Cruisemaster or Mooney

S

slimpockets

New member
I like the look of the Cruisemaster and just moved to a flying comunity. I live on a 2400 ft grass strip. Honest question. Would you use a Cruisemaster for family travel and what would you look for if you were getting one. Do you think I would be better off with a M20F?
 
You sure as hell ain't going to like that Mooney on a grass strip. If you know Mooney gear you will have no pockets after replacing gear biscuits. Mooney is a great A to B ship but grass is not it's home. Cruisemaster is a grass plane but lacks the speed of the Mooney. Your pockets your pick. Lynn N9818b the crate :?
 
I agree with Lynn. I might comment some residential grass strips are like velvet. If your strip is like that a mooney will do just fine. With most of us our 50 yr old planes are our passion more than family transportation. Reliability comes with a fair amount of TLC and tinkering. If you are more a turn the key and go type, a modified beer cans such as a mooney might be a better way to go. I hope there are no obstacles the end of the runways on a hot day with the family on board in either plane. :wink:
 
It depends.

I've known of Mooneys based at less than ideal grass strips. There were one or two at Kittie Hill, Texas when I was there, but one of them did suffer a prop strike because, as Lynn noted, they sit very low to the ground, even for a tricycle landing gear aircraft. You'd better be damned good and have a three bladed prop. Also, it helps if the ground on which the grass grows is very firm rather than spongy sod. In short, it can be done but you'd have to be concerned on every landing and veteran Mooney pilots all tell me that you really have to nail your approach speed to prevent bounces. The margins seem too thin, IMO.

The speed difference between a pre-201 Mooney and a Cruisemaster is not much. From what Lynn has said in the past, his 'Master was atypically slow: something his recover of the fuselage and wings may well address (he won't say it, but it's actually an aircraft restoration he's performing). The 1957-58 Cruisemaster was the last high performance, retractable, four place, conventional landing gear aircraft ever made. As such it represents the pinnacle of versatility in retractable gear American General Aviation aircraft. They also have pitifully low value. This is both good and bad news. The kicker is maintenance. Lots of shops know Mooneys. Few if any shops know Bellancas in all their incarnations. No so-called Bellanca guru mechanic truly knows them all, and practicality dictates they know Vikings better than the rest.

Thus I would not recommend either aircraft for your mission. The best mix of speed, load carrying capability, and short/soft field durability is the Cessna 182. If you'd consider a Mooney, clearly light controls and responsive handling are not highest on your list. Cessna 180s and 185s may be more capable on very short and very rough fields, but it's difficult to find one that has not been a working airplane, and they were chosen as working airplanes because their work was not easy. The cost of a 185 in very good shape is extremely high because the inventory of such examples is so low. Cessnas can be reliably repaired and maintained everywhere. A high wing airplane is better for family trips because passengers have a much better view.

I can't speak for anyone here but myself, but I'd give up flying before I'd own a 182. I own a Cruisemaster because I love Triple Tail Bellancas, not because I sought the most practical airplane. Triple Tails are sensual airplanes. Cessnas are dependable airplanes. Family flying is all about dispatch rate and the ability to have any problem you may encounter on a long trip readily addressed wherever you go. It's about margins, and aircraft that forgive those inevitable clumsy landings at the end of a long day when you're coming home. The Mooney won't tolerate that, not on grass.

Some will jump in and suggest a Navion. This is a fine choice for family travel and is great on short fields, but it's slow compared to the airplanes you mentioned.

Now, if I've got it all wrong because your message was brief, if you've flown a 'Master, your handy in mechanical matters, and have your heart set on one, avoid the model I own: the 1950-51 14-19. It has an orphan engine and too many hard or impossible to find parts. Most have not been treated all that well. The 14-19-2 of '57 and '58 has the speed of a 14-19 (more in many cases), but 40 more horsepower in a dependable, supported engine (the Continental O-470) this burns the same amount of fuel as the 14-19 at 75% power owning to the greater efficiency of the Continental over the O-435 Lycoming. The extra horsepower means a significantly superior rate of climb and short take-off capability at max gross weight.

I think that more than covers it :)

Jonathan
 
I will one of those that will suggest a Navion. Great on grass and loads more room then a Mooney for travel. I don't think that much slower then the Mooney it just takes more horsepower to get it. I for one would rather give up a couple knots to have the comfort on a long trip. A Mooney is pretty cramped for a family and baggage compared to a Navion and an IO550 Navion will scoot pretty well and there are some nice ones for sale.

