How Mooney Marries Metal to Composite
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- At Mooney's Kerrville, Texas factory, the company has invested in new production techniques and equipment. In this AVweb video, the company's Kevin Hawley explains how Mooney marries the new composite shell to the traditional metal tail section.
Nice video. I spent half my life in Texas and had no idea Mooney was based there.
I toured the Mooney plant several owners ago and the fabrication was almost exactly the same as WW II production. It was good, but very labor intensive. It’s good to see the company being able to begin incorporating modern technology into the aircraft.
Always loved the Mooney designs.
Such an oddball mish-mash of 1920s-1950s elements that turn out nearly perfect.
They ditched the bits of fabric covering, added some composites and the glass cockpit. But your still flying inside a hand-welded steel space frame like an Extra 330SC, or Decathlon, which are known to be fairly crash resistant. At least for PIOs and runway excursions, and right of way Safaris.
I love Mooney! I wish them all the best!
Paul Burrburrally is the best!
Love Mooney's and I hope they can stay. I really think they need to market to avg pilot's as far as price. These airplanes are too high imo. And other items within an aircraft, ex engines. Give me a break 50k plus for a 6cyl reman.? Not to mention "glass". Not saying they are not worth it but only for a few. I understand hand built, time and money. I also know Cirrus are up there too and selling. However only selling to the small few. Due to the small upper market, sadly I don't see them staying in biz. These engineers need to find a way like Henry Ford did with the car, to build for the avg pilot I'm not just bloviating, many people tell me it's too expensive to get into flying without buying a 40 year old outdated craft.. Those are the facts manufactures. I guess that's why experimental is growing hummmm. Ps Would be nice seeing a full composite Mooney. PSS I know another person talking about prices. I am not in the upper buyer sector. Even if I did have 500-800k cash, it wouldn't be for a new aircraft. I'd buy used as I have already. Thanks for the video, loved it.
Henry Ford was making a product that anyone with a spare afternoon could be licenced to drive. There were also no other options within an order of magnitude in price at the time. So anyone who wanted a car and didn't have $20,000 for a Dusie bought his make and model.
And a Model-T would now cost around $20,000-$100,000, if you consider they were $1000 initially, later reduced to $250. And the US dollar has inflated nearly to 1% of it's 1913 value.
Airplanes are different, because no single design meets all mission requirements. It's pickup truck vs sports car vs motorcycle. Except they all have wings in this case. There are only a couple hundred thousand GA aircraft in existence. Built over the last 80+ years. Ford builds 1,000,000 F-150s per year. Each design generation sells 6-8 million copies of that one model, one design, one assembly line layout. And the cheapest F-150 is in the $30Ks and up up to mid-$70s, they actually take less than 40 man-hours to build, each. A GA airplane takes 800-3,000.
A Mooney and a model T have nothing in common. Even a J-3 cub was beyond reach of all but the wealthy, or flying clubs, and governments in it's day. The Curtis Jenny was also. But the government gave them away to pilots and barnstormers for like $70, new they were several thousands of dollars.
There are only so many pilots out there, fewer yet who would be interested in purchasing a new plane and taking on the maintenance and storage obligations. Fewer yet who want or need a cramped 4-place, high speed commuter. Maybe a 2-seat or a 6-seat meets their mission, or maybe they need short grass field takeoffs, now you down to a much smaller number of pilots who would ever consider the Mooney. Maybe only 100,000 people total. That still nearly 1/4 of the pilot population in the USA.
It's simply an impossible task to market a Mooney to the masses. There aren't enough customers in existence to sell mass produced airplanes to.
It's impossible to market a Cessna 172 to the masses. And more people would want one of those than a Mooney. They run $375K+.
A Citabria Aurora with an O-235 118hp is $200,000, before upgrades. The Mooney is probably about twice the man hours, has five times more money in the panel, and runs behind an engine that costs 3x as much as a baby 118hp 4-cyl. Not to mention the constant speed propeller costs about $20K vs 2K for the Citabria.
The Mooney is an equivalent deal, considering you get about 300% more value in components and nearly 3x the speed, 3x the luxury, for around 3x the price of the Citabria. And price usually goes up at the square of speed. So the Mooney is actually a bargain. :)
Nice plant. Good to see the money being spent to bring the Mooney up into the composite world.
