Designed for extreme operating efficiency, the diminutive Mite has only one seat mounted within a snug cockpit with a bubble canopy. Everything about the Mite is small, including the tiny retractable landing gear and the 65-horsepower Lycoming engine. But as the saying goes, small hinges swing big doors, and if you’re lucky enough to fit inside, you can expect to enjoy a 125 mph cruising speed. That works out to a stunning 2 mph per horsepower. Throttle back to 2450 rpm, and it returns a similarly stunning fuel burn of around 3.5 gallons per hour.

The long, thin wing of the 520-pound (empty) Mite performs equally well at low speeds. Original Mooney marketing material lists a stall speed of only 43 miles per hour, a takeoff distance of 290 feet, and a landing distance of 275 feet. Empty weight is listed as approximately 520 pounds, with a gross weight of 850 pounds. With a 15-gallon fuel capacity, useful load is approximately 240 pounds.

Any aircraft with a wooden airframe demands care and attention, and the Mite is no exception. Fortunately, this example was thoroughly rebuilt in 1997 and is in annual. Interior and paint are reportedly very good, and while the panel is relatively simple, it’s also tidy with a logical layout.

Few aircraft types offer the combination of economy, speed, and exclusivity as the Mooney Mite. And with only 94 actively registered on the FAA registry, few aircraft types will turn as many heads at fly-ins as the Mite.

• Learn more about the Mooney Mite here.

You can arrange financing of the aircraft through FLYING Finance. For more information, email info@flyingfinance.com. Calculate your monthly payment using their airplane finance calculator.

Editor’s note: To view a great air-to-air photo of the plane submitted by a previous owner, Cliff Tatum, visit this site and scroll to June 2017.

The post Bargain Buys on AircraftForSale: 1951 Mooney M-18 Mite appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Porsche, riding high on the sales success of its classic 911 and its domination of sports car racing, including the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans, was looking to make a return to the aviation business. Mooney, which had much success marketing its Roy LoPresti-inspired 200-plus mph Mooney 201 and 231 models, was looking to create another marketing success. Just maybe the combination of these two-speed kings might produce the high-end product line anchor that Mooney needed and create the same kind of mystique that driving a Porsche 911 bestowed upon its owner.

Well, it was worth a try.

In the summer of 1981, Porsche decided to reenter the aviation market. Nearly 20 years earlier, it had adapted its classic boxer 4-cylinder engines, which began life in the back of countless Volkswagen Beetles, for small airplane builders and manufacturers. These Porsche 678 series engines measured just under 100 cubic inches and produced around 70 hp. Developed in the 1930s, about the same time as the initial air-cooled Lycoming and Continental 4-cylinder opposed engines, the little Porsche engine made the transition seamlessly into the engine compartment of many small homebuilt and limited production aircraft.

• READ MORE: This Incredible Plane: Bede BD-1

This time, Porsche was ready to get back into the general aviation market in a big way. The basis for its new GA powerplant was the race-tested, 6-cylinder, air-cooled boxer engine that powered the iconic Porsche 911. The Porsche-Flugmotoren (Porsche Flight Engine) PFM 3200 featured an air-cooled, 6-cylinder, opposed 3.2 liter (195 cubic inch) design. However, any similarity to other opposed aircraft engines of the time ended there.

The PFM 3200 featured a single-lever engine and propeller control, overhead cams, dual electronic ignition, automatic mixture control, racing-inspired dry sump lubrication, and a large belt-driven cooling fan at the rear to pull air through the cylinders. In order to squeeze nearly 217 hp out of this naturally aspirated engine, it operated at more than 5,000 rpm and required a reduction gearbox to bring the Hartzell composite propeller speeds down to a modest 2,300 rpm. The higher rpm provided greater smoothness, and based on Porsche racing experience, did not impact reliability.

This was a groundbreaking approach as the high-revving Rotax and diesel engines we now take for granted were still nearly 20 years over the horizon. And one more thing: The PFM 3200 featured tuned exhaust and mufflers that gave it a satisfying note, much like the expensive Porsche 911.

