Flying the Light Retractables

A guided tour through the most popular complex single-engine airplanes

LeRoy Cook

• Publisher: Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc.
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781560276074
• eBook ISBN: 9781644251140
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Aviation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Follow author LeRoy Cook on a tour of the retractable-gear airplanes you've always wanted to learn more about. Flying the Light Retractables is an informative journey through the development history of each plane with plentiful insight into design considerations, evolutionary changes, advantages and disadvantages of the different models, and background on maintenance issues. Pilots or potential owners will really get a sense of the subtle or not-so-subtle differences; this is like going flying with the author and having the advantage of his eye for detail and sense of observation Cook gives a unique perspective on ergonomics, control feel and other features that work or don't work for the pilot and/or passengers…it becomes obvious that he has spent many hours in different makes of aircraft. As a potential buyer, you're most interested in performance and economic trade-offs, and Cook excels in such details. His balanced discussion stacks the technical detail (speeds, loads, etc.) against economic factors. You're not swamped with numbers, but you come out with a good sense of what you need and want to know about flying these light retractable-gear airplanes. Beautiful photographs (some in color) accompany each airplane discussion, covering these aircraft:
Mooney M20C
M20J 201/MSE
Beech Bonanza 35
Beech Sierra
Cessna Cardinal RG
Cessna Cutlass RG
Lake Buccaneer
Piper Comanche 180
Piper Arrow
Rockwell Commander 112TC

1 • The Mooney Family

The Mother Church of Light Retractables

If there were a quintessential light retractable, it would have to be the Mooney M20 series, from the original Mark 20 to the M20J. As the first four-place retractable-gear airplane designed around the light, powerful Lycoming four-cylinder engine, the Mooney created a whole new class of efficient, personal traveling machines.

Using the prevailing standards of Civil Air Regulation Part 3, the Mooney M20 received its initial type certification on August 24, 1955; it is from this original TC that most variants have been certificated. Although the basic layout has remained the same, one will find that the newer Mooneys have very little in common with the first airplanes, in either construction methods or aircraft systems. Tracing the history of the Mooney Company will help us understand the evolution of the M20 series.

Al Mooney began his career in aircraft design in the mid-1920s, working for various other firms until the euphoric period after the end of World War II, when he and his brother Art started Mooney Aircraft Company in that hotbed of aviation, Wichita, Kansas. His first product was a tiny single seat speedster with retractable landing gear and flaps, dubbed the M18 Mooney Mite. Initially powered by a converted Crosley auto engine, producing all of 25 hp, the Mite was quickly retrofitted with 65-hp Lycoming and Continental engines. The M18 was built from 1946 through 1955, by which time the Mooneys had left the payroll of the company that bore their name. Mooney Aircraft moved from Wichita to Kerrville, Texas in 1953, as development of a new, larger Mooney was well underway.

A four-place Mooney M20 had been on Al Mooney’s drawing board by mid-1952, resembling a scaled-up Mite. As with the M18, the first Mooney Mark 20s utilized truly composite construction; the wing was built entirely of wood, including a spruce plywood skin to minimize airflow disruption over the laminar-flow airfoil section. The empennage was also built of wood, while the fuselage used a combination of monocoque aluminum construction in the tailcone area and non-stressed aluminum skin over a tubular steel truss around the cabin area. The engine was Lycoming’s brand-new 150-hp O-320, tightly cowled and turning a Hartzell constant-speed propeller. The landing gear and flaps were manually operated.

Pre-1961 Mooney Mark 20As like this one had a wood wing and tail, although the fuselage was aluminum skinned. Most have now been retired.

