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Mooney Ovation3

The most powerful Mooney is also the most sophisticated.

At first glance the newly certified Mooney Ovation3 looks like just another Mooney (which, granted, is a little like saying “just another Porsche.”) But behind the familiar long-body lines are a couple of big changes.

Even before the Ovation3 came along, these airplanes were fast, and over the past few years they’ve gotten faster, and they’ve still got those great Mooney lines that have enchanted loyal owners for decades. Over that time, Mooneys havetypically come out of the factory equipped with great panels, and today’s Mooneys have the best panels yet, with the Garmin G1000 integrated avionics suite and now the Garmin GFC 700 digital autopilot. For added comfort and utility, you can get upgrades like air conditioning and known-ice-approved TKS. And I don’t care what you say, despite Cirrus and Columbia having really fast fixed-gear airplanes, there’s something that just feels right about retractable gear on a high-performance airplane. I’ve gotten used to it on the Cirrus, but the idea of a fixed-gear Mooney sounds blasphemous. (And you can save your emails: I know they built a couple fixed-gear models back in Eisenhower’s day.)

So what is it about the Ovation3 that makes it so special?

Power, that’s what. In terms of horsepower and electronics, the Ovation3 is the most powerful Mooney, and with the possible exception of the just-certified turbocharged Acclaim, it’s also the most sophisticated airplane Mooney has ever put its name on.

The pony-power part of the equation was the easy part. Well, at least it seems that way. The engine powering the Ovation, the Continental IO-550 series, is commonly rated at 310 hp in airplanes like the Cirrus SR22 and Columbia 350, but the max horsepower of Mooneys using just about the same engine has always been 280, which is essentially “achieved” by turning down the max engine rpm to 2500, instead of the 2700 rpm of the IO-550 in the Cirrus and Columbia, among others. Mooney gets back that horsepower by using a mod engineered by Midwest M20 Mooney. The STC simply boosts the power back up to 310 horses by allowing the prop to turn at 2700 instead of 2500 rpm, which is the redline on other versions. Mooney also adds a three-blade Hartzell prop. Now with FAA approval for the mod, Mooney performs the STC in-house as part of the production process.

With the STC, the Ovation is approved for max continuous operation at 2700 rpm; although there is a “maximum recommended cruise power” setting of 262 hp and 2550 rpm, you can cruise at the higher power setting if you want to. As you’d expect, the cruise speeds on the Ovation3 are very good at typical cruise altitudes, between 5,000 and 8,000 feet, but the fuel consumption numbers go way up as you push the prop lever forward. In the Cirrus, I’m used to seeing close to 20 gph at best power and 2700 rpm, which is very similar to the fuel flows I saw in the Ovation3.

The Ovation3 comes standard with the G1000 flat-panel avionics system, but the G1000 isn’t set up to show the new redline on the engine of 2700 rpm. So there are a couple of placards that advise you to use “the G1000 tachometer for reference only,” and an additional “official” tachometer is added to the panel, presumably so the pilot can see the proper placement of the green and red colors there.

I had a chance to fly the Ovation3 with Brian Kendrick, Mooney’s chief pilot/inspector, out of Kerrville, Texas, earlier this year. It was anything but a typical general aviation day in Central Texas when I launched out of Austin, located just about 40 SR22 minutes east of Kerrville. The weather was just over minimums at Austin, and it was only slightly better at Kerrville (KERV). But it was still just better than minimums because KERV’s only approaches are non-precision ones. And the wind that day was howling. At 6,000 feet, the wind vector on the Avidyne PFD was showing winds from the south at 57 knots, so I had a hellacious crab angle as I motored my way toward Kerrville, getting slammed and bammed around the cockpit as I went.

While the ride into Kerrville was pretty wild, the wind on the ground wasn’t so bad. The AWOS had it just about down the runway at 18 gusting to 25 knots. The landing was uneventful, but more on the approach later. Once the SR22 was safely in the hangar at Mooney, I headed over to the reception office to meet with Brian, and spent a little time talking about the autopilot and its G1000 interface.

While the GFC 700 is an incredibly capable autopilot, pilots who fly with a rate-based S-Tec or Bendix/King autopilot needn’t be intimidated by it. There are some important differences, though, both in system architecture and operation.

Even though the GFC 700 has been certified on several general aviation airplanes, the system is still not widely known or well understood. Integrated nicely with the G1000 avionics system, the GFC 700 is an attitude-based dual-channel, digital two-axis (pitch and roll) autopilot with flight director driving smart servos. In the Mooney, the autopilot is controlled by the PFD and a control unit mounted by the pilot’s side of the center-mounted MFD. There’s also a go-around function, with a console-mounted switch just ahead of the throttles and a control-wheel steering button on the yoke.

In terms of flying the airplane, it’s important to start thinking seriously about vertical navigation. With the GFC 700, you can set in your rate of climb or descent, which is pretty common on GA autopilots. But the part that was brand new to me was the FLC button, which allows you to set your indicated airspeed. This airspeed-hold capability is known on the GFC 700 as the “flight level change” function, which is shortened to “FLC” on the control unit and simply called “filch” by pilots. Once you get used to using it, you won’t want to go back.