The PFM 3200 appeared experimentally in several light aircraft, but it fell to Mooney to mate it to its classic M20 line and place it in production. The Porsche engine demanded a newfound level of comfort and elegance that Mooney hoped would attract well-heeled auto enthusiasts to make the leap from fast cars to this sophisticated airplane. The result of its design efforts was the Mooney M20L PFM. The “L” stood for long fuselage, and this was in fact the first long fuselage Mooney. The stretch added nearly a foot to the rear seat and baggage compartment area, longer rear side windows, and a lengthened nose section to accommodate the Porsche’s six cylinders, geared propeller, and rear-mounted, belt-driven cooling fan. The final outcome was an especially elegant rendering of the original M20 design. The lengthened nose section features a single cowling opening located below the propeller hub and conspicuous Porsche lettering and the iconic logo on each side of the cowling.

Stepping down into the cockpit from the wing gave an intimate look at the flight deck. The panel featured turbine-style engine gauges mounted in vertical rows to the right of the pilot’s flight instruments. A single power lever rested on the center quadrant and was complemented by sculpted control yokes with the Mooney logo.

• READ MORE: This Incredible Plane: Anderson-Greenwood AG-14

In case your passengers were not impressed yet, a Porsche emblem sat high on the center of the panel. Interior accommodations were equally luxurious with leather and high-end fabrics in all the right places. The entire package was stylish, had significant ramp appeal, just the right exhaust note, and exuded luxury, much like the high-end Cirrus and Beechcraft singles of today.

As you might expect, the advertising copy was equally glamorous, based on the slogan, “Mooney meets Porsche for the dawn of a new mystique.” Advertising images were sure to place a bright red or elegant silver Porsche 911, parked in the background, as these new upwardly mobile owners climbed into their even faster Mooney Porsche. So, with all of this product development, two very talented engineering companies, and the advertising machine working at full speed, what happened?

The good news is that the Mooney M20L PFM, performed as advertised. It was a smooth, reliable, well-heeled ride. It was arguably the most sophisticated GA aircraft of its day. On the other hand, the Porsche PFM 3200 was heavier and produced less power than the Continental and Lycoming engines it replaced, and the cooling drag from the fan-cooled engine was higher than expected. Thus, the performance of the Mooney Porsche was only average for the Mooney line with a 640 fpm rate of climb and a 166 knot advertised cruise speed. It certainly did not help that the GA market was in a significant decline by the end of the 1980s. And one more thing: Anyone could walk into a Porsche dealer and drive home in a shiny, new 911 that very afternoon. On the other hand, the Mooney Porsche purchase required time, training, and expense that might not have matched the mystique.

The Mooney Porsche debuted in the 1988 model year. Sadly, only 41 were produced by the time production ended in 1989. The PFM 3200 engine did not fare much better. Porsche produced around 80 of these sophisticated powerplants at a total development and production cost of nearly $1 million per engine. Little wonder that by 1991, Porsche had closed its aviation business again and returned to the more lucrative automotive market, where it found higher volume and continued success.

To its credit, Porsche continued to support the engine in a limited fashion until 2005, when it ceased all support. However, the FAA did not ground the airplane, noting that as long as spare parts were available, the engine could still be made airworthy.

Today several Mooney Porsches have been converted to more traditional firewall-forward powerplants by the Punta Gorda Modworks, and unfortunately, several more were destroyed awaiting conversion during Hurricane Charley in 2004. At least 10 loyal owners, who manage to find new or old stock parts, still proudly fly their airplanes. Oh, and their images online usually include a beautiful Porsche 911 lurking in the background.

The general aviation business is not an easy one to crack, but you have to give Mooney and Porsche credit for designing such an elegant, sophisticated, and incredible plane.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

The post This Incredible Plane: Mooney Porsche M20L PFM appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

It’s a story I’ve heard told in any number of FBOs with minor variations, recollections of when a favor went terribly wrong. “I was laughing and crying and worried I would hit the trees because my buddy’s ashes were all in my eyes. The ashes washed out of my clothes, but a little bit of Don goes along for the ride whenever I fly now. I’ll never get all the ashes out of the nooks and crannies of my Cherokee!”