Kevin
 
There used to be a Money Statesman on the field I could out run anywhere we went with my Cruiseair. Not to mention getting off the ground faster. I think you will find no one wants to work on a Money but the factory. Very poorly designed aircraft to do anything to from a mechanics stand point. I have a Bonanza that is my beater airplane to leave sitting on the ramp if I have to do that. Not a great short field aircraft. I did learn in a 182 and it is a good airplane for what you are talking about but NOTHING flies or performs like a Bellanca. Greg
 
You're right, Kevin, about those IO550 powered Navions. They come with a price premium that has been rather high in the ads I've seen, though. Interestingly Aviation Consumer ran fuel efficiency comparison between the IO550 and the Theiert Diesel, and the difference (burn per horsepower per hour) was surprisingly close. It's a great upgrade over the E225 or GO435. The bad news is that you're using a lot of that horsepower to push a Navion beyond 130kts (Aviation Consumer noted that you could get 160 if you pushed it and sucked gobs of fuel). It was designed to be very sturdy and very comfortable, but with its thick wings (the key to its short field capabilities), broad cross section, and massive overall size, you may be able to shove it through the sky faster if you throw in heaps of horsepower, but you'll pay dearly for it in fuel. The airplane is so outstanding in so many ways as it is. Trying to make it fast feels a bit silly, as it amounts to yet another case of trying to stretch an airplane into roles beyond its design. Do you recall the aerobatic Bonanza? :)

Cruisairs running with Mooneys? Uh....yeah, if the Mooney has a serious problem...a VERY serious problem. Let's not get silly here. We're Triple Tail guys. We got what we wanted, and what a Mooney is is not that ;) I think it is fair to say, however, despite any bias - AND WE HAVE A BIAS - that Mooneys and grass is also an example of pushing an aircraft beyond its mission.

Jonathan
 
The guy next door to me has a 225hp bonanza. He gets in this strip w/family, no problem. I have lots of time in M20j's but it's been years. I think I'd have the family meet me at the county airport for trips. I would need to fuel up so the stop would work. I have never been up in a bellanca or a bonanza. I keep hearing how parts for the bo will break the bank. I'm handy but I don't know if I can cut it on an older bellanca. I like the way the plane (bellanca) looks, and the speed isn't too bad either. I would like to know more about owning one but it's not like you see them everywhere. In 10,000 hrs of flying I have only seen 2 triple tails flying. I keep hearing guys say stay away from wood. Your planes are 50 years old and still flying so how bad can it be? To me a 182 is like showing up on a moped, it could be fun but you don't want your friends seeing you on it.
 
I have owned a mooney (two to be exact-one a m20c and the other a m20e) I have landed on a friend's driveway in Nevada, on a dry lake bed in Mexico and on numerous grass strips (Burlington, W VA, Several in Mexico, Canyonlands, Ut) but I have also had two propstrikes-one while taxiing out of a parking spot and having the front wheel suddenly sink into a mud puddle and another due to genuine pilot error (Friend said "look over there on the right" and while looking at that spot while taxiing I hit a drainage ditch in the middle of the airport) The mooney was pretty fast but not really faster than my Cruisemaster. (Once I raced the mooney 20c against a 1947 bonanza with 165 horsepower and a wood prop and the bonanza walked away from me. The mooney was difficult to work on-especially radios etc. Everything is tough to get to. I remember having to do a lot of disassembly just to put new o rings in the brake master cylinders. It turned a 30 minute job into a three hour job. Changing the rubber discs on the gear is tough but needs to only be done once a decade. I also recall replacing the o-rings on the gear of a cruiseair in under an hour (labor was $15 an hour then). Put simply. I swapped my mooney for a bonanza to have a fast comfortable plane and swapped the bonanza for a Cruisemaster to own a plane that would put a smile on my face. Recall too that wood has unlimited fatigue life-metal doesn't. If the wood is in good shape and you can keep it in good shape, it will still be strong in the year 3000. Most airplanes have very few factory parts that ever need replacing and of course when they do, they are terribly expensive. Far and away, whatever plane you get, most of the parts you will pay for will not be factory parts, but will be standard aviation hardware-bearings, brake parts, engine parts, cables, etc, etc. Have fun making choices.
 
Wow 10,000 hours <bows> I yield to the gentleman who asked the question :oops: Sorry about the crack about handling and and such. The question posed such an odd choice that, forgive me, I wasn't entirely sure the person who asked it was all that aware of GA aircraft. Clearly I was wrong and entirely too condescending. I apologize and I hope you accept it.

