Fat Dude (well, maybe not FAT, but bigger than I'd like to be) and a Mooney M20C

rbridges said:
I have a c model. Two decent size guys can get sit in the plane but you will want to offset the seats. Otherwise you are rubbing shoulders. I recommend an F model if you plan to carry larger kids later but for me and the wife, the C is perfect. I hate to argue with hank, but I thought the F gave 5 inches in front of the firewall and 5 inches of rear passenger leg room. You may want to consider ingress/egress. my wife always says there's no lady like way to get out of the plane. Lol.
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My wife is no lady thankfully.
 
rbridges said:
I have a c model. Two decent size guys can get sit in the plane but you will want to offset the seats. Otherwise you are rubbing shoulders. I recommend an F model if you plan to carry larger kids later but for me and the wife, the C is perfect. I hate to argue with hank, but I thought the F gave 5 inches in front of the firewall and 5 inches of rear passenger leg room. You may want to consider ingress/egress. my wife always says there's no lady like way to get out of the plane. Lol.
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My wife is short enough that she just stands up and steps out. Most other passengers, I recommend rolling out onto the wing on their knees, then stand up. Leaning on the fuselage is OK, leaning on the door is a big no-no!
 
A little late to this thread, but I've certainly got some experience here. My wife and I are close to the same size as you and your wife. I started out with a Comanche 250 that belonged to a friend. But I got to fly it whenever I wanted and helped maintain it. It was how I got my HP/Cplx and did some initial traveling in. Nice plane but struggled with maintenance, parts, etc. Then I was partners in a Bonanza F33A. We loved that plane, but had to be careful how much we flew it as it likes to drink gas. The financial situation improved and I decided I could own a plane on my own if it was the right one.
I got a Mooney M20C. No question it was the best move we ever made. The wife and I fit comfortably in it with plenty of room. She leaves her seat slid all the way back while I'm up closer to the panel so I can reach the peddles. We've had adults in the back seat for trips of up to 1.5 hours without any complaints. Usually it's just our 50lb. dog in the back. We put 400 hours on the Mooney in 2 years. We did a 4000 mile trip in July and were very comfortable. Annuals were very reasonable, parts plentiful, and easy to find Mooney specific mechanics. We traveled all over the country (based in Austin) and crossed the rockies several times. I have a portable O2 bottle that works great for the times we need to go high. We usually cruise at 12,500 to 13,500 at 7 gph and 150 kts TAS.
Our budget was $10K per year for the plane and for that we could fly as much as we wanted to.
I recently sold the Mooney and got another Mooney, this time an M20K 252 with a turbo. I decided that we could easily afford it and the turbo allows us to cruise higher and faster, therefore go further in a weekend.

The only difference between the fuselage of the short bodies (B, C, D, E) and the mid bodies (F, G, J) is 5" behind the front seats and 5" in baggage. In fact all Mooneys are the same in the front seats.

The Mooney's have a wider cabin than most including the Bonanza's, Cherokees, and all Cessna's up to and including the 210. They look smaller as they have a lower roof line and sit low to the ground. But I fly mine regularly with a buddy of mine who is 250 lbs like me. We fit fine without rubbing shoulders.
I recently flew my K from Memphis to Austin. I was at 12,500 and doing 180 kts. There was a Bonanza at the same altitude, direction, speed, etc. We were within 5 miles of each other the whole trip and landed within a few minutes of each other. Talking on the ramp we learned I'd burned 40 gal and he'd burned 52 gal.

You can't buy a more efficient and cost effective airplane for cross country travel than an M20C and if anyone says differently, they don't know. You might need more seats, more useful load (my M20C was 1015 useful, the K is only 800 useful), or more speed. But you'll have to pay for it. You can't go from A to B cheaper than the Mooney M20C.

If you ever get to Austin, TX I'd be happy to take you up for a ride in mine.
 
BTW... entry and exit are a lot more important in other airplanes. Because you'll be doing it a lot more. We almost always can skip stops that others in C177, Bo A36's, C182's, etc are making on the same trip.
 
