Latest / Flyer Magazine / The End of the Bonanza - The FLYER Show - 27 November 2025

Transcript

The End of the Bonanza - The FLYER Show - 27 November 2025 · Flyer Magazine

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_05: Hello and welcome to this week's Flashway from Watch Week.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_05: My name's Ian Seeger, I'm Ed Hicks, and I'm Dave Gorderwood.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_05: In this week's show we'll be talking about the big news, which is Textron Hoof Sunset, the Bonanza and Baron.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_05: Both news, both news, both news.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um but first of all, we would like to say a huge thank you to Sky Demon for supporting the show, and here is this week's top tip.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Hannah from Sky Demon, and this is this week's top tip.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: In a previous video, I've spoken about creating checklists in Sky Demon.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've created some checklists as part of your aircraft profile, you might like to copy them to your other aircraft or share them with other people.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: To copy a checklist to another aircraft profile, select it and tap Copy to Aircraft.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then select the other aircraft profile in your library and it will be copied across.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Checklists are part of your aircraft profile, so to have them on other mobile devices, tap the Sync with Cloud button at the top of the aircraft library.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then sync again on your other devices.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can also share an aircraft profile containing your checklists with someone else by email.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just tap on the aircraft in the library and choose send by email.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The recipient of the email will just need to tap on the aircraft attachment for the option to add it to their library in Sky Demon.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, go to our website skydemon.arrow.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: So there you go.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Checklists and shareable ones.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's nice that you can make your own and you can share them.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: Quite useful.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_05: Particularly quite often you get a group of people flying the same aircraft and they've all got different checklists.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_05: Good, good news.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_05: Well done, Sky Demon.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: That sounded a bit patronizing.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_05: Wasn't meant to be genuinely well done.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: Shall we uh see what Simon has in store for us this week?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh this this coming weekend with the weather.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_04: I'm hoping it's going to be nice.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_05: Fingers crossed.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it is the end of November, isn't it?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_05: So I know.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's not supposed to be that nice around here anyway.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_05: Not brought to you from Wadswick in Florida, unfortunately.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um but yeah, anyway.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Evening all hope that you're well this evening.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Bit of a mixed weekend, uh, weather-wise ahead.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is again from the icon EU model.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh quite a good one for aviation forecasting, pretty accurate and quite high resolution, which is why I've been using it for the last few weeks.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the times of the charts up here, top right hand corner, and we're looking at forecast rainfall.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Effectively, it's a forecast radar.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've got isobars on there as well, and we've got cloud.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: The white areas are cloud, the black areas are where we're free from cloud.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Friday morning, windy across Scotland, some pretty heavy showers, merging to more persistent rain, central and western Scotland, further area of showers across western and southwestern parts of Wales getting into south west England.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Notice that area of showers passes through the Midlands and southern England during the course of Friday, clearing away from East Anglia and the far southeast late on Friday afternoon.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: At the staying time, further areas of rain and showers moving south through Ireland and into northwest England.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So really messy picture there.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Not great as we go through the course of Friday, but improving across southern Wales, southwest, central, and southern England during Friday afternoon as the rain and showers clear away.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as we get in towards Saturday, so we're going to be finding what looks like another area of rain that moves through Southern Ireland and then through um northern parts of Wales as we get in towards Saturday morning.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to push an area of rain north and east.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Some of this rain is going to be heavy, it's going to become windy as well.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that rain moving its way north and east as the low area does as well.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And really, for many of us, it's by Saturday afternoon.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be wet, much of northern England, southern Scotland, eastern Ireland, western Wales.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: But as you can see, should improve a little bit with the bases coming up to about 3,000 feet, tops about 10,000 feet across parts of the Midlands and southwest England.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Also a better day across Scotland, particularly northwestern Scotland, although always a fair amount of cloud in the east and across northeastern Scotland as well.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then getting in towards Sunday, the area of low pressure is still with us.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's reluctant to clear away.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And by the middle of the day on Sunday, the fronts associated with it are across northern England, across parts of western Wales, into southwest England as well.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Generally non-VFR conditions here, and bases are going to be less than a thousand feet hill fog as well.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: 12,000 foot tops.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Some cloud again for northeast Scotland, one or two showers, but western Scotland, much of Ireland look okay.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And probably actually it's not that bad across central and eastern parts of England, with lighter winds here.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Two to three thousand foot bases, tops probably at around 10,000 feet.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So um Sunday, this despite that low pressure, may not be so bad.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just keep your eye though on the official forecasts as we get through the weekend.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of subtle changes taking place in this, particularly in regards to the position of that area of low pressure.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want to learn more about spotting weather windows yourself and being able to forecast using the charts like I've just shown you and forecast things like cloud bases and tops and visibility, this is your chance.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: My aviation weather school is going to be held on the Tuesday evenings of the 2nd and the 9th of December.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is going to be my live online course presented entirely by me over those two Tuesday evenings.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I will show you how to plan five days in advance.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'll get you flying more, I'll get you flying more safely.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can book your place on the course now.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is the final call.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want one of the places that remain, and I think there are two at the moment that are remaining, then uh get to weatherschool.co.uk uh or use the QR code you see there and book your place now.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Be absolutely super to see you there.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have a fab fab couple of evenings together, and you'll get a recording of each of those sessions to watch for up to a week after the sessions too.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um in fact, I've had some pilots who just don't attend the live sessions, they just watch the recordings uh and then ask any questions they need to um uh during uh during having watched those sessions.