Owning one....for me it's been pure hell. It's my fault really, but I think I covered those pitfalls in judgement in the newsletter, and I'm not ashamed to make myself the butt of my own jokes. What I have, though, is something I love, and I'm proud to show people an original 14-19 with its original engine, original grinning cowl, prop, chrome trim, spinner, and so forth (though I'm grateful the previous owner swapped the original brakes for Clevelands). I feel it's my responsibility to keep it that way. People should see it that way as it was the last model made by Bellanca. I could never, in complete candor, recommend it as a family ride. It's more a frigid wife who will turn amorous on occasion if you do everything right long enough to please her.

My friend Russell has had a different experience entirely. His dispatch rate with his later model 'Master has been outstanding, but he chose the later model because his other airplanes are anything but dispatch rate champions. They are far rarer, far older, and he takes that responsibility seriously as well. His 'Master is his dependable ride, but he's overhauled the engine (not because he really had to though) can make all the other repairs, and has a gift for the preemptive maintenance strike.

As Peter said, wood is a cellular structure, not granular like metal. It does not suffer fatigue and handles flexing with grace. But water is kinder to metal. The British Royal Navy did not practically enslave people for pitch and, later, others for copper in the age of sail for nothing. Fortunately our Triple Tail ships depart the worldly shore and travel through a different medium.

Peter:

An older gentleman I know, who's flown everything from F4U Corsairs to Cessna 140s, said his favorite airplane of all was the M20 with its wooden tail and wings. Light and lithe, marvelously efficient, he too landed it wherever he wanted, took off in the distance he wanted, and he knew how you treat wood. He's the sort who finds practicing crosswind landings in light taildraggers in winds significantly exceeding the so-called demonstrated crosswind capability his idea of a fun time. I've seen so many examples of this sort of thing. Old hands who can take off in absurdly short distances in beater 172s, guys happily touching the windward wheel of a Luscombe 8A in near gales delicately down on pavement and riding them straight on down the runway until all three touch and that little bird has stopped flying.

There are so many things about aviation I'll never understand, and so many skills I will never possess. But I can marvel at them. Me, I'm more the Doctor Johnson's dog of pilots. One day I hope to witness, first hand, a Mooney pilot do something astonishingly deft. Until that day I'll readily take your word, and that of my brother's father in-law, that such people do indeed exist.

Jonathan
 
the woodwing mooneys may have flown beautifully, but rumor has it they used the wrong glue and the perfect wood pieces have a tendancy to fly apart at times. Not my idea of flying. Speaking of great pilots. There was a 91 year old guy at my airport who was restoring a staggerwing. He had sold his previous one about 5 years ago and my last recollection was seeing him on top of a 12 foot ladder working on the top of the engine . A few weeks ago, I saw his hangar open and dropped by to chat and found that he had died and they were preparing to sell all his "stuff". I was told "He ran out of life". When he applied to work for a job at United umpteen zillion years ago, he was put in the left seat of a DC-3 and told to fly from SF to Denver and land at every airport in between. So he landed at Blue Canyon, Truckee, etc, etc. and got the job. Knowing him was one of the high points of my life. Anyone want an almost completly restored Staggerwing (or an old Porsche?)?
 
I think every extant pilot in the world would WANT a Staggerwing, Peter :)

Indeed we've had both the privilege and sorrow of seeing the last pioneers of the most significant feat in transportation in human history leave this life. Sailors had centuries of predecessors whereas aviation is only a little over a century old. As I've often said, old airplanes carry an enormous yet weightless and invisible cargo aboard them: the spirits of previous aviators now long gone. Sometimes I imagine them there with me, disapproving of my later day pilot skills because we cannot have the skills they did. Flying today simply doesn't demand as much of us, and we can only rise to the demands it now places on us. You cannot meet a challenge that no longer exists. Oh sure, we need the stick and rudder basics, but we don't have to operate in the environment they did with the limited tools they had to work with. Their courage allows the likes of me to fly, and fly safely. Call me delusional, but I'd swear I can hear an angry huff when I put aside my chart and rely on my handheld GPS...or perhaps it just the wood creaking. Perhaps its the fact I have the chart at all, and not a Texaco road map ;)

Interesting the business about the early wood Mooneys. Every one I've heard of flying today has rebuilt wings. I always wondered that the problem was. Al Mooney had been working on wood wing aircraft since he was a teenager as an employee of Alexander Eaglerock. He worked for Bellanca for a time as well. There's the Culver Cadet and other examples of Mooney aircraft with fine wood wings. Something indeed must have gone horribly wrong other than design with the M20 that can't be attributed to poor care or owners not putting them in hangars. It's a pity really.