A family friend asked if I could help him find a pilot to spread a friend’s ashes over a farm. “If you don’t mind it being a weekday, I can help you out,” I offered.

Saying no when a friend asks for a favor is difficult for me, and I volunteered for the mission before even contemplating the machine I had available. My Mooney is a fine traveling machine. It’s relatively comfortable, quick enough, and efficient. I’ve crossed significant swaths of the country in it, enjoying the experience. It really isn’t great at flying low and slow; the wing on the bottom kind of gets in the way of seeing what’s below, and the only window that can be opened in flight is the pilot’s ice window, which is only a little bigger than a deck of cards.

In other words, it’s a fine machine for anything except trying to spread a person’s ashes across a farm.

• READ MORE: Words Aloft: Test Pilot, Airline Style

A Piper J-3 Cub would be perfect, and I have enough pieces to build most of a Cub, but the fella’s younger relatives would likely need their ashes spread before I get around to that. A Cessna with an opening window would do, but try getting a Mooney owner into a 172. You’ll have better luck getting a McLaren owner to drive your Toyota Camry to town.

I needed to find someone with a suitable airplane for the mission, so I did the right thing and figured out how to jettison a person’s mortal remains out the ice window of a 165 mph airplane without wearing all of the ashes in the process. Some of the local EAA guys had spread ashes from the gear leg of a 172 using a PVC pipe rig with a pull-string trigger to release the contents. I could have done that, but how would I retract the landing gear then? Ain’t no Mooney driver gonna buzz around with the gear down if they can help it. We pay a lot of extra insurance for the privilege of retracting our gear. Another idea floated was hanging a hose out the window, positioning it into a lower-pressure area and using a $75.00 shop vacuum to pull the ashes out of the window.

I flew a test run, with a friend—using a setup I’d heard would work—and in my mind it was the perfect solution for the job. Take a brown paper lunch bag, fill it with ashes, and tie a string to it. Throw it out the window, while holding onto the string, and the bag will shred, spreading the powdery contents in a puff to scatter across the land below.

It was simple, foolproof, and cheap: a perfect solution.

But why leave perfection alone? I did what I always do and overengineered the thing. I put an index card into the bottom of the bag to reinforce it and punched two holes through the bag bottom and its reinforcement. I looped some paracord through the holes, tied it in a bowline, and then tied another loop into the other end of the string.

On a test flight with a friend, using stale Cream of Wheat instant cereal as the test medium, I looped the end of the string around my wrist and slowed to about 80. I had wrapped the bag around on itself and ran two loops of paracord around that. Holding the assemblage in my left hand and flying with my right, I stuck the bag out into the breeze and released it. The brown parcel rolled out of my hand and shot aft in the breeze, a good 2 feet before it hit the end of the line. Tethered in the breeze by its reinforced base, the bag stayed intact for about a millisecond as it unfurled and tore away from the string in a puff of milled grain. I cheered and we flew back to home base, where I realized there was a fine dust where I’d sat the bag on the floor ahead of my seat. The plan wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a disaster.

There was no time left to refine the design. I had to fly a work trip, and our plan was to spread the ashes the morning after my return.

Monday dawned a little cloudy and foggy, but the clouds burned off quickly, and I hopped over to the nearest airport to meet the son and daughter of the fella we’d be spreading across the farm. They wanted to go along for the flight, so I’d opted for the longer, paved runway for our mission. They walked into the FBO carrying a cardboard tube the size of a small artillery shell—its contents would certainly not fit into the single brown bag rig I’d built to go out the Mooney’s window. Time was on my side, as I’d told them to arrive early. After having a discussion about what to expect and where on their farm they wanted the ashes dropped, I came up with a plan.

“Why don’t y’all stay in here with the air conditioning while I load your dad up?” I followed with my truest words of the day: “The next few moments might not be the most dignified part of the day, and there’s no reason y’all need to be part of that.” It was a hot day, and AC was a hard amenity to pass up, so they agreed.