Most of my time in Mooney's have been in the ones with manual gear. I can see a problem with moving the gear handle between two large people in the front seats.
 
labbadabba said:
Ah, yes, that is a good point. Was planning on having my 4 y/o manage the gear handle just to give her something unimportant to do.
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Even sitting in the front seat she may have some trouble with that. It doesn't take that much force if you get the technique right, but I don't really see a 4 year old having the strength, especially if the technique isn't perfect. From the back seat, nobody is putting the gear up or down, period.
 
Plano Pilot said:
Most of my time in Mooney's have been in the ones with manual gear. I can see a problem with moving the gear handle between two large people in the front seats.
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Nope never a problem, and I'd know.


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labbadabba said:
Since the long bodies are heavier but with the same O-360, I would suspect they have a reduced useful load compared to the short bodies, yes?
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My Larry Ball book says not so, because the Executive and Statesman had gross weight increased from 2575 lbs to 2740 lbs. Naturally you pay for flying with a higher gross with a slower cruise speed.
 
mondtster said:
So far it looks like the Bonanza, Comanche, and Mooney have been mentioned, but there are more. How about one of the following?

Comanche 180
Arrow 1
Cardinal RG
172RG
Beech Sierra
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Sierra, ugh. Heard that it's nothing like Bo's quality. It's basically Beech Arrow.

172RG and 177RG, well... I don't really need their payloads. Cardinals are expensive. Not fan of the gear.

Arrow I just loathe, although I have about 50 hours in one. No climbing ability whatsoever with the old Cherokee wing. It's a torture in summer at my altitudes, and I fly a 150 too!

Comanche is too low for me. Can't fit. It is otherwise a large airplane, but alas.

Currently I cross-shop M20C/F/G/E with AA-5B/AG-5. Yeah, it's kinda slower, but if we include Sierras into this, Tiger's speed is in the ballpark too.
 
StinkBug said:
Even sitting in the front seat she may have some trouble with that. It doesn't take that much force if you get the technique right, but I don't really see a 4 year old having the strength, especially if the technique isn't perfect. From the back seat, nobody is putting the gear up or down, period.
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Sorry, my original remark was made in jest.
 
Hank S said:
My, that's harsh in the wife! Does your wife fly with you?
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My Wife does. And her knees are not that great and she has problems getting in and out. What I was comparing his wife too was my father at 5'10" and 240lbs and bad knees. It take him a good 5 minutes to get out with me doing some pushing and finally him crab crawling down the wing where I have left the flaps down so he can get his legs down to stand up. I do have a concern if I messed up and we needed to get out in a hurry that I am just going to have to shove him out and I bail out on top of him. It is really hard to stand up in the passenger seat and get out. The wife does kind of a roll out onto the wing. It's not very graceful.
 
I put my right knee on seat, step out with left while using seat back as support, works well but if you have bad knees, you need a plane you don't fall into, like a Cessna.
 
Cessna... better than a Mooney in every way... until they leave the ground.
 
teejayevans said:
I put my right knee on seat, step out with left while using seat back as support, works well but if you have bad knees, you need a plane you don't fall into, like a Cessna.
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I use the bar behind the windshield to hold my weight when exiting and put my right knee on the passenger seat. I just don't have lots of faith in the seat frames holding up to consistent weight on the backs of the seats.
 
rbridges said:
I just don't have lots of faith in the seat frames holding up to consistent weight on the backs of the seats.
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You're not putting your entire weight on it, I would think sitting in them and leaning against the seat back is just as stressful. The one thing you don't want to do is grab the open door, there should be a strap to grab for your left hand, but I never use it.
 
Yeah, I'm probably being overly cautious. I see how much those seats "give" when people lean against them. 100% agree about the door!
 