Another thing that has always puzzled me about the M20 series was the windshield. This man was an efficiency fanatic, an astonishing aeronautical engineering prodigy, and he certainly knew that a sharply sloped windshield, as we have on our Triple Tails and he had on other of his designs, was better than the flat windshield on the M20. Somebody told me it had something to do with a manufacturing or structural compromise, but people tell me lots of things and I lack the savvy to sort out the false ones.

Jonathan
 
I know this link has been posted before, but I figure this is the place and time to do so again.

As you know, many people who will never get to fly express their passion through simulators. This fellow clearly has a thing for our Triple Tails...nifty homage made by someone who will never be as fortunate as we who get to own and fly these airplanes. Yes, there is a heavy Christian message tossed in at the end, but that's okay. He also likes Pink Floyd.

Slim Pockets: this one's for you :)

One final note: you really need a broadband connection for this or it will drive you nuts. It's 35 megabytes.

http://www.lionheartcreations.com/media/Bellanca_Collection.wmv

Jonathan
 
When I get old enough, I may consider a 182. I use to fly them for work, and figured I would never have to exercise after flying one. They were such a heavy beast. I will say they are great for the mission they were designed for...st. & level with room to run around in. (Except I'll be too old to run around)

The Mooney MK 21's I use to fly were ok, though I never had to work on one. I was told that when they built them, they started by putting out the seats, and then building out from there. If you ever had to work on the seats, you had to take the whole plane apart to get to them... and any other part you had to get to, you took the plane apart in the reverse order it was built until you got to that part. My IA won't work on them 'cause they are just too expensive to work on. They kind of reminded me of an old MG, the way you sat it them with your legs stretched out. I also remember that the first few times I flew them, my right had would be wet after take off. Id look down, and I was always bleeding after TO until I started to wear a glove to protect my had when I retracted the gear. I must say though that it must be nice to have such nice engines as the O-360 and the O-470 that are still factory supported (not sure I want to pay for the fuel burn of an O-470 these days...I think Lynn has the right description of them!).

Since I have already decided to stop flying when I am 108, I guess there is still time for me to consider a 182.
 
Where would you go to find out more about owning a Bellanca? I have never even sat in one. Is there a shop in the SE that works on them? I live in GA but like I said you don't see the Cruisemaster that much. I will make it to sun-and-fun this year, are any of you flying in? I have 10000 hrs but only one was in a C-140. I would like to share flying with my kids (and then hope like hell they don't do it for a living). You ever hear the one about the guy in the J-3 looking up at the jet saying I wish it was me? The guy in the jet IS looking down saying I wish I was in that J-3. I used to love flying small AC and now it's been 10 years with out doing it. How did that happen?
 
Thanks for the offer. I hope to take you up on it. I'm going to plan on going to sun-n-fun so I'll check back in and see if any of you are going. I'm getting ahead of myself on getting an aircraft. I still need to build the hanger! I also need to think about what kind of aircraft I want. I have a friend with a M20J and he says not to get one until you hit the lotto. He also says to get the 182 and be done with it. It looks to me like most of you work on your AC but the bo and m20 guys write the check. I'm more hands on. I just don't know if I'm up to the task with the Bellanca.
 
Hey slimpockets, I have a 14-19-2 cruisemaster and I have taken more than one bellanca dreamer for his first flight. Most of them walk away with a pretty wide smile. The Last one I remember was restoring a cruisemaster and he was also a professional pilot. He was layed over in SFO and while on the west coast he came by and got a ride. His level of motivation was elevated when he left and he later finished and flew his, and loves it. That being said you need to get a ride. They are all wonderfull flyers, the earlier cruisairs are lighter and very delightfull the cruisemasters a little heavier contol forces but still a joy and the last cruisemasters are a blast from the past. Yes we all work on them but some of the horror stories , if you have even heard any, might be someone who bought a basket case and did not prepare the money and time to complete. Once flying, they just need someone to love them. I have flown Mooney and 182 and others, never flew a Navion but I have passed a lot of them along the way, and I just never got the same joy out of every flight. If you ever hit N calif give me a call. Brian
 
I'm trying to get into my head what it would take to own one. I'm thinking I need to stay away from the 190 because of parts. I have looked at Van's projects but never a Bellanca. I keep looking on the net to see projects but not much on it. How do you know your getting a good one if you buy a flying Cruisemaster? Do you take it to Potstown Pa, and have them give it the once over? I have seen flying ones go for 22-65K, hard to know where to buy in.
 
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