Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

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straightpilot
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Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by straightpilot »

Just had a twin bonanza dumped in my lap, and
I will have to check myself out in it, because no
one has ever even seen one before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Twin_Bonanza

I will read the POH and scour the internet for
gen before I fly it, but has anyone here spent
some time in one?

Any not-in-the-ancient-POH info about

- the fuel system,
- the landing gear system,
- those weird GO-480's,
- configuration/power settings/speeds for climb/cruise/descent/approach/landing.

Anything else I need to know about it? It reminds me a bit of those old Queen Airs I used to see parked in the hangars, all those decades ago. It seems big for a little piston twin, somehow.

Thanks for any info on it!
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by The Old Fogducker »

They had one on lease when I worked for Victoria Flying Services almost a hundred years ago.

Huge interior that looked like it came from a 1938 Cadillac, and that looked kind of cool back in the day. Some dingle balls, and fuzzy dice would finish off the look. Hauled a good sized load .... they used it for a bag run airplane.

About all I can recall is that it was tough to keep cylinders on it for for very long. Even though it was assigned pretty much exclusively to an excellent pilot, it seemed to really suffer from the short stage lengths involved on a Vancouver Island bag run where you were pretty much either in the climb or top of descent with very short segments at cruise.

They eventually replaced it due to operating economics. I can't imagine the numbers have improved much over the decades. Its a classic example of low capital cost versus high operating costs and poor reliability. At some time in the next few months you may hear .... "Yah, but we got it cheap." .... well, you got it on a cheap down payment but high monthly payments is what it will amount to.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by Changes in Latitudes »

Supercharged engines on it?
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by Liquid Charlie »

Slate Falls operated one but unfortunately I think that anyone I knew who flew it has moved on -- I'll ask Knobby but I think the best place would be to google american aviation sites -- if you have any piston Beach time at all I think you will find a lot of the systems are similar.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by longjon »

A corporate one ran out of Whitehorse in the day flown by the famous Yukon aviator Bud Harbottle but Id say he has passed on or is 100 yrs old by now.

XMB might have been the reg and it had 3 sets of rudder pedals and the mountings for Jato bottles back of the engine cowls. I went for a spin in it and remember it climbed like a scared cat . Super charged Lycomings which were an odd ball
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by Big Pistons Forever »

You might try giving the guys at the Beechcraft heritage museum a call.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by Beefitarian »

straightpilot wrote:Just had a twin bonanza dumped in my lap, and
I will have to check myself out in it, because no
one has ever even seen one before.

Thanks for any info on it!
bummer, how did it get there, truck?
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by straightpilot »

Thanks guys - it's pretty hard to find anyone with any time in a T-bone. I've flown various Beech aircraft and this isn't my first pair of GO-480's, so I don't think it will be too difficult, but I always appreciate a heads-up on the various systems (fuel, landing gear) for oddities. I will continue to scour the internet.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by onceacop »

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Post by Beefitarian »

What are the legalities of checking yourself out on aircraft? Is it mostly the insurance companies that have issues or does TC have guidelines? I really enjoyed the story Lynn Garisons wrote about flying a Lancaster but that was back when things were a little different.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by Brown Bear »

They're basically a Queen Air. Have at 'er. There's nothing lllegal about checking ones self out in an airplane. You probably won't get hull coverage till you have a few hours on type. Only you're insurance company will know for sure.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by straightpilot »

Lynn Garisons wrote about flying a Lancaster but that was back when things were a little different
Not really. I'm sure it still hurt when you crashed, 'way back when :wink:

Checking myself out on type isn't my first choice, but it's quite possible there isn't a single pilot in all of Canada with both a flight instructor rating, and significant T-bone time (ie more than one or two flights, decades ago).

Reminds me - a couple years back, there was a guy looking for a current flight instructor with 10 hours in a Skybolt, which is what his insurance company wanted for hull coverage. Again, I'm not sure such a creature existed with those qualfications anywhere in Canada.

Anyways, I've flown Beechcraft bigger than the T-bone, and smaller than the T-bone, and I've flown the GO-480 engines, so I'm sure it will go ok, I am just trying to avail myself of any type-specific (esp systems & configuration) knowledge that isn't in the POH.
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Post by North Shore »

Beefitarian wrote:I really enjoyed the story Lynn Garisons wrote about flying a Lancaster but that was back when things were a little different.
Sorry for the hijack...(and length - but it's a good read!)

I see your Lancaster, and raise you a Sabre:

Even as the powerful F-100 and other Century Series jets were carrying the U.S. Air Force to supersonic speeds in the 1950s, the North American F-86
Sabre was still a trusted fighter. Its reputation as a MiG killer, earned
during the Korean War, made flying the Sabrejet a young airman's dream. It
wasn't easy, especially considering the competition. Many F-86 pilots were
World War II veterans with combat experience.

New Sabre pilots faced at least a year of training, including several
hundred hours of classroom work and several hundred more of dual and solo
flight time. After that came 15 hours in a cockpit simulator. During the
student's first flight in the single-seat fighter, an instructor flew on his
wing, teaching via radio.

