New Mooneys and Microjets

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At Sun ‘n Fun early in the week, I got a good long sit in Mooney’s new M10T mockup, which they unveiled for the first time in the U.S. First impression: It’s big. Like Cirrus big. The cabin interior is about 48 inches wide, so it will easily accommodate two 21st century Americans rather than the svelteish 1950s models that Al Mooney figured the original airplanes were large enough to accommodate.

It being a mock-up, most of the attention was paid to working out the interior details and they are decidedly automotive. The panel is dominated by a Garmin G1000, but there’s little else in it in the way of additional mechanical controls or switching, although I’m sure there will be more when the airplane is actually ready to fly, which it will be sometime this summer. Ingress and egress isn’t typical Mooney, since it has two doors and the sill is lower than I recall it being on the M20 series.

Mooney hasn’t given any numbers yet, other than a gouge on speed and the basic dimensions. But just looking at the airplane, I see two challenges the designers will have to deal with and they’re the perennial two: weight and drag. The M10T will be powered by Continental’s CD-135 diesel. This engine has proven to be a reliable, economical performer but in conversions of older 172s, it doesn’t exactly deliver nosebleed-inducing climbs. If propped correctly—Hartzell has a nice three-blade option—it climbs acceptably, but not as well as the Lycoming version at low altitude.

That’s a function of weight, so Mooney will really have to keep the M10T on strict weight control and composite construction may or may not help. When composites were the latest new thing, proponents cited their superior strength-to-weight ratio, but the reality proved otherwise. One engineer told me that the more he worked with composites, the better he liked metal. Mooney says it will use quite a bit of carbon fiber in the M10T, so that should help.

Diesels flow a lot of air and because they’re water-cooled, they have radiators that gulp air, too. That adds cooling drag to an engine/airframe combination that isn’t overburdened with thrust. Since the M10T is a clean sheet and really a third- or fourth-gen OEM diesel, Mooney has a nice opportunity for some engineering creativity to tweak the most from a diesel powerplant. I’m looking forward to seeing how they do it. But diesels hardly rewrite the laws of physics and aerodynamics, so expectations need to be kept in check.

Jet Envy

This year’s airshow at Sun ‘n Fun promised to be and was one of the most jet-heavy in recent memory. The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds performed and so did the Breitling Jet Team, flying L-39s. This was their first appearance in Lakeland.

Jets blended with prop acts are a mixed bag, in my view. They tend to be fast and loud, but also dancing at the limits of the crowd’s visual range since there’s no hope of fast jets inhabiting the traditional airshow box. But one jet act this year should was a refreshing exception to that. Bob Carlton flew a routine in the SJX-2 SubSonex, a kit airplane from Sonex Aircraft powered by a PBS TJ100 turbojet. The airplane and the act drew a lot of attention.

Unlike typical jet shows, Carleton’s routine included the kind of compact, high-G aerobatics normally associated with piston aircraft and not just high-speed flybys and three-mile diameter loops. He did a couple of graceful performances that were just loud enough to be noticed without splitting the eardrums. Personally, as I get older and crankier, I’ve had my fill of 105-decibel, rib cage-rattling flybys. That’s why I usually abandon the airfield when the show starts, retreating to some place quiet where I can work in peace.

The week before Sun ‘n Fun, I spent a couple of days at Carleton’s Albuquerque home base shooting a video for our sister publication, KITPLANES, whose editor, Paul Dye, was checking out in the SubSonex. We’ll have the video up next week. Sonex has sold seven of these kits and I suspect they’re going to sell a lot more. At $130,000 complete, it’s a lot of exceptionally cool airplane for the money. It’s basically the price of a mid-range LSA, but it makes just enough of the right kind of noise and goes like stink. Then there’s always the smell of Jet A in the morning.

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