This was posted on the Mooney Mailing List earlier today by the co-pilot of a Mooney Ovation2.  It is posted here without permission (I believe none is needed).  There are a few lessons here for everyone flying any airplane.  These include: Fly the airplane, get training, plan for the unexpected, land first and ask questions later and fly at a high enough altitude that when there is a problem, you have options.  With all of this, you improve your odds of having a good outcome in a bad situation.  "Good fortune" in such situations is usually (but not always) created by our own actions and decisions, and I am not talking about karma.

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Our instructor has always told us, an emergency landing is not if, it's when. Today it happened to us.

We were flying from Dallas to Austin-Lakeway this afternoon, a flight we've done hundreds of times. We were at 10,000 feet due to the building cumulus clouds, on an IFR flight plan in VFR weather, and roughly just west of Temple, talking to Gray Approach (Killeen-Ft. Hood area). Suddenly the engine gave a big shudder & the engine stopped. Our engine analyzer showed #4 & #6 cylinders at zero. My husband Bob was flying & I was doing radio & co-pilot stuff. We immediately decided to land -- though we didn't know the engine had effectively stopped, Bob knew he wasn't getting any power. I called ATC, told them the situation & that we wanted to land NOW. In retrospect, we failed to use the Emergency word, but ATC immediately gave us a vector to the nearest airport & acted as tho it was. We had already decided Killeen was our best target, from our GPS, & ATC confirmed that. It was a great sight to see it right in front of us. We actually had to make 3 turns over the field to reduce our altitude, then landed safely on a 5500 foot runway. The prop froze on our rollout, but we were able to coast off the runway & even off the taxiway next to a hangar. ATC had alerted the field, so they greeted us with official cars & the fire truck. Usually they are not there on Saturday, but were there because they were expecting New Orleans refugees. We tied down the plane & were able to get a rental car from the nearby airline airport to get to Austin.

Now we're wondering what happened to our wonderful bird. We are so fortunate that our training paid off, the weather was VFR, we had plenty of altitude & an airport was nearby. The mind boggles at the alternatives. When it all went wrong, it happened astonishingly fast. We flew the plane, & attempted all the usual restarts in logical order. However, the engine was running really rough & the analyzer was telling us it wasn't a typical restart problem. We did have good oil pressure. Engine temps were falling because the engine wasn't producing power. I think our best decision was to land NOW and communicate the same to ATC.