenance get an Arrow".
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The C has a carburetor 180HP, F would be 200 fuel injection.

Your mechanic clearly didn’t work like to work on Mooneys. A former IA who pulled a engine off a Mooney bitched about how they terrible it was to work on. Turn out he was doing it wrong.
Cessna are easy to find mechanics with experience, Mooney not so much.



Tom
 
Earlier this month a friend with a '66 M20E and I both flew our planes roughly 11 hours round trip to Reno for the races. He had one passenger, I had three. After years renting 182s and flying a friend's Tiger (and riding with me to Reno) he decided to buy this very nice Mooney last fall. This was his longest cross country in it so far. His Mooney is only slightly slower than my Aztec, on less than half the gas. But after we landed at KRNO and rendezvoused at Atlantic the first comment he made was "There's just no room to move around in the Mooney".
 
Rock Berube said:
Im pondering over a Mooney M20F or a Cardinal retractable, most of my flying is cross country including Canada to Southern Mexico and down to Panama. No not a drug runner. Recently sold my Cardinal 177B
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A guy on Mooneyspace lives down in Central America IIRC, he has posted videos, so you decide to go with a Mooney, I would sign up on Mooneyspace.com before you buy. Wealth of knowledgeable people can help before and after you buy.


Tom
 
Are parts a problem for the 177RG since they have been out of production for so long?
 
I had a corrosion on an upper stringer in M20E and somewhat to my surprise, Mooney sold me stringers.

In the same instance, my expert repairman found a corrosion on the a spar cap, while the wing was torn apart for stringer replacement. It was less than 10% depth, so we cleaned it out. But the shop owner mentioned that a customer before me had a deeper corrosion, and Mooney flatly said that there was no approved repair. The only choice was to buy a whole wing. That customer opted for a doubler. The shop made the engineering analysis and a DAR in our FSDO signed it off for a low fee of $900.

So as far as parts go, there's good and bad.
 
zaitcev said:
In the same instance, my expert repairman found a corrosion on the a spar cap, while the wing was torn apart for stringer replacement. It was less than 10% depth, so we cleaned it out. But the shop owner mentioned that a customer before me had a deeper corrosion, and Mooney flatly said that there was no approved repair. The only choice was to buy a whole wing. That customer opted for a doubler. The shop made the engineering analysis and a DAR in our FSDO signed it off for a low fee of $900.
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Production methods have changed and producing a spar cap for older models is difficult. But some have been sold recently. If your issue occurred during hibernation 2009-2014, there were no caps to be had.
 
i go for comfort these days, cardinal would be my choice. on the maintenance front its a wash, theyre both old spam cans with dwindling support and ridiculous pricing gotchas. if your mission is solo, just go EAB, that would be my choice. Good luck.
 
A Mooney F is 150 kts on 10.5 with no speed mods. Lots of them have at least the J windshield (2-3 Knots). Some have the cowl (5-7 Knots) and others have the belly (a few more). That beats a 177 any day, both ways. Better in turbulence. Only get the 177 if you regularly need more than a 2-3 person airplane, or have a hard time getting in and out of a side door. Once in a Mooney, they are very comfortable to sit in for a long time.
 
N1120A said:
Only get the 177 if you regularly need more than a 2-3 person airplane, or have a hard time getting in and out of a side door.
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I could never understand why a manufacture would install one door on an aircraft. To the OP buy what fits you mission.
 
jonvcaples said:
Are parts a problem for the 177RG since they have been out of production for so long?
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Some of the parts can be. We just had an engine put on one of ours and a piece busted and it took almost a month for us to find a replacement and that was with some good effort on my shop’s part.
 
I'm pretty sure Textron will make you parts for a 177, and charge you for them as well, but you're probably going to get them quicker on the aftermarket and salvage market, not to mention cheaper.
 
aftCG said:
I love Mooney's and would probably choose it in this scenario. Have to say though, I had a 177RG and put about 400 hours on it. I flight planned 140 knots at 11 gal/hr, so a C model isn't exactly kicking ass in this example.
I was disheartened when I asked a mechanic about his preference between the two. He said "Neither. If you want easy maintenance get an Arrow".
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If a properly running C is burning 11, it nds a JPI for reliable temps so that you can safely lean it 9.5 or 10. I burned 9.5 in my C and wasn’t running LOP.
 
AKBill said:
I could never understand why a manufacture would install one door on an aircraft. To the OP buy what fits you mission.
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Cost and weight.

Remember, these designs (Mooneys, Cherokees, Beechcraft, Bellancas, etc) date back decades to a time when these planes were being mass produced and mass marketed. In the late '60s and through most of the 1970s Piper produced ~7000 Cherokees a year at Vero Beach. Price competition between manufacturers was much more aggressive back then.

On a low wing it's not just the extra cost, complexity and weight of the second door, but the wing walk has to be strengthened for a left side door, which adds weight and cost, takes away from useful load, on it goes...

There were a few low wing exceptions, like the Rockwell Commander, which continues to be criticized for being heavy and slow. Cirrus went with two doors, but note they ended up increasing the hp of the entry level SR-20 because the airframe is a bit heavy (things like the CAPS parachute system contribute to that, it's not just an extra door).


N1120A said:
Engineering at the time. Mooney now puts 2 doors on.
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True. But I doubt Mooney has built more than three dozen airplanes total with the left side door since it was introduced in early 2016, so not really an option for the OP, unless he wants to shell out for a new one.
 
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I was a shared owner of a 177RG for over 5 years. The gear was never where the maintenance monies went. And since I was the treasurer, I would know.
 
images
upload_2019-9-29_8-59-24.jpeg If those the only choices, I'm out
 
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