My best friend had an E model Mooney for years, and we flew that wonderful airplane into airports all over North America, including a lot of grass strips. Limiting factor being prop clearance and rocks.

The key to that airplane was airspeed control. It was critical, and flown slow as it should be, it would go in anywhere you could get out of. We had it in several of the Idaho strips over the years, including JC and Big Creek, and there was never an issue of that airplane not being suitable.

Gump

Desert185 wrote:[quote="iceman"

Slight correction...Big Creek, U60 is 3500x110 (with a big uphill for slow down), entirely doable, even @ 5740' MSL...and with a Mooney.

[/quote]Yeah I knew it was way more but I used 2000 ft cause I had too many beers when I wrote that and didn't want to get up and check the runway length at BC> 2000 ft is way more than most of the strips up there anyway. Does anyone know from what airport in San Diego these folks were from?

Bonanza Man wrote:

a64pilot wrote:A Mooney slips well with flaps as far as I remember. The speed brakes are way cool, instant 500 FPM descent and no trim change. Mooney flaps are not nearly as effective as say the Fowlers on a Cessna and VFE if I remember right is 112 kts and VLE 132, so you get gear first which is backwards so to speak.

Do you mean that most high performance retracts are able to put out flaps above their gear speed? In my Bo max flap speed is 130 MPH and all the gear speeds are 162 MPH. Also does that imply you use flaps before you put the gear down? In a Bo there's never a reason to use flaps before gear and in fact Bo instructors teach it that way, helps to avoid gear up landings.

BM, Most of my Mooney time was in a 121 school.(Central Texas College) They were training pilots for the airlines primarily, I was a little unusual as I was getting my college degree so I could stay in the Army.
Anyway they wouldn't let you use the speed brakes or let you drop gear before the flaps. I assume that most bigger aircraft get approach flaps first then gear. Because of their training methodology you had to get the little Mooney slowed to below 112 kts outside of the outer marker or you weren't going to land. Seemed stupid at the time, but it did teach you to think well ahead of the airplane. Their reasoning was that they weren't training Mooney pilots, they were training Commercial pilots. Some of the other things they taught that did make sense was if you were holding, then you were doing it at max endurance airspeed. I took my Commercial ride before the Instrument ride and took the instrument ride in a complex airplane, both stupid things to do, I found out the hard way. My first license was the Commercial, I never had my private, so my training was a little unusual.

There is a tendency on fields that have a big uphill on them to land long, especially if all your time is on paved flat strips.

When the end of the field is lower than the midfield the fringe vision one normally depends upon to send height signals gets a bit screwed up and it takes some work on these types of runways to override the impulse to land at midfield elevation.

Couple that with the fact that the ground speed at Big Creek is way higher than at lower elevations especially when density altitude is factored in.

In other words, what would have been an acceptable landing at a flat strip at 1000 ft. elevation turns into a high hot approach. Everything looks pretty normal until the tree tops start flying by at a higher rate of speed than usual...too late.

Same visual cues happen when landing on Mesa type airports where the runway is elevated from the surrounding terrain. The visual cues are yelling " you are too high " while in all reality you may be too low. In the back country these lower terrain quite often are rivers where there is a down draft to further create a too low situation.

I have been guilty of all the above at one time or another.

TD