The light, compact Mark 20, with an empty weight of only 1,415 pounds, exceeded the one-mph-per-horsepower standard by a considerable amount, reputedly cruising at 165 mph and hitting a 171 mph top speed. By 1957, Lycoming had its 180-hp O-360 engine ready, and it appeared in the 1958 Mark 20A with a McCauley constant-speed propeller; its maximum cruise speed was quoted at 180 mph, with a top speed of 190. Exhaust augmenter tubes under the belly of the original M20 did a good job of enhancing cooling airflow through the engine, but they produced a husky bark, causing adjustable cowl flaps and a conventional exhaust system to be fitted to the 1958 airplanes. Both the Mark 20 and Mark 20A were offered for 1958; the 180-hp airplane outsold its smaller brother by a three-to-one margin, so only the M20A was offered thereafter. In all, some 700 Mark 20 aircraft were built.

Years of neglect and outside storage have taken their toll on the 1955–1960 wood-construction Mooneys, some of which exhibited deterioration, particularly in the tail area. At this point, most of the wooden Mooneys have been converted to metal tails, at considerable cost, due to rigorous load tests required by a recurring AD to detect failures in the wooden tail structure.

By 1960 a market preference for all-metal aircraft was clearly evident, requiring the M20A to be redesigned with a metal wing and tail. Initial doubts about Mooney’s ability to substitute flush riveting for smooth plywood were laid to rest, and the 1961 M20B appeared as the Mark 21, starting with serial #1701. A total of 48-gallons of fuel was now carried in integral wet-wing bays within the wing; the wood-wing Mooneys offered 35 gallons in the wings and an optional 14 gallons in an aft-fuselage tank. The Mark 21’s flaps and landing gear were still manually operated; the wheels folded away with a hefty bar that moved through a 90° arc, from a vertical location under the panel to a flat position on the floor between the seats. The flaps, meanwhile, were extended by a small chrome lever under the panel that one pulled down to engage one of two notches. Empty weight increased by about 85 pounds with the conversion to metal construction, and the advertised cruise speed was boosted by 2 mph, to 182 mph. A total of 222 M20Bs were built.

For 1962, Mooney brought out its M20C, still marketed as the Mark 21. The most obvious changes were an increase in gross weight, from the earlier airplane’s 2,450 pounds to 2,575 pounds, and the installation of a hydraulic hand-pump to lower the flaps, using the same handle as the M20B. A few strokes with the selector in the “down” position extended the flaps to as much as 33°, up from 21.5° in the M20B. Flipping the selector to “up” allowed the hydraulic pressure to bleed off, retracting the flaps. The M20C, as the basic 180-hp, carburetor-equipped economy Mooney, settled in for a long, stable production run, even while other permutations evolved; renamed the Ranger in 1965, it was still in production when the 201 was introduced in late 1976. The final 15 M20Cs were built in 1978, for a total of 2,192 airplanes.

The Mooney line was expanded in 1963 to include a fixed-gear, fixed-pitch entry-level version called the M20D Master. Maximum cruise speed was quoted as 139 mph, and gross weight was identical to the M20C, with 50 pounds more useful load. Because the airframe was identical to the Mark 21, the owner of an M20D could have it converted to a retractable-gear airplane at any time, as practically all have been by now. Only 161 Masters were built through 1966.

The 200-hp Mooney M20E Super 21 was one of the fastest small Mooneys, particularly when modified with a sleeker cowling and windshield, as this one has been. Stretched into the M20F Executive 21, it eventually became the M20J 201.

Some Mooneys may still be seen with an automotive-type shock absorber on the nosegear to limit rebound. Proper landing technique makes it unnecessary.

For 1964, new flush-fitting fuel filler caps replaced the old thermos-type caps under a hinged plate, increasing fuel capacity by four gallons. A Super 21 M20E, using Lycoming’s new 200-hp IO-360-A1A fuel-injected four-banger, came along in 1964, expanding the line to three models. The hot-rod M20E proved to be the most popular version yet, selling at a 400 to 500 per year rate in the mid-60s; it was renamed the Chaparral in 1969, after a one year hiatus in 1968, and was built through 1975, for a total of 1,471 airplanes. Top speed was advertised as 197 mph, and cruise speed at 75% power was 187 mph, enhanced by a “ram air” feature that allowed the pilot to bypass the air filter to gain an extra inch of manifold pressure. The Super 21 routinely indicated well into the yellow arc, which began at 150 mph in airplanes built prior to 1969, after which the yellow arc was expanded to 175 mph and the flap limit speed was raised from 100 mph to 125.

