Waypoints

A recent peek into the "skunk-works" at Mooney Aircraft gave me renewed appreciation for this manufacturer that has soldiered on through general aviation's doldrums. While other manufacturers abandoned or ignored their piston products or let their finances get out of control, Mooney has quietly kept turning out rugged, top-performing airplanes. In fact, the factory, located in Kerrville, Texas, has churned out more new models over the last decade than any other manufacturer.

A typical small Texas town, Kerrville is located northwest of San Antonio in the hill country. Driving to the airport from downtown Kerrville, you'll pass by hunting ranches hemming in exotic game animals and hillsides dotted with furry black and brown goats. A collection of gray and blue metal hangars sprawls over a dozen acres or so, each connected to the next with dirt paths worn smooth over the 42 years since Al Mooney moved his then-young company from Wichita. Ever since, the sleek singles (and even a twin-engine prototype years ago) have lifted off the runways and headed to all points on the globe, making the name Mooney synonymous with speed and efficiency. You'll find no steel-and-glass Taj Mahal headquarters here. Executive offices are scattered across a couple of weather-worn one-story buildings. There is a plan afoot to consolidate the offices in a new building, although you get the sense that designing and manufacturing airplanes takes precedence here. Investment in new buildings comes only as the cash flow allows.

Considering all the new models out of Mooney in the last decade, it's obvious the company has been too busy to build new offices. Since 1987, the new models have included the Porsche-powered PFM, the TLS (and now the TLS Bravo with improved engine cooling), and the Ovation. The mainstay Mooney over the years has been the MSE, the speedy and simple 200-hp model using the "short-body" fuselage.

When not introducing new models, Mooney has kept its engineering staff busy developing improved interiors and redundant systems for all the models.

These days, subcontracting makes up a significant portion of Mooney's revenue, with the biggest customers being Boeing, Lockheed, Bell Helicopter, de Havilland, and E-Systems. Among the biggest contract jobs is rebuilding the aging tail surfaces of the Navy's P-3 Orion fleet. The aircraft's horizontal tail is about the size of a Mooney wing.

In a sense, the new Mooney in development is a return to the company's roots. Like earlier models, the new Encore will be eking remarkable performance out of only 220 horsepower. With a projected cruise of 210 KTAS, it's the sort of performance many of today's pilots associate only with kitbuilt aircraft — but in this case, no assembly is required and batteries are included.

The Encore is actually a modernized version of the 252, which was last produced in 1990. To create the 252, Mooney engineers strapped an intercooled, turbocharged 210-hp Continental TSIO-360 engine to the short-body Mooney fuselage to economically deliver 200-knot cruise speeds up into the flight levels. Many Mooney enthusiasts will state that the 252 was the best aircraft the company ever built. The new Encore squeezes another 10 hp out of the same engine because of a change to the wastegate controller and other modifications to the engine setup. Most significant from the 252, the Encore comes with a 200-pound maximum gross weight increase, giving the modern variant a full-fuel, well-equipped payload of 650 pounds, versus about 400 pounds for the typical 252. To receive the weight change, Mooney had to do a new structural analysis of the airframe. Among the changes are beefed-up landing gear and engine mounts.

During my mid-March visit, the engineering staff was conducting propeller trials. The 252 flew behind a two-blade McCauley propeller. In developing the Encore, the company is testing that same prop against a three-blade MT prop, a two-blade Hartzell scimitar prop, and two other two-blade McCauleys. Thomas A. Bowen, director of engineering, admitted the white MT prop looks great, but he acknowledged that engineering would not concede one knot to looks. The winner will be the prop that allows the airplane to go the fastest — period. Well, maybe one caveat to that, according to Bowen. The new airplane must meet the tough European noise requirements. That could mandate a slightly less efficient prop in favor of lower noise.

To measure true performance, the airplane is equipped with a torquemeter during testing. The torquemeter at the prop shaft allows the test pilots to see exactly the horsepower the engine is producing. That, along with sensitive airspeed indicators and careful corrections for atmospheric conditions, allows the engineers to accurately compare one prop's performance to another's.

It seems only natural that flight test airplanes have an X in the registration number, and sure enough, the Encore prototype does. With the torquemeter hanging out front and "the bird" — a long pitot tube — sticking out of the left wing, N20XK, painted a bright white with black numbers, seemed to beg Bowen and me to don flight suits and helmets as we prepared to board. We resisted the urge.

As I climbed on the wing, Bowen felt obligated to remind me that this was a work in progress and that I was only the third person to fly the airplane, and the first outside of Mooney staff. Inside, the fuselage was strung with cables and flight test equipment. Aside from the two front seats, the interior was bare, although the panel was mostly stock MSE.

The engineers were still tweaking the fuel flows, and the Continental was reluctant to start at first, but perseverance and a strong battery paid off.

Thanks to the absolute pressure controller on the turbo system, the pilot needn't worry about overboosting. During takeoff, I shoved the throttle to the panel and watched fuel flows jump to an engine-cooling 27 gallons per hour. The weight of the torquemeter hanging ahead of the engine and just behind the prop prevented me from wracking the airplane around much, but the handling during the climb to 10,500 feet was typical Mooney. And why not? There is no change to the flight control system from the stock MSE. In the climb, oil temperature never rose above 160 degrees Fahrenheit, about the center of the green arc. Cylinder head temps stayed comfortably in the 370- to 380-degree range.

Even with all the flight test gear hanging in the breeze, the prototype easily ascended at better than 1,000 fpm right to 10,500 feet. There, at 75-percent power the speed climbed to 170 KTAS on 14.5 gph. At 67 percent power, the speed dropped to 161 KTAS on 12.4 gph. The flight manual predicted a burn of only 11.7 gph, further convincing Bowen that the fuel flows were set too high. With the test gear and only climbing to 10,500 feet, we had no expectations of seeing the max cruise of 210 knots on 13 gph that the company hopes to achieve with the production prop up in the flight levels.

With only 30 of an expected 200 flight-test hours completed when I flew the airplane, Bowen has lots to do before the expected first deliveries in early June. The first seven or eight Encores will go out the door as stock 252s — the same prop, 210 hp, and weights as the old model. Later in the summer, when the paperwork is all done, Mooney will retrofit those airplanes free to the new Encore status, including dialing up the engine to 220 hp, increasing the max gross weight by 200 pounds, and, if necessary, swapping the 252 prop for a new variant. Dirk Vander Zee, Mooney's vice president of sales, explained that the initial deliveries will allow the company to begin to recover some of the cash laid out for the Encore flight test program — a necessary consideration for a small manufacturer.

Pricewise, the Encore, with its equipped price of $324,950, will compete with the Ovation at $319,950. The MSE comes in at $250,000, while the TLS Bravo rounds out the top at $389,000. After several years of price increases, Mooney CEO Bing Lantis says that the models are now turning a profit and prices will likely stabilize for a while.

The Encore isn't the only project in the Mooney skunkworks. Tucked away in a corner is the gray-and-white fuselage of the EFS, a two-place model developed to compete in the U.S. Air Force flight screener program in the early 1990s. The Slingsby Firefly eventually won that competition. Vander Zee, though, believes there's a civilian market for the sporty two-seat Mooney with its glass canopy and control sticks instead of yokes. To test the market reaction, Mooney plans to equip the airplane with a 300-hp Lycoming IO-580 engine and have it flying in time to show it at Oshkosh. The model will be capable of positive-G aerobatics and certified in the utility category only — if it makes it to market at all.

Don't be put off by the staid gray buildings at the end of the lane at Kerrville Municipal Airport. Inside there's always something new going on at Mooney Aircraft.