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So get away the school.co.uk, book your place now, and uh have a fab, have a safe flying weekend.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Bye for now.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_05: Well, there you go.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's the weather.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, time for some news.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the big news of the week.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_05: Big news of the week.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, and that's me.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, as Ian hinted at at the beginning of the show, uh 80 years of production of the Beechcraft Bonanza is about to come to an end.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: And not only that, they're taking the Baron with it too, which is the uh Beechcraft's piston twin.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh basically, Beach has decided that um orders for both aeroplanes slowly drying up, and actually they want the production capability in their factory to build the um Denali turbine twin, which is thoroughly boring and sorry, turbine single even.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, actually, to concentrate they can concentrate on building the turbine twin, which is the King Air, and their um their turbine single, which is the new Denali, which I I wrote.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I wrote new in my notes and realized actually they've been on that for ages.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, there was a couple of famous things where they bought like fuselar stuff around.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_05: Then there was like press conferences at Oshkros that Endless.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_05: They they forgot to cancel, so everyone turned up and there was no press conference at future.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_04: If you need an example of how long certification takes, have a look at the denali.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, um basically sales of um uh the the Bonanza and the Baron, they in 2024 they fell to just five G36s and two Barons.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: And um the Beechcraft uh textrons say we're going to continue with spares and support, but basically, once production of the current bunch of orders ends, that's it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_05: So well, as you can imagine, we've kind of dedicated this uh this week's show to the Beechcraft Bonanza and Baron.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so there's a lot more to come on that after the news, because you know, frankly, it's the aircraft, the bonanza of the aircraft that's been in non-stop production for the longest time, 80 years.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um, right.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_05: So what's the next news story?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_05: That's me, I see.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_05: So the next news story is that the Civil Aviation Authority are about to mess once more with the PMD, the Pilot Medical Declaration.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_05: It seems that a little while ago they kind of said that you could instruct and you could be a CRI with a PMD instead of a Class II medical.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_05: And as a result, a whole load of people went, you need an ANO license here, navigation order license rather than a part of FCO license for that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um a whole load of people said, Can you reissue my ANO license, please?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_05: And the CA kind of went, we better look at this and see what's going on.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: So they've announced a consultation coming out because they are minded to remove that um allowance there and to make basically all instructors, CRIs, etc., uh go with a class two medical instead of a PMD.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: And just a reminder, if you didn't know, this is kind of linked to the fact that as we all get a bit older, the CA medical department have um, contrary to much medical opinion, decided to suggest strongly that people go and get a stress ECG, which results in large chunks of money being spent uh on a regular basis.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: And according to some medical experts, for no reason, no good reason, no good statistics whatsoever.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um so it's kind of their own fault.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_05: So they're launching a consultation and they've actually put on their website, yes, you can do this at the moment, but uh beware this may be removed in future.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: This sounds like one of those consultations the CA loves to have, where they're gonna do what they want to do anyway.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_05: I'm I am pretty sure that the C have decided on the outcome of this.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm pretty sure this the It's like they go destination identified.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: Consultation.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's just one of the things that uh that it says here we have to run a consultation.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, we'll do that.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we'll just make sure we don't get an answer that we don't like.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_05: Hold on, is it the words stakeholder feedback?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_05: Stakeholder feedback.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_05: But uh so I suspect that's gonna happen.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Big thing about the ECG stress test, the doctor makes a decision based on what they call the Q risk.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And what, in other words, uh based on your age and blood pressure and some other factors, uh what is the chance of you uh having a heart attack?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's find out.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Let's find out.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_05: The other thing is the the the stats they're using, they're applying the same statistics and requirements for class one medicals as they are for class two medicals, which is which is not the case anyway.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's it's a whole anyway, that that's what's happening in the PMD.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: I I mean the PMD I think is probably one of the best things that the Civil Aviation Authority, one of the most forward-thinking does that they've done in a long, long time.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_05: I should emphasize that this they're not thinking of making that change with regards to other areas, so like microlites and sailplanes and balloons.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_05: That'll still be viable with a PMD.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Medicine is meant to be f an evidence-based uh science.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, moving on.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Some good news.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Applications for the Air League's 2026 flying scholarships are about to open next Tuesday, in fact, uh the 2nd of December.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Did you know that over the past decade the Air League has awarded more than 2.5 million pounds worth of scholarships?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_05: That that is uh that's astounding.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: It is astounding.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And uh they're making some little few changes this year in in the 2026 ones to encourage people into aviation careers, such as pilots, engineers, and other sorts of aviation professionals, they call it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um anyway, there are four flying scholarships up for up for grabs.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: There are well groups of four.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's three-hour introductory flying scholarships, a five-hour intermediate flying scholarships, a 12-hour advanced flying scholarships.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's really aimed at the people who really are going to make it a career.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: And there's an electric flying scholarship in a Pipistral.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Pipistal.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Velis Electro.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: Very good.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that that might be the only might be the only um electric scholarship, I think, in the world, isn't it?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_04: I can't think of another one.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I can't think of another one, no.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_05: Me neither.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: There you go.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: We'll claim that as the first, shall we?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_05: Jolly good.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that kind of wraps up the news, I think.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: So it's time to move to the meat of this week's show, which is the whole texture on beechcraft, bonanza, barren thing.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_05: We sent Dave down to Henstridge with Henry, cameraman Henry, to go check out where it all began.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_05: So let's have a look at that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: By God, that's what we should build.