Matching the Airplane with Your Mission

Beechcraft Bonanza Ownership

ByHank Gibson May 7, 2014July 14, 2026

If you walk up to any Beechcraft Bonanza sitting on the ramp at an airport and ask the owner, “How do you like your Bonanza?” be prepared to stand there and listen for 15-20 minutes while he brags about his airplane.

The thing about Beechcraft Bonanza owners is that they are almost a part of a cult. They will tell you up and down why the Bonanza is the best airplane out there. They’ll tell you why all the others don’t even come close. They’ll tell you about the payload, the six seats, the variety of configurations you can select from, the ability to land pretty much anywhere. By the time you walk away, you will probably be convinced to buy one yourself.

Bonanza’s are great airplanes. For those of you new to the single engine piston market, a good comparison for a Beechcraft Bonanza would be a Suburban. Not the flashiest ride out there, but extremely capable, comfortable, and family conscious. If you’re hauling a load, you’ll take a Bonanza over a Cirrus or Mooney any day. Have six people? No problem!

One of the best things about a Beechcraft Bonanza is the variety of designs. Four seats, six seats, long range tanks, tip tanks, turbo charged, normally aspirated, steam gauge, G1000, Aspen or G500 retrofitted, dual yoke, single yoke, leather, cloth, and a variety of different colors out there on the market make finding a Bonanza that fits your need pretty easy.

When it comes to picking out an airplane, the first question is always the mission. If you’re thinking about a Beechcraft Bonanza, you’ve already determined you need something with a good useful load. Do you need four seats or six? Depends on how often you’ll be carrying someone or how new of an airplane you want. Older Bonanzas have four seats, but a lot have had significant updating. Newer A36 and B36 Bonanzas have six seats, but are going to cost you more.

Do you need a turbo charged Bonanza? If you’re in a high elevation area or expect to visit the mountains a lot, then absolutely. If you want a better cruise speed and don’t mind a little less useful load, then go for it. If you’re more concerned about being able to load it up and you aren’t going to cross the Rockies often, then normally aspirated is what you want. You’re probably looking at about 160-170 KTAS with the normally aspirated whereas you get between 180-190 KTAS at altitude with the turbo.

Do you need tip tanks? Tip tanks have two advantages. One is the most obvious: you get to carry more fuel, therefore you get to go farther without having to stop (or when you stop for the bathroom, you don’t have to fill up with gas). The other advantage is you get a bump up in useful load. I talked to a Beechcraft Bonanza owner a few weeks ago who had tip tanks on his. He told me max gross on his Bonanza was 3,800 pounds and was eligible for an upgrade of up to 4,000 pounds and all it took was paper work for the STC. That’s quite a bit of load!

Are Bonanzas hard to fly? When moving up from a typical 172 or Cherokee that most people learn to fly in, it does take some adjustment. But, with good Bonanza training from a qualified Bonanza training instructor, then the transition is no problem. There are tons of resources out there to aid all future and present Bonanza owners in their foray into the Bonanza nation. With the American Bonanza Society and Bonanza Pilot Training, there is no lack of training, thoughts and opinions.

In need of an airplane that can pretty much do whatever you need? Then a Bonanza may be right for you.

Oh, Deer (Part 1)

ByAndrew Robinson March 7, 2017April 5, 2017

As far as I knew when I woke up, October 26, 2016 would be an ordinary day for me. It was a Wednesday, and I was scheduled to fly our Company’s BE58 Baron on a charter from Wings Field (KLOM), a non-towered airport just north of Philadelphia, to Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT) and spend the day there waiting for my 3 passengers to finish up their meetings. The plan was to fly them back to Wings that evening and then make the short hop back to home base at Lancaster, PA. (KLNS).