Planes are basically hand made with long hours (and a lot of patience) but cars are just pressed out at a rapid rate. Another big reason planes are so sky high in price (as well as capability).
Wow! We thought Mooney had completely folded and stopped manufacturing aircraft! This is good news👍🏼😎
900,000 for a new mooney, how did they go out of business.
“Rebates?” Never heard a joggle called that
Closed down now
I love Mooney, but at the price point, they are just not even playing the same game as Cirrus.
I wonder what is the reason the choose to do a fuselage skin in fiberglass over carbon fiber. Cost? Carbon fiber I think is more efficient in terms of structural integrity (strength) and weight.
I've come up.with two rules based on watching crash videos online, never fly in a Bonanza, and never fly in a Mooney! Also avoid cirrus (without chute)
Great video!
RIP Mooney. Thanks again China.
Hopefully an engineer at Mooney saw this and explained to him how, no, you can't just add a few plies of carbon fiber to increase strength. At most a competent composite engineer will use some fiberglass to insulate a carbon layup in order to prevent galvanic corrosion when the part is attached to metal, but mixing a few plies of carbon into a fiberglass component will actually make it weaker. Carbon fiber (CF) and fiberglass (FG) have different moduli which means that when you add CF in a few plies you introduce stress risers and hand all the load off to the CF until the epoxy joining it to the FG fails, and now you're depending on the weakened FG. Terrible idea that too many homebuilders (and at least 1 Mooney employee) think is a genius idea.
Cool video, Metal guys figuring out composites , even discovered carbon fiber , I call it progress.
There's a truly insane amount of wire going from the front to the back of the airplane. I'm assuming that's connecting the G1000 displays to the various modules mounted aft?
Maybe it's the particular timing of your visit, but I'm left with the sense that there wasn't much activity going on.
Mike Kobb they’re shipping like 2-3 per quarter :(
In business, out, in, out. 3 reasons they struggle. 1 planes like Cirrus, 2 price, 3 used market and/or experimental planes. I have RV7 I built out runs non turbo Mooneys, but if had to buy a Certified plane a Mooney would be high on the list.
I am going to pitch a story to Netflix, its called " when metal met composite".....
Do people ever offer to lick the dust from your shoes after visiting Mooney?
how does the flight control system work on a m20v? are these still connecting rods/ steel cables or even hydraulic systems? i mean come on...242 kts in cruise must be a heck of aerodynamic loads.
The maximum load a control cable ever sees in normal use is the maximum force the pilot is able to physically exert. That's why control cables are aproximatly the same size from an Peitenpol to an Extra 330 to a McDonnell-Douglass MD-80.
8,000-10,000lb steel cable is pretty darn strong.
Whenever I hear composite bonded to metal I worry about longevity. How will it be 30+ years from now? The Grumman bonded wing skin de-laminating comes to mind and how they need to eventually be riveted.
Solo in lingua Americana? Come posso ascoltare in italiano?
Love the insights 💯✌️
I'd love to work in a factory like that
Anything coming after "I'd love to work.." is kind of crazy. I prefer I'd love to have a plane and be free flying around without to worry about the money, sounds much better IMO
@@JP-xd6fm Well you obviously don't work with your hands,and have no skills working with your hands,where as I do,I am multi skilled,so that's why it appeals to me.
@@johnbravo7542 Good for you man, we need folks like you.
it is until you get the urge to create somethign. @@JP-xd6fm
Thumbnail was Ernest P Worrel :)
I have a question: How are aluminunm skin riveted to the steel frame?
Back of the airplane fuselage, aft of the cabin is a standard "semi-monocoque" stressed aluminum skin. The aft fuselage bolts to the cabin steel tube. The cabin is skinned (aluminum but now they use composite skin). The skin is riveted to formers (and now also bonded with adhesives for composite skins). The formers are attached to the "cage" or steel tube via welded flanges or tabs. I don't think they drill direct into the tubing.
@@gmcjetpilot Thank you! I was really trying to figure out how they would rivet through the tube directly😅. If I would drill on the skin by my previous thoughts, It would be a mess.