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: So said Water Beach.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was November 1944.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: World War II was still being fought.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Beach was staring at a sketch of a new aeroplane on designer Ralph Harmon's desk.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Harman and a few of his colleagues have been coming in in their spare time to work up ideas for a new aircraft.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Later that day, Ted Wells, who is the vice president of Beachcraft and chief engineer, after talking to Waldo Beach, went along to Harman's desk and had a look at the same sketch.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's it, you got a great idea, Ralph, said Ted.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And apparently he said, this is a modern aircraft.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we should build.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently, that conversation actually happened.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you can imagine pilots coming back from World War II, where they've been flying fighters or bombers or transport aircraft, they've got the skills as a pilot, they want to put them to use.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And what's on offer to them?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Mostly pre-war aircraft.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them fabric and steel tube, others maybe even wood.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: But and they would have had old-fashioned engines and old-fashioned interiors.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And here they were looking at something that was brand new: a genuine four-seater, all metal, which retracted with undercarriage, nose wheel, modern interior avionics, and a powerful six-cylinder engine up front.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, that VTail is a combination of a rudder and an elevator, and they call it a rudder vator, and it's said to offer less drag and be lighter.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: So the aircraft that Beechcraft ended up producing was the Beechcraft Model 35, known as the Bonanza.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: A revolutionary aircraft when it first went on sale in 1947, less than two years after it first flew on the 22nd of December 1945.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been in production ever since.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell how cold I was at?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_05: Freezing.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: Henry over there is only just thought out.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_05: There you go.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_05: Right, so that that was the beginning.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_05: Ed, what what happened after that?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_04: So I think it's fair to say that you don't get success like the bonanza and 80 years of production if you haven't hit on an amazing combination.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_04: You've uh it's all the right thinking.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like you said in that intro, you know, Walter Beach looked at that design and went, that is the airplane we need to be making.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and at that it was at a time when Beach and their equivalent business airplane, they were still making the stagger wing, the G model stagger wing, which um the bonanza could go as fast as on much less horsepower, much less purchase costs.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, and much less running costs.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um and it was uh Walter definitely had the vision for going, you know, if we're going to sell this airplane long-term wise, it needs to be a business product, marketed as the businessman.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: You know, he doesn't want to be crammed into a into a rag and tube airplane.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_04: He needs a vehicle that that suits suits his needs.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and basically they set out to create something that was um most advanced, most, you know, drag efficient, um, and um, you know, most attractive for its time.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: So um what is amazing, and probably one of the reasons that the bonanza has existed for so long, is when uh once Beach had designed the bonanza, when they went to make it, they committed to what they call grade A tooling.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_04: And grade A tooling is the it's like if you go, we're gonna make lots of aeroplanes on this, so it's the highest quality tooling.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_04: And rumour has it that if you go to the Beechcraft factory now, even now you can find some tools, and all of this tooling has uh inspection logbooks, and some of those tools have inspection logbooks that go back to 47.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_05: Let's let's hope that they're somehow protected and put in a museum or something.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you you go, that's not that's not the sort of thing that a bean counter would go, it's just scrap, get rid of it.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I remember reading one of my favourite books, the whole Ben Rich SR71 book, when the SR71 stuff was cancelled.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_05: That order that was kind of faxed down to just destroy all the tooling so you don't have to no Yeah, yeah.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: So orders, uh there were order 500 orders for VTails placed even before um any of the performance specs were um were released, which is bonkers.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: And 1500 aircraft were ordered uh by the time that deliveries were um were taking place.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_04: And they were the f the whole batch of uh the first 35 models, they only made 1,500.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_04: So they were they were all consigned.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_04: And there was crazy stories of customers going to multiple beechcraft dealers around the US and placing multiple orders because they were desperate to get their hands on them.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh also dealerships placing fake orders because they just wanted to get loads of bonanzas on stock.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh and there was rumors of up to 10 customers um being promised one aeroplane.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um and Beach ended up with a production rate of 12 aeroplanes a day in 47 um to get that under control.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um but it was it was because it was a success.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_04: People were looking at this airplane and going, that is that is the new modern way.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_04: You think uh that was uh they were bought as airliners, they were used by royalty, foreign governments, movie stars, uh, and the wealthy.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and a lot was sold to businessmen.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh which is probably a good time to go, actually, there's the whole Dr.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_05: Lawyer and the Dr.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_05: Killer.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_05: Fork tailed Doctor Killer was a name wasn't probably not part of the beach branding.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_04: No, and it is true, you know, there were a number of accidents uh involving bonanzas, quite often with high-profile people.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and it was that kind of aeroplane that attracted wealthy professionals, uh like doctors, lawyers, uh, who had the means, but not necessarily the capability or experience to safely fly it.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, there were some people who were coming from aeroplanes that were not, you know, that weren't low, you know, low drag and high performance.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I'm guessing a bunch of people were dealing with icing.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe they'd never dealt with icing before.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_05: So um I was looking at some of the stuff that the American Bonanza Society brought out, and they basically said, you know, we hadn't yet figured out how to train people for this kind of stuff.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_05: And a lot of people were going from Eronk champs and to a beat to a bonanza, V tail bonanza.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_05: That's a massive change in capability.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: Um and and they basically people were getting it wrong and you know, exceeding V ⁇ E, I I suspect, at various times.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_05: And aircraft coming apart.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: And other things as well.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean the the the V the V tail model range had an uh the very early ones had a narrow centre of gravity range.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um and it was very easy to exceed and you could load it up and you'd often exceed aft C of G before you'd reach max gross.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and that only got worse on the later models, which uh fun uh which were like 900 pounds heavier than the original design weight.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_04: So um so yeah, there were a whole bunch of factors that played into that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: I mean that that said, you know, because a a similar story has been repeated over the years with with different aircraft.