On the ramp, I fished another brown paper bag out of the baggage bin and cut another length of cord with my penknife. Hearing voices behind me, I glanced over my shoulder to find a group of 20 or so kids and their chaperones, having come from a summer camp for a tour of the airport. The FBO manager was explaining that I was preflighting my airplane, and someone asked what exactly I was doing. The manager and I locked eyes for a moment, and he mumbled something to the crowd and they shuffled off into the FBO hangar as I spilled a bit of our guest on the ramp while filling the second bag. Some kids probably thought they’d witnessed a pilot smuggling cocaine. Oh, to be that glamorous. If only they knew.

• READ MORE: Jargon Fails: Why Pilots Should Simplify Messages

With two bags filled as much as would fit out the ice window, there was still a little bit of remains left. It was time to swallow some pride and ask for a little help. Back into the FBO I marched, carrying the partly filled cardboard tube. “Friends, it’s getting a little windy out there. I don’t have a lot of practice dropping ashes from an airplane and, frankly, most of them may blow clear of the farm before they settle. Do y’all want to carry this bit back with you to ensure at least some of him really does settle where you’re intending?”

His son looked me in the eye with a smile, and his answer saved the shreds of my dignity I was about to sacrifice: “It was [either] spread his ashes from an airplane or plant them with a tree, and we had a tough time trying to make the decision. We’ll plant this part with the tree, and both ideas will work out.”

The flight itself went well. We launched early enough for a sightseeing lap over my passengers’ homes, and we made a high circle over the farm to confirm my memory from the test hop the week prior. I lined up on the upwind boundary of the property and let the first salvo go with the same sound effects a 7-year-old might use if pretending to drop bombs from a toy plane. With a jolt, I realized I was speaking into the microphone and that his kids could hear.

I very politely apologized for my less-than-sensitive sound effects. “Don’t worry. Dad would have loved every moment of this, your noises included,” the son said. “He had a great sense of humor.”

“Well, that’s good that we’re pretty compatible,” I said. “Seems like a bit of him may tag along for a few more flights with me!”

They took it in a figurative sense, and I just left things as they settled, including the small pile of powder on the carpet next to my left foot.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

The post Words Aloft: Ashes Away appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

• READ MORE: The Marvelous Mooney M20

While Mooneys have the reputation of being a bit more snug on the inside than other types such as the Beechcraft Bonanza and Ryan Navion, tall pilots report ample head and legroom. Additionally, the F model incorporates a longer cabin than earlier Mooneys, opening up additional space behind the front seats for passengers in the back. This example has been updated with plush, reupholstered seating.

Up front, the panel has been updated accordingly. Unlike earlier Mooneys with disorganized, seemingly random panel layouts, this example incorporates a neat, traditional six-pack layout to ease your instrument scan. A UAvionix AV-30 digital primary flight display provides at-a-glance flight information, while a Garmin radio stack and Electronics International engine monitor displays provide a thoroughly modernized flying experience, whether flying VFR or IFR.

With a mid-time engine, sharp paint scheme, and even an autopilot, this Mooney is well-equipped to provide its next caretaker with years of fast, efficient cross-country flying. Pilots interested in big-engine speed with small-engine fuel burn should consider this 1966 Mooney M20F, which is available for $79,500 on AircraftForSale.

You can arrange financing of the aircraft through FLYING Finance. For more information, email info@flyingfinance.com.

The post Bargain Buys on AircraftForSale: 1966 Mooney M20F Executive 21 appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

1962 Mooney M20C Ranger

The classic Mooney M20 series was still in its early days when this Ranger rolled off the line in Kerrville, Texas. Many pilots of the era appreciated its combination of speed and efficiency, and these initial models weren’t stuffed with a ton of extras, leaving an owner today with good options for restoration. 

