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 In 1964 I flew up to Vermont to go skiing in my ’53
TriPacer. Coming back I met another pilot at the airport who had a Mooney. We
were both heading south. I left first and was cruising along at my standard
110 mph at about 3000’ and he blasted by me like I was standing still. I was
smitten. From that day on I just had to have my own Mooney.
We moved from Connecticut to Tucson in 1972 (without the
TriPacer) but always thought – some day. I started a company in ’78 and my
business was all over the country. That gave me the reason to start thinking
about my dream Mooney again. In 1980 I found a nice ’68 Ranger that was just
what I was looking for. After getting checked out for insurance purposes in
the Mooney, I was off flying all over the country doing business. That first
year, I put 450 hours on the Mooney. The ’68 was a good plane, but traveling
like I was, I could justify a new Mooney.
I ordered a new ’81 201 with a full Silver Crown and
autopilot. The special paint job was an added touch. I was one happy pilot.
The problem was it was probably built on a Monday morning. It turned out to be
a lemon. It spent 3 of the first 5 months in the shop with engine, electrical
and avionics problems. I never did get it straightened out before having an
engine failure on takeoff and landed (crashed) in the salt marches on Long
Island Sound in Connecticut. Seems the factory never adjusted the gas tank
O-ring seal on the left tank and it leaked almost 2 quarts of water into it
during a rainstorm.
It wasn’t all bad. With only 80 hours on the tack, the
plane was totaled and I was not injured. The insurance company bought me a
brand new Mooney 201 in ‘82, which we still have. This Mooney has been great
and now has 3500 hours.
I use this plane extensively for business flying. My
business takes me all over North America. I have made about 50 trips to the
East Coast from Tucson in it, many times made New Haven in just one day. I
have made maybe half that many trips to at least the Mississippi River.
 Two years ago I had projects in Anchorage and Fairbanks,
Alaska that I had to inspect. My wife “Jo” and I flew up following the Alcan
Highway all the way to White Horse. Then instead of flying direct to
Anchorage, we went south to Skagway, then west to the Pacific, then we
followed the coast past all the glaciers emptying into the Pacific to
Anchorage. This was the most magnificent flying trip we have ever taken. The
scenery was every thing we ever expected to see. And instead of just seeing
one glacier like they do on a cruise, we seen them all. It was also the
loneliest flying trip we ever took. We flew about 600 miles with only one
airport (Skagway) on the way. The coast has some small strips, maybe 1000 feet
and un-maintained. You could probably land but not take off from them. We did
business in Anchorage for a week, and when we got ready to fly to Fairbanks,
the smoke from the forest fires were so bad it was solid IFR all the way and
flight service strongly recommended we not go there unless it was a life or
death situation. We took their suggestion and headed back home. We had to file
IFR to get out and were on the gauges in smoke for about 6 hours until getting
in the clear at Fort Nelson. The Mooney was completely covered with brown goo
when we landed. The airport let me wash the smoke residue off the plane saying
if I did not get it when it was fresh, I may never get it off.
This year in January I had business to do in New England
and in Puerto Rico. One of my long cherished dreams was to fly the Caribbean
in the Mooney. We decided to island hop, stopping at out of the way places
when possible to get a real flavor of the islands. The Mooney has an economy
cruise range of over 1000 miles but we decided we should make our stops about
every 500 miles. We had never flown over any waters longer than crossing over
Lake Michigan after Oshkosh so these long over water legs were of concern. We
borrowed two life vests, a portable radio, and even a spare Garmin 295. I laid
out our IFR flight plan to fly the “over the island route” through the
Bahamas. About 10 miles off shore, Center gave me a change in routing, and
said head directly to Beech Intersection. I acknowledged and never did find
Beech. After wandering around for 15 minutes, Center came back on line and
said since I had decided not to go to Beech, head directly to Stella Maris,
about 350 miles away and over water all the way. Now I was concentrating so
hard on navigating, I completely forgot about the typical imagined “auto
rough” engine problems that occur when land lubbers like us experience when
out of sight of land.