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_05: I think Cessna 310 had the early 310 production had quite a lot of bad accidents.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the the Cirrus in the early days had some.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_05: And then people have discovered that you need to learn to train for those it sounds obvious in retrospect, but it clearly wasn't.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_04: When you have an aeroplane that is that g that captures everyone's imagination, and people go, I want that.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_04: You get this, you you get you just get this huge number of people rushing into stuff.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: Although there was that kind of reputation at the time, once people learnt to fly, it became much safer.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_05: And actually, when you fly a bonanza or a baron, they're really lovely handling aircraft.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_04: Lovely to fly.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_04: Beautiful.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_04: And you think I mean the the basic bonanza package, four you could put four people in it plus baggage, fly 175 miles an hour.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_04: And you could do that on uh just 165 horsepower, which was amazing.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, top speed, 184 miles an hour, friendly stall speed, 55 miles an hour.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_05: So pretty good.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think we actually, while Dave was on at Hen Street, he's got a little bit of extra video here showing how someone who at the time was a relatively low-hour-ish, inexperienced pilot coped with an emergency domestically in the UK pretty damn well.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_05: So here's a here's a beach story that you perhaps weren't expecting.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: This particular aircraft, Golf Alpha Tango Cio Romeo, uh, has got low hours for its year, less than 5,000.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: But they include one very famous moment, but it had to make a false landing on the beach in Worthing, in West Sussex.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: The aircraft was climbing out of Shoreham Airport and was at around a thousand feet when the engine had a big end failure.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Literally, it went bang, and the windscreen was covered in oil.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: The pilot went on to make a textbook forced landing, according to air investigators.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: He trimmed for best glide, opened the cabin door to clear the smoke, made a melee call, and looked around for a place to land.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: This particular stretch of coast is very built up, so there's not a lot of choice, but he's He spotted a clear bit of space on Worthing's beach and decided that was his best choice.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: His actions were spot on.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: He selected full flat, gear down, turned off the fuel electrics, kept a bit of excess speed on in case he needed it closer to the ground.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: But as he was coming in, he spotted a vehicle on the beach moving his way.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: So he decided to ram it into the shingle and stop the aircraft quickly.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Amazingly, only minor injuries to occupants, no one on the ground was injured, and the aircraft itself wasn't too badly damaged.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: The pilot's airmanship was praised by investigators.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_04: So the whole V-tail thing for the bonanza as well did something really important.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to remember that in America, people knew that you learned to fly in a J3 cub.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_04: That was one vision of an aeroplane.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: If you went on an airliner, it was a DC3.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: The bonanza with its V tail gave you a whole, it's like this is another aeroplane.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's like we can identify.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't think it wasn't until the Learjet that we ended up with another aeroplane that is like, that's that, that's that, and that's that, you know.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_04: And now we know it's all just Cessna's.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: Everything's a Cessna.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_04: Everything's a Cessna.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um and in terms of success, Ayn Beach had the market, they they had it to themselves.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_04: That the only thing available in 47 uh initially was the um the North American Navion.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_04: That was the same power, but much slower.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and it wasn't really until uh 1958 when Piper introduced the Comanche, then there was adequate competition.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um Cesna came along with the 210 in 1960.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um until then, the Bonanza pretty much had had this all.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_04: And that is a that's a strong recipe for success.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_05: So when did when did they go from the V tail to the United States?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um in 59, uh Beach uh said, Hey, we'll we can do you a straight uh what we what they called the straight tail aeroplane, the straight-tailed bonanza, and they called it the debonair.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh uh and they gave us gave it a straight tail, and they made it stripped out.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_04: They went, Oh, we'll we'll make a an economy bonanza.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: Turned out no one wants an economy bonanza.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_04: That would be like saying I'll have an economy Rolls-Royce.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um Allegro.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_04: The de the Debonair The Debonair wasn't a success.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um people wanted they wanted fully loaded, fully kitted.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um that was that was definitely a thing.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: So then they came up with what, the was it the 35 afterwards?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_05: Then the 36, wasn't it?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so yeah, the the 36 was um was six seats um with uh the big club door, club seating inside, and there was turbocharged versions of that.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh there was even I even read that there was gonna Beach at one point had a pressurized T-tail version of the Bonanza.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um there was even a turbine.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um there was a there was a well there was an aftermarket turbine with an Allison, but for a time Beach actually had something called the Lightning, uh, which was looked a lot like the Bonanza, but it was actually a barren fuselage with a Garrett turbine on it, uh, but for all intents and purposes, looked like a turbine uh bonanza.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that didn't make it to the uh to the production line.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: You'll not be surprised to hear.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_04: No, indeed.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um so uh if there's one thing that I think sums up the versatility of the bonanza, and probably one of the reasons that it is so uh it's it's so ingrained in the buying psyche for so long.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh there was a guy called Oscar Thomas, he lived in Farmington, New Mexico.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_04: He bought a 1950 uh B-35 bonanza, flew at 12,000 hours in 20 years, um, and he was hauling parts, carrying people, running as an ambulance when people got hurt, uh, all in all in uh support of the oil and gas industry.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, when they couldn't land, he'd uh uh chuck parts and deliveries out the side window, or he'd arrange for someone to throw bigger things out the baggage door.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: When the bottom line is that when you have an aeroplane like that that is so versatile, people love flying it, it can do a job, it's rugged.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's just gonna go on and on and on, and that's how we get to 80 years of bonanza.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_04: And then it doesn't go on anymore.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: And well, and fundamentally that is just that's just an accountant going, well, we're not selling very many of these.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I know that is that's a very sensible decision.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: But they haven't really had had a great deal of investment in the airplane.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: But no, I I think it it's kind of I remember seeing one not that long ago, although in my terms that's probably six, eight years ago somewhere, at one of the shows in America, and there you opened it and it kind of had like crocodile skin seats, and it really felt like it was Americana from the sixties kind of thing.