The airplane flown for this report was one of the first Ovation3s off the line at Mooney’s Kerrville, Texas, factory. It was equipped with the Garmin G1000 avionics package, including two 10.4-inch displays, and the Garmin GFC 700 three-axis digital autopilot. The G1000 also includes the XM WX weather information utility and XM Radio satellite radio, TIS traffic alerting system, terrain awareness and Jeppesen instrument approach charts. (Some capabilities are optional or require a service fee.) As an Ovation3, the airplane had the Mooney factory-installed STC horsepower increase, which includes a modification to allow the prop to turn at a maximum of 2700 rpm and a three-blade Hartzell aluminum propeller. All performance figures are from the manufacturer and unless otherwise noted are for standard conditions.

In general, it’s best to use the FLC function for climbs and the vertical speed button for descents. This approach lets you control the two most important elements in both phases. On descent, it allows you to dial in a rate that gets you down to your desired altitude efficiently but not so steeply that you get too fast or make it tough on your passengers’ ears (or on yours). Conversely, when you’re climbing, the FLC function-remember, that’s essentially an airspeed hold-helps keep you from stalling the airplane, which can happen if you set too high a rate of vertical speed on climb, and the airplane attempts to hold that rate despite decreased performance in higher, thinner air. Once you get used to these features, and with the vertical nav presets in the G1000 flight planning page, you can create and fly an entire flight plan from just after takeoff to short final both vertically and laterally. The capability is tremendous. The performance is, too. More on that later.

When Brian and I hopped into the pretty new Ovation3 sitting on the ramp, we were already filed. Kerrville was quiet, as the field was IFR and had been all day long. We picked up our clearance and took off, battling the bumps as we went. The majority of our flight, up to Junction, down to San Antonio and back up to Kerrville, was flown in the soup and with the autopilot engaged. So it was an excellent test of the G1000 and the GFC 700. We flew the ILS Runway 12R approach at San Antonio on a busy IFR day. The GFC 700 kept the “needles” centered as we intercepted the localizer, and it kept the glideslope indicator right there, as well, as we started down.

It’s not very often that you get to do a side-by-side comparison of two competitive products, but I was lucky enough to get the chance that day, as I’d flown my shared ownership Cirrus SR22, which has an S-Tec 55X autopilot, on the Runway 12 GPS approach at Kerrville earlier that day.

On the approach to Kerrville in the SR22, I set up the S-Tec 55X to fly the vertical portion of the GPS Runway 12 approach to Kerrville. Considering the conditions, it was a tall order. And for the most part, the autopilot did an excellent job of it; as good as any rate-based autopilot could be expected to do. But the 90-degree turn on to the final approach course, which required negotiating a nearly 60-knot change in headwind component, was a real challenge, and the unit commanded two good-sized correction turns as it narrowed down the focus on the desired track. A couple more, much smaller corrections and we were on course. And once we were, the 55X did a good job of holding course, even given the strong turbulence that day.

A couple of hours later when I flew the same approach, only this time in the GFC 700-equipped Ovation3, the difference was compelling. The GFC 700 made the track course change and had us flying down the final approach course with no hunting at all. Unlike with rate-based autopilots, there was no waiting or wondering involved, just a solid, predictable intercept and new track. And on altitude level offs, the performance of the new Garmin autopilot was equally impressive, smoothly and efficiently beginning the level off at just the right time. In fact, the process took me a little getting used to, as I was a little concerned the autopilot was going to miss the pre-selected altitude, but it didn’t. The difference is that, unlike some other popular autopilots, it keeps the climb at an optimum rate until it needs to back off to hit the target, which is does with precision.

The high-end auto-flight package is nice to have because the Ovation3 is a fast airplane. At high-speed cruise at 8,000 feet, with the power set at 2700 rpm, max manifold and mixture set for best power, the Ovation3 can achieve 197 knots. With the power pulled back to 2550, the cruise drops off by five knots or so, putting it in the same neighborhood as the Ovation2, which is a pretty nice neighborhood, if you’re lucky enough to live there. For pilots who typically cruise below 10,000 feet, the boost in power is a real bonus. And with the optional 130-gallon fuel capacity, you can go a long way down the airways in the ‘3, though the max advertised range of more than 2,400 nm (!) is achieved at an absurdly miserly economy power setting. Still, with the prop dialed up to 2700 rpm and putting 20 gallons an hour through the IO-550, you’d still see around 1,200 miles of no-wind range with VFR reserves, according to my calculations. That’s about as long as I’d ever want to sit in any single-engine airplane.

The speed is nice, but perhaps the biggest improvement comes in climb and runway required, where the combination of the three-bladed prop and the extra rpm add up to significantly improved performance. Mooney claims a takeoff roll of just 900 feet at max takeoff weight and a rate of climb of 1,300 fpm. On my flight we were light, and the gusty conditions made it impossible to get an accurate idea of just how fast we were climbing. But suffice it to say that the 1,300 fpm was well on the low side of what we were seeing on the VSI.

What you don’t get with the Ovation3 enhancement is added weight, so you have the same kinds of limitations in the ‘3 as you do in other Mooneys. Mooney lists the same useful load for the Ovation3 as it does for the standard Ovation2 model. With full standard (102 gallon) tanks, that gives you the ability to carry a couple of reasonably sized adults and a couple of bags.

And in the Ovation3 you’ll do that at high speed. It is, after all, the fastest normally aspirated single-engine piston airplane in production. And with the new Garmin G1000 avionics suite integrated beautifully with the GFC 700 autopilot, you’ll be flying with the same package as you’d get in some pretty cool twinjets.

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