In the case of this Mooney M20C, you have 980 pounds useful load to work with. With 3,740 hours on the airframe, it’s not particularly high time, though the Lycoming O-360-A1D engine is past mid-time, you probably still have a couple years of flying before you might need to address it, though it was hung in 1982. The panel is vintage Narco, but this Ranger has been updated to ADS-B Out with a uAvionix tailBeacon.

READ MORE: The Marvelous Mooney M20

It’s priced to move at $52,000, from its current home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

Interested in more deals like this? Check out AircraftForSale.com and our new PlanePrice feature that gives you a window into the opportunities that are out there.

The post Bargain Buys on AircraftForSale: 1962 Mooney M20C Ranger appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Equipped with a sliding canopy over two seats and control sticks, the M20T was unmistakably geared for military service. Under the wings, four hardpoints gave the Predator teeth in the form of missiles, light rockets, or gun pods.
Much like the 1951 effort, the Predator showed well—but not well enough. The official reason for its rejection was that the M20T did not recover well from spins with a full load of fuel. Mooney wings are lauded for their strength and stability. The former was an asset, the latter a liability in this design. Roll rates were lackluster, failing to meet design criteria despite numerous revisions to the ailerons. Spin recovery has never been great with the Mooney design, and that was really the nail in the coffin. A one-turn spin was easily recoverable with quick recovery inputs. A two-turn spin took another four turns to recover; a four-turn spin wasn’t recoverable. Mooney withdrew from the competition before it ended.
The winner was the Slingsby T-3 Firefly, which raised some eyebrows: “Made in America” was a stipulation of the contract, but Slingsby built most of the airplane in the U.K. and assembled it in the U.S. After a brief few years in service, the U.S. Air Force grounded the T-3 fleet in 1997 after a pair of spin-related accidents and an engine failure. They were destroyed in 2006.
Meanwhile, the M20T prototype had gathered dust at the Kerrville, Texas, factory. Jacques Esculier, the company’s president, ordered the prototype destroyed. The engine went back to Continental (it had been loaned for the venture), but the employees in Mooney’s R&D complex were more than a little attached to the machine they’d poured so much work into. In a clandestine effort, they disassembled the airframe and pigeonholed it in various spaces across the facility. And there it stayed hidden until it found a champion.
Former Mooney chief operating officer Tom Bowen recalled his first encounter with the design. “In 1995, the research and development team staff gained enough confidence in me, and they said, ‘We have something to show you—this project we’d really like to work on.’” The workers took him through the
hangars where the pieces of the M20T were scattered. “I knew a little about the program, but it hadn’t been my focus.”
Bowen received permission from the company’s president for the workers to resurrect the project, but Mooney was being prepped for sale so they had to do so without any meaningful budget. “So we begged, borrowed, and might have stolen a few pieces from the production line,” Bowen said of beginning to reassemble the airplane. Working evenings and weekends, the airplane began to come back together, this time with a Lycoming AEIO-540 under the cowl. The bird had never been underpowered, but this engine promised even more performance.
Now registered as N20XT, the unique Mooney took flight again, and Dirk Vander Zee, then Mooney’s vice president of sales and marketing, dubbed it the “Predator.” The name stuck, and the Predator gained its memorable paint scheme after Bowen’s daughters, armed with a three-view drawing and a box of crayons, colored in tiger stripes. In the hands of longtime Mooney experimental test pilot Mike “Mikey” Miles, the Predator took flight, and Miles started checking out the other Mooney test pilots in the bird.