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_04: I I'm trying to remember, yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_05: Was that there was because there's been some It must have been longer than that because it was kind of pre-glass.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: There's been some special edition bananas.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_04: Do you remember there was a type with Jaguar?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_04: There was a Jaguar special edition, yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and then there was the there was the thing I I've never seen it in the flesh other than the kind of on the there was the olive There was the Olivan Beach.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_04: Olivan Beach maybe a year or two ago.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: And it was in her, she had a a powder blue colour, and you could order it in this um I'm not sure if they ever made any of that.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_04: No, I don't think so.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_04: It was a lovely idea.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: But um that was for the 75th anniversary.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_05: I remembered Dave.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Very good.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote the news story at the time.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_05: Excellent, excellent, brilliant.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I think it's time to take a little bit of a break from the from the Beechcraft story.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_05: And we'll go into some club news, and then we'll be back with some more stuff after that.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, uh, in club news, who knows what the landing fees are for the few days that are left in November?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: They are Wolverhampton, Eastshot, Dunklasswall, and Easter Island.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: Easter Island.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_05: Easter Scotland.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: Easter.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: You use them, use them.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_05: And what about December?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_05: We can't.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_04: Carnarvon, Tibbinum, and uh Manchester Barton.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I think there's one more to come for that.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_05: That's I tell you what, that's a cracking.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_05: Let's hope for some cracking weather to go and do some.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_05: Go and do some flying.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_05: That's pretty good.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_05: There's also webinars.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_05: I think we've got 30 or 40 webinars.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and including one from Ed on Air To Air Photography, but there's webinars on pretty much every subject you can think of.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_05: So lots of those existing and to come.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: It costs you just six pounds a month to join flyer.co.uk forward slash membership.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_05: Please join.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_05: We need members to make this all work.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_05: So if you like what we're doing, join.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_04: flyer.co.uk forward slash membership.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_05: That'll be the one.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_05: Go there.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_05: Back to the world of beechcraft.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_05: Do you remember a feature called FancyHanger?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_05: Holly! So uh our fantasy hanger this week is obviously about beechcraft, bonanzas and barons.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, picking your picking your favourite one.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's going away, so we have to put one in our fancy hanger right now.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_05: Let's see.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm up first on this one, and I I was torn between a couple.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: I've gone with, in the end, the F-33C.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_05: That's the aerobatic banana.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, who doesn't want one of those?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_05: You can load stuff in it, you can fly across country, you can stick some of the big tanks on if you wanted to fly a long way across country, but you can also just turn it upside down as well.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_05: You won't turn it upside down with the big tanks and all the fuel in.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_05: That's ignore that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_05: I went off on a bit of a tangent there.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_05: I'll come back to that in a minute.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I reckon and the air the F-33C, you can see little wedges on the wings, which are basically like giant-sized vortex generators, which are there because the uh aerobatic certification requires it to recover uh in a certain amount of time from a six-turn developed spin, and that didn't.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_05: So it does now with those on, which is fantastic.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's not, as some people have suggested, to give you a little table to write the checks to pay all the bills on it.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_05: Not that anyone writes checks anymore.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um I just think it's a fantastic all-round aircraft.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I'm not aerobatic enough personally to want to do sort of serious aeros, but I do like that.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_04: It gave you the capability of doing that.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_04: And there was I there was a big influx, a big influx of those into the UK, wasn't there?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: I think one airline school must have must have been selling their stock.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and I know there was I there was articles in Flyer at the time.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's remarkable, really, that Beach went, yeah, we'll do that.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, imagine if Cessna had gone, we'll make an Aerobatic 182.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: You mean it's not?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_05: What the other aircraft that I would absolutely love to aim would be an A36.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_05: A nice A36.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's a cracking aeroplane.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that is I that's so it was a kind of close second.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: I bet, yeah.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I bet it's out of all the Oshkosh displays, you must love watching Jim Peach.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_05: Jim Peach.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_05: That's just a that's fantastic.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_04: I think that and the Beach 18 display there are kind of like it's funny that there's a lot of people doing aerobatics in non-aerobic display.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_04: Well, no, in aeromatic uh beaches.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: But uh but the Jim Peach display at Oshkosh is just a m that's a marvel of energy management.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_05: It is, it's fantastic, yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I love it.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'd I aspire to be one hundredth as good as that one day.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_05: That's mine.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_05: Dave.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, do you remember a few years ago we used to fly to uh Friedrich Schaffen, the uh the annual show?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: I do uh in a beach barren.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_04: We did that for a couple of years, didn't we?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_04: We did, yeah.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: It was a BE-55.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was and I must admit, the first time I went on this trip, I was very dubious before the flight.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of thought the baron was an impressive, it was an expensive luxury, a fuel guzzler from another era.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, but I completely revised my opinion we because we on that year we were, 2018, uh, we made a short positioning flight from Hensridge, which is where the aircraft was.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: You and I in both did that, over to Gloucester, where we met the rest of the crew, uh, Ed and uh uh and his sales guy.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_05: The sales guy, yeah.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_05: Name I can't remember.