Mooney M20M Bravo
The Mooney M20M Bravo is a high-performance turbocharged single-engine piston aircraft produced by Mooney International Corporation. It is part of the long-body Mooney M20 family and is known for its high cruise speed, efficient airframe, retractable landing gear, and distinctive vertical tail design.
This page documents the FlightGear implementation of the Mooney M20M Bravo, an open-source aircraft addon currently under development.
Overview
- Aircraft type: Single-engine piston
- Engine: Lycoming TIO-540-AF1B
- Developer: Philips
- Flight dynamics model: JSBSim
- Development status: Alpha / early development
- Source code: https://github.com/philip2012/Mooney-M20M
FlightGear Implementation
The FlightGear Mooney M20M Bravo project is an open-source aircraft developed using the JSBSim flight dynamics model. Development is currently focused on building a correct and stable aircraft baseline before deeper tuning and detailed systems work.
At the current stage, the project includes:
- Aircraft directory structure and addon packaging
- JSBSim FDM baseline
- Metrics, mass balance, aerodynamics, ground reactions, and external reactions
- Flight control definition
- Starter propulsion stack
- Successful aircraft loading in FlightGear
- Baseline static FDM sanity checks
- Baseline control-chain sanity checks
The current implementation is still an early baseline and should not yet be considered a fully tuned or feature-complete simulation of the M20M Bravo.
Current Development Focus
Current development focuses on:
- Runtime validation of the JSBSim baseline
- Engine and propeller behavior testing
- Aerodynamic coefficient refinement
- Ground handling refinement
- Continued model integration
Planned Development
Future development will include:
- Accurate flight dynamics tuning against real-world reference data
- Improved turbocharged piston engine and propeller modeling
- Retractable gear system logic and animation
- Cockpit instrumentation
- Electrical and fuel systems
- Performance tuning to better match POH reference data
Development
The project is developed as a community addon for FlightGear. The aircraft source files and development history are maintained in a public GitHub repository.
Repository:
https://github.com/philip2012/Mooney-M20M