Nineteen-sixty-five saw the introduction of Mooney’s “PC” (positive control) feature, a full-time wing-leveler autopilot that could only be turned off by depressing a thumb-button on the pilot’s control wheel. New square-edge cabin windows replaced the rounded window lines from the 1950s.

Electrically-operated landing gear was optional by 1966, for those who just couldn’t master the bicep-building manual gear. The year 1966 also brought yet another significant new product; the M20F Executive, the first long-cabin Mooney. The extra few inches of aft-seat room gained by the Exec proved highly popular; the rear side windows were divided into two panes to play up the additional space. Sharing the M20E’s powerplant, maximum cruise speed supposedly ranged up to 187 mph; in actual practice, 170 would be more typical. Gross weight was increased to 2,740 pounds, and fuel capacity was boosted to 64 gallons. The M20F was the airframe that was chosen to be metamorphosed into the M20J, or 201. Although it was certificated on July 25, 1965, production of the new Executive 21, as it was first known, didn’t begin rolling in earnest until 1967, when 536 rolled out the factory door. A total of 1,241 Executives were built, forever eroding the short-cabin Super 21’s market share by offering increased back-seat comfort.

In 1966 Mooney also fielded its first M22 Mustang, a five-place pressurized-cabin airplane that shared little of the M20-series other than the wing layout. The M22 is mentioned here only because of its deleterious effect on the company’s health; the considerable expense of its development and below-cost pricing led to changes of ownership and rough times in the subsequent years. The Executive and Mustang ushered in the practice of beginning all serial numbers with the year of manufacture; by 1967 all models had adopted this numbering system.

Nineteen-sixty-eight saw the M20E dropped from the line, leaving only the M20C Ranger as a short-cabin airplane, but another new model was introduced, the M20G Statesman. The M20G combined the Executive 21’s long-cabin airframe with the Ranger’s 180-hp carburetor-equipped engine, a combination fated to result in lackluster performance; it was supposed to be just 10 mph slower than an Executive and about 4 mph faster than a Ranger. In practice, its 2,525 pound gross weight tipped the scales to the favor of the Ranger’s parentage. The Statesman was a good, solid airplane that failed to find its market niche; it was built for only three years, with 189 produced.

A new panel and quadrant-style power controls were introduced in 1969, and electrically-operated landing gear was made standard. Sixty-nine also brought back the short-cabin, big-engine M20E, now named the Chaparral, giving Mooney a complete line of engine and airframe combinations. However, continued slow sales led to a shutdown of production in 1971, when only the Ranger, Chaparral and Executive were built in limited quantities. The factory was to lie moribund for over two years, other than for parts fabrication.

In October 1973, ownership passed to Republic Steel, which brought a badly-needed measure of stability to the company during the next 10 years; in 1984, ownership passed to Eurlair, a French charter company. Mooney resumed limited production on January 1, 1974 and a total of 140 airplanes were built in 1974, with 186 rolling out the following year, divided among M20C, M20E and M20F models. A new instrument panel, control yoke and power quadrant knobs were introduced in mid-1975. Only the M2...

Table of contents

• Copyright
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1. The Mooney Family: The Mother Church of Light Retractables
• 2. Flying an Early Mooney M20C
• 3. Modern Classic: Mooney’s M20J 201/MSE
• 4. The Bonanza’s Beginning: Before There Was a Mooney...
• 5. The Beechcraft Sierra
• 6. Cessna’s First Light Retractable: The Cardinal RG
• 7. Cessna’s Cutlass RG: The Gentle Retractable
• 8. Flying with Water Wings: The Unique Lake Buccaneer
• 9. Piper’s Comanche 180: A Thoroughly Modern Antique
• 10. The Piper Arrow: An Easy Step Up for the Cherokee Pilot
• 11. The Commander 112: Biggest Light Retractable
• Appendix: Specification Tables