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, he um I was watching all these bags because Ed brings along lots of camera gear.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: Simon, the uh the uh sales guy had all his luggage and stuff, and I was thinking, where the hell is all this going in the aircraft?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it swallowed it, um, and we had a fantastic, lovely I had done a weight and balance.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: We had a lovely, fantastic uh VFR flight to Friedrichshaffen.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: The weather was very good that year.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and then of course we made the return trip a few days later.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: Seriously impressed by that airplane.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that was a real it's a real magic carpet.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_04: It is, isn't it?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, just just absolutely fantastic.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_04: An absolutely solid cruiser.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_05: I I I've mentioned it before, I think, but one of my favourite flights of ever since I started flying was in that barren, and that was you know, that was basically wake up in a hotel in Croatia and have breakfast on the balcony looking at Croatian coastal things, take off, land in Grenoble, walk out, have lunch in Grenoble.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, get back in, jump in, land back at Hinstridge in a day.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_05: And and not not one of those stupidly long days where you feel completely wiped out.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_05: Where you pour yourself out of the aeroplane at the end of the day.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_05: Not like that at all.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's absolutely lovely, and it's just such a capable distance shrinker and really nice and comfortable.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And kind of very comfortable in aircraft as well.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_04: Because we did those not they were non-stop flights.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: And a little I think it was uh the shortest might have been three and a half hours, and the the one of them was probably closer to four.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: You did have one hard I IFR flight, didn't you, one year?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't hard IFR, but it was there was some we went IFR, I think the first year we went IFR.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um because the baron was over two tons, you get Euro control charges, which adds sort of another 60 quid an hour, roughly, I think, um then.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_05: So you know, by the time you've added that times eight, you go, oh, that's quite a lot of money.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you know, you pay it because the weather was you needed it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_05: But when we did that flight, the weather was forecast to be lovely.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_05: So I'll go, well, there's no point in that, is it?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_05: We'll just we'll save that money.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_05: Spend that on beer in Friedrichshaven instead.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, just an out just an outstanding uh traveling aeroplane, wasn't it?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_05: Well, there you go.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: So uh I think there you go.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_05: So what do you reckon?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_04: Uh watch uh well, I reckon um uh in my fancy hanger, there would be uh probably a V Tail.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's gotta be a classic V-tail.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I find myself flip-flopping between the very first of the 35s.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_04: So I'd I'd love to have uh the lightweight basic 35 that would have rolled off of the production line in 47.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think that would be an absolute sweet spot for a banana uh for a bonanza.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_04: But then part of me loves you go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, and the in 82 when they were making the very final V35B uh model, which was a little bit, I think it was a little bit longer.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_04: It had the speed sloped windscreen, and it had many of you will probably remember uh there's uh bonanzas that would have they had like a hood ornament uh radio antenna on top of the cabin, angled forwards in a like a 45 degree slash with a VOR antenna.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_04: It was just if in terms of archetypal look on the ramp, it's like this thing was like they should make GPS antennas like that now, shouldn't they, really?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_05: To just give them a bit of a bit over.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, a little blob.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, big flying.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_04: Put some wings on it.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_04: But anyway, yeah, the I I think it would have to be one of those first 47 model 35s.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: I would love that.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_04: Walk into hangar and all that polished metal, I'd be in my element.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_04: So let us know in the comments what you Which one would you pick?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we've missed a model and you're going, no, it has to be one of those.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_05: You'd be wrong, I think, in this occasion, but let us know anyway.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um okay, Ed, I think well, all of us came across a whole bunch of um bonanza and barren facts as we were researching this.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_05: But I you've got a little quiz.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: I've got a little quiz, and uh and uh you two are the quiz you had the quiz challengees.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_04: Henry, we want like scores underneath this on the edit, okay?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um so uh first firstly, how many VTail bonanzas in uh 47 to 1982?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_04: How many VTail bonanzas were built?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_04: 47 to 1982, that's a lot of years.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_04: 35 years.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_04: Answer.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_04: And if you're watching this, uh answer in the comments while these two are guessing.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, not guessing, I'm trying to eventually.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_05: At one point they were building twelve a day, I don't suppose.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_05: They're they've managed that for very long, yeah.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_05: It must have run out of rivets or something.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm reckoning uh eight to nine thousand.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'm getting five thousand.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_04: It was ten thousand four hundred and five.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_04: So that's pretty good going.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_04: Amazingly, twelve one thousand two hundred and nine in the first year of production.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, don't forget they had all that the crazy order total to fulfill.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's just outstanding.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean even Cirrus haven't made that in that many in one year.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_05: Uh no, they haven't.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think Cirus has ever made more than a thousand.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_05: I think they've got up to the seven seven hundreds, yeah, seven eight hundreds at one point.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_05: In the boon times.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um true or false, uh bonanza wing leading edges are held on by piano hinge.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_05: I'm going with true because I have a little memory recollection from something or other.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's so weird, it has to be true.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_04: It is true.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_04: It's all about uh the streamlining of production and uh it's it's crazy.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_04: If you see this, you can literally take a whole leading edge, walk up and offer it to the spa and feed the pins in, and it's held on.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_04: You know what?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_04: I bet you you don't just like walk up and feed the pins in.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_04: You walk up and go.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_04: No, I'm sure I'm sure.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Helpers and tooling.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_04: So um, but yeah, no, so that that is a thing.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_04: Did the Bonanza spawn a military trainer?