@@alexandrebueno3656 I'm not an expert but it seems like a curiously mixed construction.
Whelp, there goes the value of that video. No more Mooney's.
Composites in a Mooney now, does that mean the Price goes down by half? Marketing for the upper wealthy, how about an affordable Mooney for the average Pilot?
Looks like an absolute nightmare when it comes to future maintenance. Repairs of delamination, paint and even upgrading avionics 40 years from now will be an absolute mess.
It does seem counterintuitive. Are there any advantages to that composite shell? Other than complicating assembly, allowing the occupants to become the antenna counterpoise, and showcasing how the wonder of proseal can overcome a backward-facing lap joint subject to slipstream, what are the benefits? I'm not an aero engineer, just an old mechanic. Is there something I'm missing and/or a technical lesson to be learned here, or does the glass shell just make the windows easier to glue on?
Thanks @6 6, that composite piece saved a lot more weight than I'd have expected -- sensible starting part for an incremental change strategy.
What is a manufacturing “rebate”?
A joggle.
In woodworking it's called a rabbet like in rabbit. An L shaped groove where another panel can fit into.
MIXING CARBON FIBRE AND GLASS FIBRES IN A LAMINATE IS A NONO. MOONEY BAD?
Unfortunately they've never had the funds to pave the parking lot
To bad they shut down
ok awesome but since their saving so much money with in house manufacturing now, why are we still having to pay close to a million for an airplane thats lot easier to put together than previous models and have the same performance.
inflation. also rules are so complicated, there is no competition and thus the price gaugijg can commence.
How come you are not a pretty brunette like Laura Hutson on Airborne Unlimited? ; - (
Keep your Chinese airplane.
Mooney should have engaged Burt Rutan, redesigned the plane( keeping the iconic tail fin) and switched to composite.The government should have helped out by being a costumer, just like it does with Boeing .Now for a handful of dollars the Chinese are happy to get an insight in American Aviation industry, tech and marketing with the Mooney Brand name thrown in for bad measure.The CCP cares a lot, our Government not a little.Why ?
Sounds like your going to be able to say " made in china" mooney
Chinese buying up everything in general aviation.
That is to take all the technology... China steals several billion in intellectual property every year by pure theft or forcing companies they deal with to give it to them. They also make synthetic opioide which makes it to USA and kills 10's of thousands of Americans every year. All this Russia BS, a country that has the economy of Texas and can't make an elevator... Yet China is the real threat, is overtaking ours, has human rights abuse out the ying-yang, and no one talks of it.
@@gmcjetpilot "no one talks of it"
Only if you're oblivious to foreign affairs.
its not stylish at all , its an outdated look and i would never buy one. if they dont change soon they will fold
A lot of Trump voters in that parking lot. Verily I say onto you that not one Trump voter will enter heaven.
Also that plane has way to many cables.
@@earth9531 no that's just satan's excuse in your weak mind. Hillary was a serious sober candidate, Trump is a bizarrely childish sociopath monster. He lies transparently at every turn even when there is no reason to at all. He's the most spectacular personality flaw I have ever seen. Republican idiots aren't squeezed from every side, things are better than ever. Despite Bush jr crashing the economy hard. A pos republican. The only merit indirectly to trump is that the left has been too indulgent of sjw idiocy but that is in no way anywhere near enough to vote for the absolute garbage that is Trump. No one who knows Jesus would ever vote for Trump. Not one.
Jesus said he is the very concept of truth. Yet socalled evangelicals voted for this sociopath child liar. Trump's first press conference was to lie about crowd size at his inauguration. Half his cabinet is in prison. His family is next. He's a carbon copy of Nixon just worse.
Trump is a joke the world over. Opinion polls in europe was something like 90% for Hillary and the UN laughed at Trump when he spoke his idiocy. USA's own media and late night shows are the most scathing by far ever and Bush jr was a satanic joke himself yet he was only somewhat ridiculed for his incompetence and evil.
We are not talking subtleties here. These a biblical level events because not only is Trump utter filth but about 40% of USA is so beastly mindless as to stubbornly still side with Trump. Siding with Hitler would have more integrity.
Not one Trump voter shall enter heaven. Not one.
Never trust a man wearing shorts.
Or a bowtie.