You have an incomig e mail

Got it. I'll reply to your question when I have a chance to catch my breath. Do you prefer email reply, or a post here in this thread?

Here, here.

OK, since you asked …

SIG 229R emailed me, asking about the V-Tail vs. conventional configurations of the BeechCraft Bonanza.

Quick history: The V-Tail, which is the BeechCraft Series 35, was test-flown just after WW-2 and hit the market in 1947 as the model 35. As features were added and higher hp engines were used it evolved through the A-35, B-35, etc. Production ended in the early 1980s with the model V-35B. Many fans think that the best model was the S-35, which was the first one to receive the 520 cubic inch, 285 hp engine. This engine was used in all subsequent models, but the airframes that came after the S model were heavier, so the S-35 is sort of the hot-rod of the series: the lightest airframe that was coupled with the biggest engine. Mine is one of these.

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Around 1960, Beech introduced the Series 33. Basically the save as the 35, but used a conventional tail instead of the V-Tail. The 33 is just slightly slower than the 35 because there is a bit more aerodynamic drag with the conventional tail, which has three surfaces (rudder, left elevator, right elevator) as opposed to two surfaces in the V-Tail. The conventional tail also weighs a bit more, so the CG (Center of Gravity) is further aft, making load placement a bit more critical.

As far as flight characteristics, no really perceptible difference.

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Beech subsequently added another model, the Series 36. This is basically a conventional tail 33, in a “stretch limo” configuration. It’s pretty much the same airplane, but about a foot and a half longer. Large door aft of the wing for easy access to the rear seats, which are usually arranged in a “club” configuration, facing each other, with a conference table that pulls out from the side wall. I find that this model handles a bit differently. It has the same wing as the 33 and 35 series, so at first, the difference in handling mystified me until I thought it through. The CG in this model is further forward from the CL (Center of Lift) than it is in the shorter models. This gives the “feel” of a heavier airplane. More stable, too, in the pitch axis, but not as nimble feeling as the V-Tail, which is an absolute delight; I find the V-Tail a perfect mix of stability and responsiveness.

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If you take a good look at the 33 and 36 photos, you can see that an easy way to distinguish them is the 36 has four side windows.

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Beech did not stop with these models. The Series 45 is the military T-34 Mentor, with piston engines up through the T-34B, and a turboprop in the T-34C. Basically Bonanza with the same wing, landing gear, and for the piston powered models, the same engine series.

But wait, that's not all! If you remove the engine from the nose of a 33 and put one engine on each wing, you will have a model 95 TravelAir, or a 55 or 56 series Baron. Likewise, the 36 stretch model Bonanza has Baron counterparts, the 58 and 58P (P for Pressurized).

Maybe more than you wanted to know.

SIG P229R also asked me why we don't see more of the V-Tails. I do see quite a few of them. Remember that production ceased about 35 years ago -- they were sold from 1947 through approximately 1982. Some died of old age and were worth more as parts donors than they were as airplanes. Some were destroyed. Quite a few were exported. So, the population is dwindling and there are no replacements being manufactured. Those that have been well taken care of can bring a good price on the used market, as much as four times the original price that they sold for when they were new.

Thanks for the concise summary.

Thank you, V-Tail, I too learned quite a bit from your response.

Thanks, I learned a lot here. This is oneof the reasons I love this place.

Very nice history - comprehensive yet concise. I’ll add just a couple esoteric things: First, on the BE 95 Travel Air, besides moving the engines from the nose to the wings, they shrunk them and got them from a different manufacturer. Four cylinder Lycoming O-360s and later IO-360s instead of the Continental 470s or 520s. Second, the original Baron were certifticated as a modification of the Travel Air. The early Baron type certificates were BE 95-55. They’re all pretty great airplanes.

The V-Tail and the successors and variants are some of the most beautiful aircraft we've ever produced here in the Air Capital. Just my Opn.

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
Very nice history - comprehensive yet concise. I’ll add just a couple esoteric things: First, on the BE 95 Travel Air, besides moving the engines from the nose to the wings, they shrunk them and got them from a different manufacturer. Four cylinder Lycoming O-360s and later IO-360s instead of the Continental 470s or 520s. Second, the original Baron were certifticated as a modification of the Travel Air. The early Baron type certificates were BE 95-55. They’re all pretty great airplanes.

Travel Air. Really don't see many of these any more. The last time I flew one was maybe twenty-five years ago; a guy who was a long-time Cessna 182 owner at our airport bought a Travel Air and I was his instructor for his multi-engine rating. 180 hp each side, if memory serves.

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Another member of the family that I did not mention is sort of a second cousin to "real" Bonanzas: the series 50 Twin Bonanza, aka the T-Bone. Around 1965, give or take a year, Monmouth College awarded an honorary PhD to Bob Hope. I was moonlighting at the time, flying for an Air Taxi / Charter company; I flew one of our Swearingen conversion Twin Bonanzas to pick up Mr. Hope at JFK -- was it still called Idlewild at the time? -- and ferry him to Monmouth Airport for the ceremony. We had given the college's Homecoming Queen a tutorial on the safety duties of a Flight Attendant.

