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 wasnt 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 Majestys 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 4^th 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 its 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. Its 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