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Now that prices for aircraft are down (for the moment), I thought it a good time to express some feelings that I have for the Mooney Rocket as I have never seen prices for those anywhere near as low as they are selling for now.

Darwin Conrad owns Rocket Engineering in Spokane Washington, and he was well aware of the strength of the Mooney airplane and coupled with the fact of one of the finest airfoils and airframes out there, he set to work on a 305 Turbo Charged Horse Power conversion for the K model (231 or 252) Mooney only. He designed a wonderful eight point engine mount (stressed to a full 9 G's) to handle the torque as well as the extra weight whereby the engine sat in kind of a cradle, and that replaced the standard four point mount from Mooney. Following the modifications necessary in order to mate the mount to the airframe, they took the engine/propeller combination out of the Cabin Class Cessna 340, the Continental TSIO-520NB engine and using the Cessna prop, it fully feathered even in the Rocket! Why a fully feathering propeller in a single engine aircraft? The Mooney enjoys about the best engine out glide ratio by far of anything in its class: 12.7-1. Should you lose an engine and need the glide; feathering the prop turns the glide into an instant 16-1 at the correct airspeed, so you can depart your home airport, fly sixty nautical miles downrange at your best rate of climb; lose an engine, turn the plane around and feather the prop, and you will land at your point of origin with altitude to spare!

I was checked out in Rocket's by Ken Shoup back in the '90's, and I remember thinking the night before of my concern in flying the Rocket thinking that the 310 HP would push things to the edge of the envelope with little room for error. The Rocket that I was checked out in I think was N231CP which had a vernier throttle which I eased in on take-off and I obviously felt good acceleration and was airborne prior to full throttle because I never "jam" the throttle in on any engine, especially a ferocious engine like the Rocket's, so it was just after liftoff that I got her firewalled. It was then the turbo really kicked in and the acceleration pressed us into our seatbacks.  That part was really cool! I sucked up the gear and flaps, pointed the nose way up and saw initially over 2,000 fpm which it sustained for some time and that was really cool. As you all know; your only friend after liftoff is altitude and this baby can climb!

We got to about 8,000' quicker than I've ever done that and we leveled off and accelerated, and accelerated, and accelerated! We had flown toward Austin and I remember the controller asking me what kind of Mooney Jet was this?! :o) Winds were with us and ground speed was nearing 300 kts at full bore cruise setting. I was all smiles for sure and upon doing some maneuvers, I was convinced that not only was she well within all envelopes, but she handled beautifully and was much quieter than a 201 with 1/3 less HP! Smoooooth for sure and the engine gave a great sense of security.

My only remaining concern was landing thinking that the extra weight of the Rocket engine may cause it to be more nose heavy so I was ready for that, except that in the end it felt no more nose heavy than the standard 231. The reason for that is because Darwin felt the need for some rear ballast, so instead of adding dead weight, he added a second battery which gives you more power for longer should the alternator fail.

During the Rocket conversion heyday, the cost to convert with an zero remanned engine/prop was $69,900.00 plus mandatory speed brakes and hopefully needed long range tanks. Conversion with a factory new engine was ten grand more, so many people had invested over $90K to get all the bells and whistles associated with the conversion, and all Rockets needed paint work on the cowl modifications once converted. The Aircraft Blue Book recognized the value of the added horsepower, so they increased the value of the Rocket substantially unlike another conversion available for the 231, the Trophy 262. That was an expensive mod bringing the 231 up to 252 standards including the 252 engine, but the problem was that it was still only 210 HP, so not much was added to book values.

Mooney Aircraft was non too happy with that conversion as it kicked the crap out of the TLS's 270 HP on a longer and heavier airframe with a top speed at 24,000' of 286 MPH or 248 KTS, quicker still than the new 270 HP Acclaim.

There have been few in flight airframe breakups in a Mooney airplane including a Rocket over stormy mountainous terrain. The doomed pilot got himself into a level five storm, lost control and was radar estimated way over 300 kts near straight down and out of control. He dropped his gear like he should have and hit the speed brakes, again a good move because up until that time, there was no placarded maximum speed to deploy the brakes. Once deployed at that very high speed, the speed brakes blanked out the tail which caused the aircraft to pull some 15 G's which broke the tail right off. The speed brake manufacturer has since limited deployment to the airplane's redline speed via an A.D. Two other breakups were recently pointed out to me and I make this observation and note: There are "L" brackets stabilizing the horizontal stabilizer in Mooney aircraft. Grab hold of the tail plane and see if there is any lateral movement in the tail. If so, those "L" brackets need replacing because under extreme conditions (10-12 G's), the tail could fail. Of course if you're going to pull those type of G's, then your personal "airframe" will most likely fail before the airplane does.

The Mooney Rocket is an amazing airplane to operate, and a very exciting airplane to fly. I have seen one listed for sale recently in the $130K range with good times remaining, and that is about $40K less than the cheaper ones were selling at prior to the decline of the economy. We were selling early 201's and 231's for about that price. I have been through a few downturns in the economy over my 19 years of doing this and the economy has always rebounded, so those who plan ahead should consider purchasing so much bang for the buck while prices are somewhat depressed at the moment.

At full bore cruise, you can expect a fuel burn of 22-24 GPS, a bit less with Gami Injectors installed. However, if you throttle back to 201 or 231 speeds, you will burn only 201 and 231 fuel, so you have an option to go very fast, or to burn less fuel.

If you ever wanted to consider owning a Rocket, let me know and I'll find you the best one out there available, and teach you how to properly fly and operate that bad-boy!

Check out some Rocket specs:

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