It was a flight that I had done countless times, and I was comfortable with the airports, the passengers, and the airplane. Everything went smoothly that morning and my short flight from Lancaster to Wings was uneventful. I even made it there in time to spill coffee all down the front of my pants before my passengers arrived. The weather was clear, calm and beautiful as we loaded into the Baron and the sun was just starting to come up as I taxied toward runway 24 for departure. I was departing VFR and had an IFR plan on file which I intended to pick up with Harrisburg Approach once we were airborne. According to my calculations, I was on schedule to be drinking my coffee at the Pittsburgh FBO right around 8:30.

At 7:05, I advanced the throttles for departure. A few moments later, I received a very unpleasant surprise. I was quickly approaching rotation speed when 2 deer ran onto the runway directly in front of the aircraft. It was still dark enough that I was relying on my landing/ taxi lights to illuminate the runway for take-off.  As a result, I was unable to see the animals before it was too late. I don’t remember making a conscious decision to pull back on the yoke, but it was that or plow directly into them at about 85 knots. I pulled up as quickly as I could and the airplane rotated immediately.  A fraction of a second later I heard and felt a sickening THUD.

There was no doubt that I had hit one of them, but, somewhat unbelievably, the airplane was climbing as though nothing had happened. I put the nose down to get the airspeed back up and began to try and piece together what damage the airplane had sustained. Based on the noise and the feeling of the impact, my suspicion was that I had hit the deer with the left main landing gear. A review of the instrumentation showed no abnormalities and the airplane was behaving normally, so I didn’t suspect any damage to the airframe/ flight controls. I couldn’t see anything out the windows that looked unusual, and somewhat unbelievably I still had 3 green lights.

After gaining a safe amount of speed and altitude, I turned around and told the passengers that we had hit a deer. It was obvious that we had hit something and I was sure that they wanted to know what was going on. Then, I checked all my indications again and satisfied with what I was seeing, tried to bring up the landing gear. No dice. When I pulled the gear lever to the up position, the master “GEAR UP” warning light came on and I got a horn. There was never any change in the 3-green indication and the gear motor never came to life at all.

At this point it was obvious that, minimally I was going to have to divert to Lancaster and have the maintenance guys look at the airplane to see if anything was broken. I figured that they would either give me the green light to continue or I would just jump into one of our PC12s and complete the trip while they worked on the Baron.

The landing gear’s refusal to come up was my first indication that there was substantial damage. I set course for Lancaster and called our Chief Pilot. After explaining the situation to him, we agreed that KLNS was the best option and that he would let the maintenance guys know that I was coming.

The logic was that proceeding to Lancaster would allow a visual check of the landing gear by maintenance people as well as the tower and result in the safest outcome if an emergency landing were required. Lancaster would likely have better services available in terms of emergency responders and, not to mention, I was fairly certain that there was a dead deer on the only runway at Wings that I didn’t feel like hitting for a second time. In addition, the relatively long runway at Lancaster combined with light traffic at that time of day made it the ideal option to divert to.

I again turned around to brief the passengers. I told them that we were going to have to make precautionary landing before continuing to our intended destination and that I would be performing a few low passes for the tower.

Due to the drag from the landing gear, the flight to Lancaster seemed to take forever. The long cruise home, however, gave me time to try and reach someone on the ground at Wings in hope of having the runway inspected and cleaned off before other traffic tried to use it. After several attempts to raise anyone on the Unicom/ CTAF frequency, I called Philadelphia Approach for help instead. Philly answered right away and I explained to them what had happened. I requested that they call over to Wings on the phone or send someone out to check the runway. They told me that they would get it done and asked if there was any other way that they could assist me. I told them I was headed to Lancaster and that I appreciated their offer, but didn’t require any further assistance. I then switched over to Lancaster Tower and let them know that I was about 15-20 minutes out, but I would need to perform a couple of passes to have them check my gear. The tower cleared me for a low approach over runway 26.

I arrived at LNS at about 7:30. I performed my first low pass by the tower, not really expecting anything to appear out of place. I figured I had bent something or damaged the squat switch, but not much more. I climbed to pattern altitude and awaited the good word. Shortly after the fly-by, Tower reported that the left main gear didn’t appear to be down and locked. They suggested that I make another pass. The airport maintenance personnel chimed in, reporting the same. We had just started discussing whether cranking the gear a little by hand might help when Philly approach called the Lancaster tower on the phone.