Another Bonanza lost. Not a v-tail.

"…The single-engine, six-seat Beech BE36 Bonanza had taken off from Montgomery Field about a half mile away…"

https://www.google.com/amp/amp...-diego-home/14399623

Could you explain the part about the tail falling off ???
How did they fix it ?

Just a Mooney driver !!

quote:

Originally posted by mike28w:
Could you explain the part about the tail falling off ???
How did they fix it ?

Poor pilot training. The Bonanza, much like the Mooney (Ralph Harmon was lead designer for both airplanes) is very clean, aerodynamically. Slippery, low drag. Just a little bit of nose-down pitch and the airplane accelerates. Quickly. An inattentive pilot might let this happen, glance at the airspeed indicator and altimeter, see airspeed increasing and altitude decreasing, haul back on the yoke, put a lot of stress on the airframe, bigger G-Load than the airframe was designed for, and something will break. Until the internal brace and external cuff were available, it was the tail surface.

Not exclusive to Bonanzas, it can happen to any airplane that is flown in a manner that exceeds specified limitations. Just happens that there are a good number of Bonanzas around, and many of them are, unfortunately, flown by pilots with inadequate training.

Now, with the strengthening, the tail might hang in there, but something else will break. Wing spar cracks have been reported in some aircraft that were used for aerobatics.

Stress any metal hard enough, something will break.

The formal Bonanza pilot training curriculum addresses this. I cover this thoroughly in ground school, and then fly through it with my Bonanza trainees. We induce the situation from a safe altitude, and then recover properly while minimizing the G-load on the airplane. I demonstrate, I do it a second time with the trainee talking me through it, then I have the trainee do it a couple times until s/he is comfortable with it, and really understands the technique.

This training might have saved JFK Jr.

You have already mentioned the drag differential between the v tail and the conventional tail. Is there any other advantage to the v tail? Training differences?
Never flown a plane though I have fallen out of a few!

quote:

Originally posted by walkinghorse:
You have already mentioned the drag differential between the v tail and the conventional tail. Is there any other advantage to the v tail? Training differences?

Nope. Other than just a little difference in loading -- weight distribution must always be taken into account on any aircraft -- the 33 and 35 series are the same as far as the pilot is concerned. Cockpit controls are identical. All operations are done the same way. The differences in performance are really slight. Maybe a couple minutes, if that, in flight time on a trip of three or four hours, maybe a gallon or less difference in fuel consumption on a trip of that length. Training? There is no difference in the course curriculum. Same airplane, really.

I thought this was about the abbreviation for ATTENTION versus TAIL.

I was prepared to observe it was dependent on the nature and shape of the tail.

A week ago I got my first ride in a Bonanza, a '63 model I believe. I was prepared to be unimpressed....... but that didn't work out quite like I had anticipated. A 200mph pass down the runway caught this Supercub drivers attention! (just 100mph faster, or exactly twice as fast as I am used to)!
I was also impressed with the quality of the appointments, the thickness of the plexiglass, passenger room, etc. I didn't like the old school "throw over" yoke or lack of rudder pedal on my side, but that is something the owner plans to address.
And flying a fast airplane piloted by a 28 year old ag-pilot is always an experience.
O.Z.

quote:

Originally posted by Oscar Zulu:
A week ago I got my first ride in a Bonanza, a '63 model I believe. I was prepared to be unimpressed....... but that didn't work out quite like I had anticipated. A 200mph pass down the runway caught this Supercub drivers attention! (just 100mph faster, or exactly twice as fast as I am used to)!
I was also impressed with the quality of the appointments, the thickness of the plexiglass, passenger room, etc. I didn't like the old school "throw over" yoke or lack of rudder pedal on my side, but that is something the owner plans to address.
And flying a fast airplane piloted by a 28 year old ag-pilot is always an experience.
O.Z.

The 1963 was the P-35, the last one that had the 470 ci, 260 hp engine. 1964 saw the introduction of the 520 ci, 285 hp engine that stayed with the v-tail until the end of production.

In the model that you're talking about, there were three options offered for rudder pedals:

• None at all, flat floor with lots of foot room. Remember, at the time of its introduction, one of the intended uses for the Bonanza was a small executive transport, speed was in the same class as the DC-3 that was flying for the airlines at the time. No rudder pedals meant that "the boss" had plenty of room, while the hired help drove.
  
  
• Second option was rudder only, no brakes. This was probably the most common configuration.
  
  
• Third option was full rudder and brake pedals.

The airplane was certified for production with any of the above options, so retrofits can be done with minimal FAA paperwork.