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yes, yes, it did.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: You're you're correct.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the T-34.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: T thirty four.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh Walter Beach, uh basically there was uh he recognized that the American the US Air Force were going to need a trainer uh and went, you know, this bonanza platform we've got is pretty special.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_04: Came up with a tandem fuselage on the Bonanza platform and uh and it was a runaway success.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_05: I I've never flown one of those.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_05: I'd like to flow one of those.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_05: I was distantly puzzled about why we don't have any of them over here.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_04: Why are there none in the UK?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: There's I know Red Bull have got one there, and I saw one going in a box for another customer in Europe recently.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_04: So um yeah, and the T-34 is is is it's uh it's very uh looking at the same thing.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_05: We know a couple of people who've got a couple of T-34s in in the US needs to try and make that happen somehow.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, pretty pretty damn cool, those.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um true or false?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_04: The Israeli Air Force used a bonanza as a fighter bomber.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: Again, that's so weird.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_05: It has to be a random question, so it's got to be true, but it seems like it seems madness to me.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: It is madness.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: It does seem like madness, but apparently in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, uh several bonanzas uh were used by the Israeli Air Force, and apparently uh they were equipped with a machine gun in the uh in the um opening side window.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: And believe, and if you if this is true, it's crazy, but apparently people would open doors and roll bombs out.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: Which I just I done.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: I well, I get this is in the very, very early days of Israel, it being made a state.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess they uh they didn't really have the the Air Force it's got at the moment.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm guessing yeah, it's uh well the bonanza had some performance, so someone went, hey, let's let's let's use that to our advantage.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't until 1965 US Air Force went, you know, I won't maybe we can use this as a light attack bomber.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and there was a bonanza uh prototype made with six hard points that you could put napalm on, um general purpose bombs, mini guns, uh unguided rockets.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um wasn't didn't go into production there.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_04: I know, yeah, yes.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um The Bonanza had a special certification review.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it was requested by the American Bonanza Society.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: Can you name which year that happened?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna go 50s or 60s.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'd have said 50s if it would have happened early, did you think?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: You would think, but I was surprised that actually it didn't happen until 1984.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh why did it need a special certification review?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um well, a bit like you might remember that um because these don't happen very often, but uh one was also one also um happened for the Piper Malibu, and again, it's a high-performance airplane that has had an unusually large number of accidents, and it was a review of all the certification standards, all the accident data, and it's just like the Malibu.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: The airplane wasn't found wanting, it was it's all to do with pilot capability.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_04: Pilot error.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_04: Bonanzas have been the choice for famous long-distance flights, many of them.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but what was the first?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_04: And uh what was the flight?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um I don't know what the first one was, and I I'm I think it was a long way.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: It was definitely a long way.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_04: So in 1949, a guy called Bill Odon, he was given the fourth produ uh fourth prototype bonanza uh by Walter Beach, uh which had been specially kitted out with big tanks.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_04: And he flew from Honolulu in Hawaii uh to uh Teeterborough in New Jer New Jersey, and he did that non-stop.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh 36 hours and uh one minute, uh 4,957 miles.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that that's right across the Pacific Ocean.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then right across the States.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_05: You'd think I'd be like, land in sight, I think I need a bit of a pee.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna pop down there, grab a burger.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_04: He burned burned a thousand and thirty litres of fuel, landed with 45 litres of fuel.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_04: So that aeroplane is now in the Smithsonian Museum.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: Breathing a sigh of a leaf, I should imagine.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_04: And if you and if you think no one's gonna go further further than that, then in 1958 someone went, I'm gonna beat Bill, and a beach again came up with another aeroplane, and that guy, which who was called Pat Bolling, um, he flew an aeroplane with 400 gallons of fuel, and he flew it for 45 hours.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: 45 hours.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, m Manila, he was aiming Manila to Wichita, made it to Oregon instead.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_05: You've got to I mean, I d I don't know.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_05: Can you stay awake for 45 hours while you're flying?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_04: That's quite after a long I d aeroplanes are noisy places, but weirdly after you've been in a long time.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_05: I did I remember one flight uh in the 182 coming back in it, it's an IFR flight and it was it it was in sort of IMC, but it was unbelievably smooth IMC.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_05: And it was just droning along, you know, no weird noises.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: And you it felt like there was no sensation of speed or anything else.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_05: It felt like you could open the door and just step out.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it was a probably I think it was must have been about nine, nine thousand feet or something at the time, but it just felt it was surreal, very weird.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: But um, yeah, you won't be surprised that Beechcraft figured out a way to add oil during the uh the bowling flight, and you could add that via the cabin.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_04: So do that with a beaver as well.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: You can, yeah.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: So do you sort of pull open a little tube?