Philly informed Lancaster that someone had inspected the runway at Wings and found the left main strut and wheel in the grass. I quickly concluded that cranking the gear down probably wouldn’t help!

To Be Continued…

(Read Part 2 Here)

Andrew Robinson is an airline pilot for Piedmont Airlines.  He is a former 135 Charter Pilot and flight instructor who lives with his wife and 2 daughters in Pennsylvania.  He instructs in Beechcraft Bonanzas.

A Takeoff Briefing

ByHank Gibson January 22, 2015January 27, 2015

Takeoff briefings are one of those things that most pilots are taught when they first learn how to fly, but once they get into flying themselves around, quickly fall by the wayside.  There is a reason student pilots are instructed to perform a takeoff briefing before departure.  It gets them thinking about what the plan is after they get off the ground and what to do if something goes wrong.

Takeoff briefings are a good habit to get into.  Airline crews do a takeoff briefing before every departure, even though they have performed a takeoff in that particular airplane thousands of times.  It enhances safety and provides repetition, keeping that knowledge at the forefront of the crew’s minds.

In general aviation, a takeoff briefing should cover what the takeoff procedure is, what the abort plan is, and what the plan after takeoff is.

Takeoff Procedure

Most pilots fly the same airplane all the time, so the familiarity with what goes into a takeoff is there.  But, habits should be formed to brief the takeoff procedure as part of the takeoff briefing.  It doesn’t need to be extensive, just covering the basics of how the airplane is getting off the ground.  Something like this:

• Throttle setting (if turbo charged, will full throttle cause an overboost?)
• Rotate speed
• Expected takeoff roll

That’s it.  Nothing fancy for the takeoff procedure.

Abort Plan

What is the plan if something goes wrong?  It doesn’t have to be an engine failure, maybe the engine coughs when full power is added or maybe the engine doesn’t produce peak RPM.  Maybe the takeoff roll is longer than anticipated and something doesn’t seem right.  Maybe on climb out a door pops open.  Maybe the engine fails at 1,000 feet.  It’s good to keep the plan in the foreground for what to do if an abnormal or emergency situation takes place.

• Brief the aborted takeoff procedure
  • Pick an abort point on the runway based on the expected ground roll
  • What is the procedure if the airplane isn’t off the ground by then?
  • What is the procedure if the engine quits on the runway?
• Brief the engine failure procedure at low altitude
  • If the engine fails over the runway, will you try to land on the runway?
  • What altitude would you elect to turn back as opposed to landing straight ahead?
  • If the plane is too low to turn back, would you land straight ahead or aim left or right?
  • What airspeed will you aim to hold if the engine fails?
• In a Cirrus, what is your minimum parachute deployment altitude?

After Takeoff Plan

After the airplane is off the ground, what’s the plan then?  Are you staying in the pattern or departing the area?  Do you need to adjust your power at a certain altitude?  What altitude are you climbing to?  What heading are you going to fly?  Is your flight plan in your GPS?  This is an excellent time to set up altitude and heading bugs if your airplane is so equipped.

Get in the habit of doing a takeoff briefing before you call the tower or announce your departure.  It get’s your mind focused on the task at hand and then what is going to be happening next.

Upgrading Avionics

ByHank Gibson October 6, 2014

There are many different ways to upgrade an instrument panel.  Putting in a 696 here, a JPI engine monitoring system there, even an Electronic HSI.  But, if you want to swing for the fences and get a serious upgrade, you have to go for a complete glass instrument panel.  For good measure, you might as well throw in a touch screen GPS while you are at it.

Which panel to go with?  There are two mainstream options (Garmin and Aspen) and a handful of other companies that make glass panel replacements (Avidyne being one, King for a short period of time at the end of the last decade being another with the KFD 840).  Around 2010, there were a lot of companies trying to get into the glass panel retrofit game, but many of the products didn’t gain a whole lot of popularity, leaving Garmin and Aspen at the top of the heap.