 That kind of broke the ice for us, as we did not think
about the engine again on the entire trip. Our first stop was Inagua, the last
gas stop in the Bahamas. It is a rarely used over night stop because it has no
hotels, restaurants, or even a good reason to stay there, but we did. And it
was wonderful. We found a room to stay at, ate carry out food from a local
kitchen, did find a bar to wet our whistle at, and visited the only plant on
the island – Morton Salt. We even paid the cab driver extra to take us to the
famous Flamingo breeding grounds, and we never seen one. Later when having a
drink at the bar, another patron laughed when I told him we did not see any
flamingos he told us you have to be there before down to see them. This guy
was black, in a cut off shirt and shorts, sandals, and introduced himself as “His Majesty’s High Commissioner” for Inagua. When I asked him what that
meant, he said mater of fact that he was the top dog on the island. We had a
ball buying each other beers.
Our next stop was Puerto Rico where we stayed for several
days. We completed our business and did tour the island, which was very
pleasant. There is a general aviation airport almost downtown, which was quite
easy to fly in and out of.
From Puerto Rico back to Tucson it is almost a toss up
whether to go back by way of Florida, or go on to Aruba and Panama and go up
through Central America back to Tucson. We choose the Aruba route. The only
plane trouble we had on the entire trip occurred, as we were getting ready to
depart from San Juan – my GPS locked up. I was able to get the spare unit out
and up quickly so we were not delayed in leaving and meeting our departure
window.
 
Our next stop was a satellite island of Guadalupe called
Marie Galente. It did not have any seaport facilities that could accommodate
the huge tour boats, which could inundate a town when they disgorge their 2 or
3 thousand passengers. The island is French and off the beaten path for
tourists. In fact, the airport controller came down from his tower to shake
our hands and told us he had been on the island for 33 years and we were the 3
and 4th Americans he had ever met. We stayed there for 2 days with
many interesting happenings to remember the island by.
From there we went on to Granada, Aruba and to Panama
staying in each place 2 days. It was just enough to see the sights and enjoy
them.
 We had been to Panama with the Baja Bush Pilots in ’01 and were glad to
visit the Panama City again and watch the boats pass thru the Panama Canal
locks. They are almost a hundred years old and still are amazing. New larger
locks are going to be built to handle even larger ships.
We headed northwest from Panama making El Salvador our
next stop. We had not been there before and even though it is a third world
country, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay. Mexico was our last country to visit
and it takes almost two days to travel the whole distance. Re-enter the U.S.
at Nogales was easy but the customs agent was taken back when he asked us the
last U.S. territory we left from and we said Puerto Rico. He said that was a
first for him.
Flying though the Caribbean is quite easy with no
notification required of any kind except filing a flight plan. Paper work is
pretty simple and quick. Central America is another story. They claim you need
to give prior notice of arrival but it’s almost impossible to figure out how
to do that. We just arrived by flight plan and it was no problem. You do have
to go through customs, flight service, immigration, the airport commandant,
etc. it takes almost an hour coming in and leaving. Its not a hassle, just
needs to be done. We had no problems anywhere, were not asked for any tipping
and did not offer any except when given good service. Some airports like Aruba
and Panama City have “handlers” who make life a lot easier. They got us to the
correct offices, walked our papers through, arranged for our plane to be
serviced, made hotel reservations and even put us in a cab to the hotel. They
were worth it. We even got airline crew rates at the hotels, which just about
made us come out even.
Skiing is another passion. We usually fly up to Durango
to do our skiing. We fly up on a Sunday afternoon, ski until Wednesday
afternoon, fly back to Tucson, and I am back in work on Thursday. It’s only a
two-hour flight and we have it down to a pattern. We call into the Unicom when
we are about 15 minutes out, they call the motel that sends a van over to pick
us up and we can get to the hotel in time for the happy hour at 5 pm.
We do the whale-watching thing in Baja every year. We
usually stay in Mulege or Loreto, which are only a 2-˝ hour trip from Tucson.
Going through customs in Mexico is easy once you get the hang of it. I have
never been hassled in Mexico or paid anything extra to make things easier.
 
We do go to Oshkosh every other year with the Mooney
Caravan. Camping out with 50 or so other Mooney pilots naturally leads all
conversations into Mooneys. Jo still thinks a tent should have a flush toilet
so going every year may be pushing my luck too much.
Our Mooney has just gotten a new paint job and interior
recover. It makes me feel like I have a new plane. The 201, with the 200 h.p.
engine is the best of the best. We usually cruise in the 9 to 13 thousand foot
range, set the prop at 22 or 2300 rpm, set the throttle full, lean to 25
degrees rich, and have gotten 150 knots and 8-9 gph at altitude on many trips.
Ozzie & Jo Kaufmann
April 2007 |
