Whoa whoa whoa.... easy there, tiger! We're not mixing girlie cars with Mooneys.

 

You just wait till our BBQ, Eeyore! It'll change your perspective on airplane ownership.

 

Seriously. I flew a Mooney M20J back in college and there was no question it was the muscle car of single engine airplanes. Mustang maybe? Camero? Porsche? But not Miata.

 

Beautiful!

I came within a gnat's a$$ of buying an airplane to commute about a decade ago, and the J bar Mooneys were on the short list.

I looked at a few of them, and they checked off a lot of my requirements.

The Grumman American Tiger was also on the short list. On a sub 150 mile commute, I figured the speed difference would've been offset by the simplicity of fixed pitch, fixed gear. It likely would've come down to whichever I could find a better example of.

In the end, the cost, time savings and logistics hassle for my particular commute wasn't worth it at the time. We even considered buying a place on the local fly in community, which would've at least simplified the logistics on the home end. The closest/easiest airport I could keep it at was 30-40 minutes away, and that trip has gotten longer these days as well. I almost rented a T hangar there because my name came up on the waiting list before I even had an airplane.

117, ironically, made it possible to rearrange my trips into 6 day blocks,which was difficult to do prior, and that sealed the deal.

It got to the point where even commuting twice a month was getting untenable, not to mention that my hometown of over 3 decades was undergoing a rapid transformation from paradise to he!! with palm trees, so we punched out, and like I said, my only regret is not doing a decade sooner.