What about the touch screen GPS market?  Garmin has this pretty much cornered as well, with Avidyne and King just getting into the game.  The gap between Garmin’s GTN series and Avidyne and King is pretty wide.

The answer is pretty easy when it comes to the GPS (go with Garmin!), but not so easy when it comes to the panel.  The G500 and the Aspen Evolution series are both excellent interfaces with strong reliability, so which one do you go with?  Feature-wise, both have a lot of the same features: traffic, weather, terrain, synthetic vision, to name a few.  The presentation for each feature is a little different between the two interfaces.  It just depends on what you like better.

The nice thing about the Aspen system is you can go glass, but you have options on how much glass you want:  1 screen, 2 screens, or 3 screens?  With the single screen PFD, you have all your instrumentation, traffic, weather, and optional synthetic vision.  You don’t need the synthetic vision for the traffic and weather, as it shows up behind your HSI.  It is an honest to goodness glass panel retrofit.

When you decide to upgrade to 2 screens, this is where Aspen has a leg up.  The second screen is a completely redundant PFD and, if you get the 2 hour emergency backup battery installed, acts as the backup instrumentation to the main PFD.  This means you can take out the old steam gauge standby instruments.  This helps clean the panel up.

I personally don’t see the need for 3 screens, but maybe there is someone out there who needs it.

One selling point that Aspen has over Garmin is the wide variety of autopilots and GPS units that Aspen units are compatible with.  The G500 is only compatible with King autopilots, it’s own GFC 700 autopilot (which would be a retrofit), some Collins autopilots, and the Century 21, 31, 41, and 2000.  This does cover a wide array of autopilots, but it keeps some on the outside.  Aspen, on the other hand, is compatible with most autopilots on the market.

Finally, let’s talk price.  Going with an Aspen EFD 1000 PFD (this is the single screen Aspen) will run you somewhere in the area of $12,000.  The price will vary based on the shop and the airplane.  When you want to add a screen, it’s an additional $6,000.  This is for the base, so if you want to add weather or synthetic vision, it’ll run you a little more.

The Garmin G500 comes in around $20,000, again depending on the shop and the airplane.  The screens are bigger on the G500, which is kind of nice, and you are buying a Garmin product, which has a fabulous track record in the aviation industry.

Decisions, decisions.  There really is no wrong answer here.  Both are excellent products with very good track records.  Both have really nice features and don’t hardly fail.  Really, the choice comes down to what you want.

Need training on your upgraded GPS or glass panel retrofit?  Contact Texas Top Aviation for thorough training on your new avionics today.

AOPA Rusty Pilot Seminar in San Marcos

ByHank Gibson June 21, 2016July 7, 2016

“AOPA Rusty Pilot presented by AOPA Ambassador Pat Brown at Tempus Training Solutions”
Topic: A Rusty Pilots Seminar
On Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 09:00 Central Daylight Time
Location:
Tempus Training Solutions
2080 Airport Dr.

San Marcos, TX 78666

Select Number:
EA2769634

Description:

Life may have gotten in the way, but the dream of flight can be yours again. Returning to the skies is not as difficult as most rusty pilot think. We’re inviting you back in the cockpit and will help you get there. Come and participate in a FREE Rusty Pilot program with fellow lapsed pilots. We will help you understand what’s changed in aviation since you’ve last took the controls and brush up on your aviation knowledge. The Rusty Pilot program is developed by AOPA in partnership with local flight training providers in order to create the best environment for getting you back in the air and a part of the general aviation community.

It is easier than most people think:

• No FAA checkride or test
• Medical may not be required

As a Bonus, by attending, you get two to three hours of free ground instruction towards your flight review!

Register Now!

https://ww2.eventrebels.com/er/Registration/StepRegInfo.jsp?ActivityID=16910&StepNumber=1

To view further details and registration information for this seminar, click here.