I have heard of people bending the Mooney seatbacks by putting too much force against them when exiting. Sitting in the seat your weight is mainly on the seat bottom, and well distributed across the back. When someone pushes themselves up off a corner of the seat the weight is concentrated on a small area, and often much more of your weight is exerted there than would be normally.
 
bradg33 said:
If you want room, the only (well, maybe "best") solution is a Twin Bonanza... Basically a flying motorhome.
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Actually a Twin Bonanza is 1 inch narrower than a Mini Cooper.
 
StinkBug said:
I have heard of people bending the Mooney seatbacks by putting too much force against them when exiting. Sitting in the seat your weight is mainly on the seat bottom, and well distributed across the back. When someone pushes themselves up off a corner of the seat the weight is concentrated on a small area, and often much more of your weight is exerted there than would be normally.
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What can the average person push with 1 arm, 50lbs? There is a cam that controls the seat back position, from looking at it seems to me that's the failure point. Maybe if you pushed back instead of down, I'm fairly lightweight and athletic so I may be underestimating the stresses an overweight person could put on it.
 
teejayevans said:
What can the average person push with 1 arm, 50lbs? There is a cam that controls the seat back position, from looking at it seems to me that's the failure point. Maybe if you pushed back instead of down, I'm fairly lightweight and athletic so I may be underestimating the stresses an overweight person could put on it.
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Probably double that....think about a bench press.
 
deonb said:
Actually a Twin Bonanza is 1 inch narrower than a Mini Cooper.
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I'm not sure that's accurate. The TBone's cabin is 54" wide (same as a King Air). The Mini Cooper has a published "shoulder width" (which I assume is interior width) of 50.6". The Ford Taurus, for example, has an interior shoulder width of a little over 57". In airplane terms, the TBone is huge.
 
midcap said:
Probably double that....think about a bench press.
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Yea, but that's with 2 arms, you are saying the average person can bench press 200lbs?
I never really thought about what I was doing before, today I noted I just use the seat back to stabilize myself as I step out more than push down on it.
 
It's not a bench press though, it's a locked elbow with much of your weight leaning on it. If you look inside the seat it's just thin aluminum sheet formed into a seatback. I originally thought it was crazy when I heard about people bending them, but after seeing a seat stripped of its upholstery it made more sense. The seat is designed to take the load of you leaning back, which isn't a lot of load and evenly distributed. Pushing up with one hand is a lot more load in a lot smaller area.
 
When I flew M20E, one of the most annoying parts was that every blessed time I put the gear down, I also unbuckled myself. It was madness, aggravated by that being a checkout time, so we shot close to a dozen landings over the course of some 4 hours. So every time when I needed to do something else in the air, I had to find the buckle and re-attach it. I am not holding it against Mooney in general, because I'm sure I could fix this somehow if it were my own airplane, but man. That's when I told myself that if I'm buying a Mooney, it's going to be an electric gear. The gear extension speed of electric is higher too.
 
teejayevans said:
Yea, but that's with 2 arms, you are saying the average person can bench press 200lbs?
I never really thought about what I was doing before, today I noted I just use the seat back to stabilize myself as I step out more than push down on it.
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Wow....i just researched it and the number is debated between 135 and 160 lbs.

I would never have guessed it to be that low.
 
zaitcev said:
When I flew M20E, one of the most annoying parts was that every blessed time I put the gear down, I also unbuckled myself. It was madness, aggravated by that being a checkout time, so we shot close to a dozen landings over the course of some 4 hours. So every time when I needed to do something else in the air, I had to find the buckle and re-attach it. I am not holding it against Mooney in general, because I'm sure I could fix this somehow if it were my own airplane, but man. That's when I told myself that if I'm buying a Mooney, it's going to be an electric gear. The gear extension speed of electric is higher too.
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That's funny, I've heard that from other Mooney owners as well, but never had that problem myself. I think the buckle on my belts is just a little higher up the lap than some others. They are not original belts I'm pretty sure, because I have shoulder belts, so maybe whatever brand they are is just different enough to prevent that particular problem.
 
I don't have that problem in my C, either. The buckle is in my lap, and the gear switch is way up high at the top of the panel . . . :p :rolleyes:
 
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