Anyone know anything about a Mooney Mustang? This one popped up on Controller today:

http://www.controller.com/listingsdetai ... 313147.htm

Ahhh, what could have been...

It's cool

I remember reading about that before, I think somewhere her on BT but cannot remember the details. Is this a one-off example? Gotta be a bear finding parts for this, I would imagine. I wonder if you could get TKS added to it???

Interesting plane, only a few built. I "think" that particular plane was up for sale a few years ago after a rebuild. Some folks suggest that the MM was a precursor to the TBM. I just wonder what one does for parts - make good friend with a very talented machinist?

RAS

I have seen a few but only few were ever in service. Never saw one that I would fly in though. Might try this one but not sure pressurized at 24k.

Very complex plane, way ahead of it's time and not matured much before it was killed. Mooney later started work on the "301" in the 80s and that might've been a great airplane, but it sorta morphed into what became the TBM after the French owners of Mooney took the tech and the project back to France. I remember reading a PIREP on one and it sounded like a very high workload airplane, at least until established in cruise.

The M22 engine is the same or similar to the Duke engine. I guess the good news is that there is only one of them. The Pietsch family in ND has or had some of the M22's and are a good resource if you have serious interest in one.

http://pietschaircraft.com/gallery/aircraft/fleet.jpg

Somehow I knew you'd have the answers on this one Scott!

Trust me...I have noooo interest in one other than it being a bit of an odyssey. Seems like had it had time to mature it might have turned in to a decent plane.

I agree. Mooney was really innovating in the 60's when things were going like gangbusters, and it is a shame that the M22 didn't mature before Mooney fell on hard times the first time in the early 70s. Considering that the M20 had a wood wing in 1960, by 1968 there were a bunch of all-metal planes in production: M20C (short fuse, 180 hp), M20E (short fuse, 200 hp), M20F (mid fuse 200 hp), M20G (mid fuse 180 hp) and the M22 (pressurized, 300? hp). I believe they had a twin Mooney prototype flying during that time as well.

The 301 had a lot of potential in the 80s IMO and might have captured the market that the Malibu ultimately got, but they were under-capitalized and of course the GA market was crashing in the mid-80s.

I daydream frequently about what-could've-been with my favorite Texas brand!

Mooney tried their best to sell my dad one in 1967 or 68. As I recall it was under powered, handled like a dump truck, and had marginal pressurization..plus it was above his budget

Not many sold

And REALLY ugly.

Cool sled. Painted like Chester's Bo.

My friend Warren Pietsch from Minot Aero Service owns and flies one and I have flown it solo, and with him on some longer trips a few times.

His father Al Pietsch worked with Mooney to design the door so a stretcher would go in it for Air Ambulance in the frozen North, so it is a passion for Warren. He has all the left over parts from Kerrville left over from one of the bankruptcies...

Warrens has a G-500 and and an Auracle engine analyzer.. It is spacious for 4 people...

It is a 185 knot airplane at FL 180, it would go faster at at FL-250, but Warrens has some cabin leaks and runs out of pressurization... Warren pulls it back and flies it at 155 KTAS and flies really long legs in it.....

The ailerons are as heavy as a B-17 and the visibility over the nose is really poor... But all in all, it is an airplane way ahead of it's time... IMHO it is a 10x better airplane than a Cessna P-210...

Mostly, it is just really cool!!! Especially for those who don't get to check on the Freq with "Mustang 66179" That always starts a conversation...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N66179

Here is a pic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10659106@N00/5112330104/

Don't fly a Tri Tail, but is that tail backwards?