The whole rehabilitation project had stayed beneath leadership’s radar, and on June 30, 1997, Bowen taxied the mostly complete Predator, its test time already flown off, to the main headquarters and parked it in front of the office of Mooney president Bing Lantis. “The offices all have windows out to the ramp, and as I walked in, he was speechless,” Bowen said. Lantis went for a ride, and magically, the team had a modest operating budget for the program. With a few bucks to use, the crayon on paper became paint on metal, and soon the bird was ready to display.
The Predator parked at the Mooney Aircraft Pilots Association tent that year at EAA AirVenture, and the next it was front and center for Oshkosh and the Sun ’n
Fun Fly-In.
The R&D team continued to tweak the design, modifying the flight control sizes, then adding and adjusting servo tabs to eke out every bit of maneuverability it could. The work was well outside the norm for Mooney’s engineers, who had built generations of stable, efficient aircraft but sometimes overshot their goals and had to rein back the project when it became too unstable. What they wound up with, Bowen recalled, was not the fingertip-flying mindbender that some would imagine.
“It’s not a two-finger machine,” Bowen said. “But it is a pleasant airplane to fly with one hand on the stick.” The 90-degree-per-second roll rate hoped for initially never really came to be—50 degrees per second is where it settled in, and inverted flight was never all that great, taking an aggressive nose-up pitch of 10-12 degrees to hold level inverted. “But it looped great, pulling only about 1.8 to 2 Gs.” It was speedy—160 knots or so in cruise, but the straight exhaust pipes with no mufflers made for a very noisy experience until ANR headsets came along.
Dreamers drooled over the design, but nobody was ready to pony up the bucks for orders, and when Bowen left Mooney, the Predator hardly flew. After a period of dormancy, the Florida Air Museum asked to display it, and it was ferried to Lakeland, where it sat for several years. It eventually wound up back in Kerrville at the Mooney factory, once again forlorn.
Don and Paul Maxwell, the father-son team at Maxwell Aviation, made an offer to the newest owners of Mooney: They’d restore the Predator to flight status if they could get permission. One might argue that short of the factory itself, Maxwell Aviation—one of the nation’s most popular Mooney Service Centers—would be the perfect place for such a project.
In 2020, the Maxwells showed up at Mooney’s Texas factory to bring the Predator back to their shop, but it didn’t fly home. The solid wing, a design trait Mooney owners brag about when it comes to comparison with other GA aircraft, becomes a liability if you want to haul a Mooney home. The crew from Maxwell Aviation set to drilling out the bulkhead’s rivets just aft of the cabin’s steel-tube cage and separated the tail, setting the pieces onto a flatbed trailer for transport.
The restoration took two years of part-time work as Paul led the effort, overhauling the engine and rebuilding the airframe. The M20T wing had featured larger-than-stock ailerons. Paul and his crew replaced that wing with a M20K wing, which brought them back to stock ailerons and flaps. The elevators had featured servo tabs to lighten stick forces, but after a few flights the team replaced them with stock equipment.
“Unless you’re going to be flying aerobatics every single flight, the older elevators were overkill,” Paul Maxwell said.
The Predator’s entire existence had ridden out numerous ownership changes at Mooney and a shoestring budget all along, but now the Maxwells have heaped the goodies onto it. Its instrument panel now features Garmin G3X Touch displays with engine instrumentation, CIES electronic fuel senders, and a Garmin GFC 500 autopilot.
The fuselage’s tiger stripes were replicated and extended to the wings. Carbon monoxide in the cabin was an issue all along, but the Maxwells have sorted that out, and it now has a Guardian CO detector. Sporting a 300 hp Lycoming AEIO-540 on the nose, the Predator certainly has the power to push you back into the seat and plaster a smile on your face.
“It’s a 170-knot airplane,” said Paul Maxwell. “It’s not as fast as a Bravo, but it will outclimb all the other Mooneys.”
The Predator returned to flight March 18 and recently attended a Mooney Caravan formation clinic in San Angelo, Texas. The Caravan clinic provides training through the year at regional venues before a giant formation arrival—with tentative plans for the Predator to lead it—at AirVenture in Oshkosh. The Predator will also be on display at MooneyMax, a Mooney-specific symposium in Longview, Texas, on June 22 through 25.
As for its future, what the Predator can do is limited mainly by regulation—it’s registered as experimental-exhibition. “Despite being factory built, it has more restrictions on its use than something built in a garage,” Paul said.
But he intends to fly it to Oshkosh for every AirVenture as long as he lives, and it will actively participate in Mooney caravan clinics as well as attending other, smaller events. 

Editor’s note: This story appeared in the July 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine.

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