As far as the throwover yoke, the single was standard, a dual arm coming out of the center of the console optional. Last I looked, a few years ago, new dual arms could be had for around $4,500, used ones around $2,500. 1969 or so, I worked at a large school at Chicago Midway. They focused on instrument training and encouraged trainees to bring their own airplane -- "train like you're gonna fly." For Bonanza clients who had single yokes, the school owned a couple of dual arms. The maintenance guys could do the swap in ten or fifteen minutes. Easy job once you've done it a few times.

1984 was a changeover year. Prior to that, most members of the Bonanza family had the throwover yoke with the column coming out of the center of the panel. After that, there were conventional dual controls. Also part of the 1984 change, earlier birds had the landing gear selector on the copilot side, flap control on the pilot side. After the changeover, these were swapped and the landing gear control was on the pilot side, just like the rest of the industry. This is just one of the reasons that I never permitted a trainee to retract the flaps during the landing rollout -- I wanted the airplane brought to a complete stop, then the pilot should visually identify flap control, and not move the landing gear control to the "up" position in error.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Travel Air. Really don't see many of these any more. The last time I flew one was maybe twenty-five years ago; a guy who was a long-time Cessna 182 owner at our airport bought a Travel Air and I was his instructor for his multi-engine rating. 180 hp each side, if memory serves.

---

Another member of the family that I did not mention is sort of a second cousin to "real" Bonanzas: the series 50 Twin Bonanza, aka the T-Bone. Around 1965, give or take a year, Monmouth College awarded an honorary PhD to Bob Hope. I was moonlighting at the time, flying for an Air Taxi / Charter company; I flew one of our Swearingen conversion Twin Bonanzas to pick up Mr. Hope at JFK -- was it still called Idlewild at the time? -- and ferry him to Monmouth Airport for the ceremony. We had given the college's Homecoming Queen a tutorial on the safety duties of a Flight Attendant.

An E95 has been the “family cruiser” for the last 21 years. Every once in a while I think another 40 or so knots would be nice and maybe we should consider a Baron. Then I fuel up and come back to my senses quickly.
There was a T-Bone at Santa Paula for a while. Five seats, something like a five or six inch plug widening the fuselage. Interesting bird.

The thing that bites a lot of folks with the Bonanzas (and Debonairs) is that they have strong positive static and dynamic pitch stability and negative dynamic roll stability. The exercise I was taught was to trim the airplane for slow flight, straight and level, then put your hands in your lap and feet on the floor. Eventually it will drop a wing. May be a fuel imbalance, may be a gust, doesn’t matter what causes it, it will happen. Once it does, it will roll more. As it rolls, the nose will drop and the airplane will pickup speed. With the strong pitch stability, it will pitch up, trying to return to the trimmed speed. This only tightens the spiral. The balance of the exercise as it was taught to me was to continue to monitor bank angle and airspeed. Just before reaching 60 degrees angle of bank or maneuvering speed, whichever comes first, grab the yoke and smoothly but firmly roll wings level, then let go. The pull-up that results from the airplane trying to return to the trimmed airspeed is impressive. As this is entered from slow flight and stopped at or below maneuvering speed (where by definition the airplane will stall rather than breaking) you don’t tear pieces off, but if you imagine the same thing happening to an inattentive or incapable instrument pilot at cruise speed you understand how the birds get broken.

slosig: Your description of the exercise for dealing with the spiral recovery is very similar to the way that I teach it. My process varies from yours in two details, one minor, and I think that the second is significant.

The minor detail: when teaching this, I want to keep things moving, so rather than just put hands in lap and wait for the roll to start, I'll help it along. I might drop a pencil on the floor and ask the trainee to get it for me. While her / his attention is diverted, I'll just apply a bit of light rudder pressure. That will help get the spiral started a little more quickly.

The second way that I vary from you -- as you said, during the recovery process, once the wings are rolled level, the abrupt tendency to return to trimmed speed is impressive. There will be a very strong nose-up transition. This can, and should be, controlled by applying some forward pressure to the yoke. Not enough to keep the nose down, but enough to control the rate at which the nose pitches up. Doing this, keeping the rate of pitch change slow, will reduce the G-forces on the airframe; bits and pieces of aluminum will be less likely to break off.

The forward pressure is definitely counter-intuitive. When the pilot notices that the nose is down, airspeed is building, and altitude is being lost, the instinctive reaction is to pull back on the yoke, exactly the wrong thing to do, since as you pointed out, the elevator trim is already providing nose-up force. Too much, in fact, so we need to control this by adding some nose-down force. Not so necessary if the exercise is initiated at slow speed, but in real life, if this type of spiral is entered inadvertently, usually in reduced visibility, it will start at cruising speed, so reducing the G-force, that is, reducing the rate of pitch-up, is crucial.

I do this exercise a few times. Enough so that the act of applying enough forward force to control the rate of pitch-up becomes a conditioned response with the trainee.