Airtest-Mooney M20R Ovation

The Mooney Aircraft Corporation has a 40 year reputation for producing moderately powered but highly efficient speed machines.

While other manufacturers used big, heavy, thirsty engines to go faster, Mooney stuck with fewer horses, relying on sleekness and low frontal area to attain high speeds. But now they have fitted Continental’s big, eight litre, six cylinder engine to their new, 280hp (210kW) M20R Ovation, making it the most powerful Mooney of all. The result is performance that trounces every other aircraft in its class (normally-aspirated four seat retractables) by nearly 20kt (37km/h), exceeds the turbocharged Mooney TLS’s speeds at lower levels, and even beats many twins.

Since the French took over, the company first broadened and then refined its product range, trimming it to just three models. The $US155,000 entry level aircraft is the perennial short bodied, 200hp (185kW) Mooney 201, now renamed the MSE. Top of the line is the $US265,000, 270hp (200kW) turbocharged TLS, a long bodied, high speed stratospheric interstate boomer requiring its occupants to breathe oxygen for efficient cruising, but achieving a prodigious 223kt (413km/h) at its 25,000ft ceiling. To plug the gap between these models the TLS’s fuselage was mated with Continental’s IO-550G engine, producing the mid-range Ovation.

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