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Can of oil?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_04: I think it is as simple as that.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_04: Isn't that they've extended they must have extended the dipstick back into the cabin.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um final one from me.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_04: True or false?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Beach had an automotive designer to style sculptural elements on the bonanza.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe maybe that aerial thing was a bit automotive.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't think that was on the original.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: On the on the earliest ones, but you the the cowling is it's I'm gonna go no.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_04: No?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: I I I've looked inside the bonanza.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's no wind up windows or anything like that.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you'd be Wrong, because actually there was a designer called Wayne Porter, and he was brought in uh by Beach and he had come from the automotive world and he styled the instrument panel and did a whole bunch of details on the nose bowl and the cowl and other items.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's it's aeroplanes are generally pretty things, but there are there are some where the details really lift it, and a bonanza is definitely one of those.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_05: I've got a bonus question for you.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_05: You can enter the quiz last.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_05: Now, you mentioned about the bonanzas being good at long distance touring, and we know that the Adrian Eichel went round the world in a in a way in France.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_05: We did a photo shoot in France, it was great.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um Matt Guthmiller when he was 19 back in whenever that was.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_05: 2014.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_05: 2014.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_05: He was first he was the youngest person to fly around the world.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_05: Solo.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_05: Uh solo, and that was that was before Travis Ludlow came along and did it in a 172, I think.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_05: And then the The Rutherfords.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_05: The Rutherfords did it.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_05: Did it in the shock.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_05: But so the the Adrian Icorn and Matt Goodmiller had huge tip tanks.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_05: And these in the Are you gonna tell me they didn't?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Icorn definitely had the big tip tanks.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_04: I think I had a feeling that Matt Goethmiller had the Osborne tip tanks.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_05: Do you think so?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_05: I think the Osborne's only 20 gallons of side, isn't it?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, whatever.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_05: But Icorn definitely had the huge tip tanks.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_05: And these in the beach community are, I don't know why, but officially known as the Dolly Parton tanks.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: There's not many of them around either, are there?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_05: Because they they were basically highly modified drop tanks.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_05: Um, a dozen pair of them or somewhere around.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_05: I I did see some for sale back in 2015, um, and they were like$30,000 shipped.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_04: I remember Adrian telling us a tale that he wanted some, and it took f it literally took him years to find a set and find someone willing to send them.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um anyway, question is what's the capacity of the Dolly Partons on a bonanza in terms of US gallons each?
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um I didn't know this.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_04: I won't I'm gonna say 75.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was g I was gonna say you said that 20 US gallons was the Osborne's, and that was too small.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah so it's gotta be a worthwhile increase.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say 80 gallons.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_05: 100 gallons aside.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_05: 100 US gallons aside.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_05: So 200 that's like that's the best part of it's not quite 800 litres, but not far off 800.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_05: So that's twice the twice twice what I've got in the 182, even with the extended tanks in the 182.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_05: That's crazy, isn't it?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_05: So there you go.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: Great fun, yeah, good fun fact, that.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_05: So how did you do in the Beach Bonanza quiz?
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_05: I've got a feeling that Dave won.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_05: We'll have to see the score afterwards as we walk through, but I think Dave me to the peto post.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm better at estimating the Dolly Parsons.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_05: There you go.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_05: Apparently.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_05: Right, on that note.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_05: Are you better at estimating the Christ the I guess not quite Christmas yet, the events that are coming up?
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's just definitely coming up to jingle bell time because there's a Christmas lunch until the 4th of December available at Stone Marie.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: St.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Marie's.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: And on Saturday, the 6th of December, the first flying for we've had for a little while, the Christmas flying at Compton Abbas.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_05: Brilliant.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_05: They're putting quite a lot of flyings on at the moment at Compton Abbas, aren't they?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_05: They've been quite active.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_05: Good.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_05: Well, uh, in that case, I think I think it's time to bid farewell to not only everybody out there, but to all of the barons and bonances.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_05: Obviously, there's a huge fleet of used aircraft out there.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_05: If you wanted a brand new one, you've left it a bit too late.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'm guessing it's said that if they're only fulfilling orders now, then um then it won't take them long, probably.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh thing to think of that many.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you very much for watching.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_05: Don't forget to join flyer.co.uk forward slash membership.
• 47:52
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• 47:55
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• 47:56
  SPEAKER_05: It really helps.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_05: It does.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_05: Bye.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_05: Bye.
• 48:02
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