And then there was Airman First Class George R. Johnson. A 20-year-old
mechanic at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, Johnson skipped the
preliminaries; on the evening of September 20, 1956, he took a Sabrejet up
for a ride. Up to then, Johnson's piloting experience amounted to two hours
with an instructor in a Piper Cub.

I learned about Johnson from an article in the now-defunct Argosy magazine,
published in February 1959. At the time, I was a senior at Iowa State
University studying aeronautical engineering and in the Air Force Reserve
Officer Training Corps program. (I was commissioned in November 1959 and
entered active duty the following January.) There were no quotes from
Johnson in the Argosy story, and the piece did not say what happened to him
after his adventure. I always wondered about him, and when I asked around in
the rather large community of former F-86 pilots, I was surprised to find
how little anyone knew about his exploit. After retiring from the Air Force,
I decided to look him up.

Now 75, Johnson was amazed that anyone would still be interested in his
long-ago flight. An intensely private man, he nonetheless agreed to meet me
at a motel in Safford, Arizona, near his hometown, last November.

He grew up fascinated with airplanes. Johnson still remembered the bright
yellow AT-6 Texan trainer that buzzed his family's Pima home early in World
War II. After his family moved to Los Angeles, he rode his bicycle to
Inglewood to watch airplanes take off and land at the airport. At 17, with a
letter of permission from his mother, the underage Johnson enlisted in the
Air Force in January 1954. He got his first airplane ride on a chartered
Convair 240 to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for basic training. Having
worked on cars in high school, Johnson had mechanical skills, and so was
sent to jet engine school at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois. There, he
accompanied pilots in the T-6, rode in the nose of a B-25, and in his spare
time logged Cub flight time. Though Johnson dearly wanted to fly for the Air
Force, he knew he never would; as a boy, he had stared at the sun during an
eclipse and had slightly burned one retina, making it impossible for him to
pass the physical for military pilots.

In October 1955, Johnson arrived at Williams, about 30 miles southeast of
Phoenix. The base was just beginning to transition from a basic training
site, where students flew the Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star jet trainer, to an
advanced fighter training base stocked with F-86s. Assigned to the 3525th
Periodic Maintenance Squadron as a T-33 mechanic, Johnson did hydraulic and
electrical repairs, engine changes, flight control and system checks, and
flight instrument calibrations. He learned how to start and run the engine,
and how to taxi the aircraft.

Johnson was proficient enough to be reassigned to the Sabre early the next
year. On September 20, he and several other mechanics were working the
evening shift on the flightline. The day shift had done major maintenance on
an F-86F, no. 52-5039, but the work had not been done correctly; as a
result, one of the aircraft's control cables became inoperative. Fixing it
required that the aft section of the Sabre be pulled off, the cables
realigned, and then the aft reinstalled before all wiring, cables, and
tubing could be reconnected.

Before the evening shift's work could be signed off on, the mechanics had to
perform a functional check, to be followed the next morning by a pilot's
flight check. While one mechanic connected a ground power unit to the
aircraft, Johnson gave the Sabre an external check, grabbed his headset and
microphone from his toolbox, climbed into the cockpit, and started the
engine. Normal procedures called for the aircraft to be taxied to a run-up
area, a short concrete spur near the active runway, where the engine could
be monitored for normal operation up to full power.

Donning his headset, Johnson called the control tower, manned by Airman
First Class Theodore Davis Jr., who cleared him to taxi to the run-up area.
A few minutes later, after the engine check, Johnson called again and asked
for permission to use the runway for a high-speed taxi test-a common
procedure after any work on the brakes or nosewheel. The F-86 had a history
of problems in which the nosewheel shimmied, so the damping mechanism had to
be carefully adjusted. Davis again granted clearance, and watched as Johnson
taxied the Sabre to the active runway, 30L, which was seldom used at night.

"My intentions were still just to do a high-speed taxi," Johnson recalled.
"I never had a conscious intention to fly that airplane. The nose lifts off
the runway at about 105 knots [120 mph]. As I approached 105, I could feel
the nose getting light, and I thought I would just wait a few more seconds
to see if I could feel the plane getting light on the main gear. The few
seconds passed, and I just didn't think I had enough room to stop. I wasn't
thinking about being in trouble. I was thinking about maintaining climb
airspeed, and when I was in a definite climb, I retracted the landing gear.
I was off and committed. There was no wind at all that night. The air was
smooth as glass." The time was 10:34 p.m.

Reaction on the ground was immediate. As the F-86 climbed northwest into the
moonlit sky, Davis tried, unsuccessfully, to contact it. He then alerted the
Officer of the Day, Captain Robert McCormick, who in turn notified other
officers, including the base commander, Colonel Jerry Page, and the fire
chief, Edward Anderson.

As all of them converged on the airfield, Johnson finally came on the radio,
calmly announced that he had taken off, and asked what the tower thought he
should do. McCormick, who by then had arrived in the tower, asked Johnson to
orbit eight or 10 miles from the base and to avoid flying over residential
areas. McCormick, who was an F-86 pilot, talked Johnson through the proper
engine power adjustments to conserve fuel and to cease his climb and level
the aircraft.

Johnson told me that while he was a bit apprehensive about his predicament,
he was not afraid for his life. "I knew that airplane," he said, "and I knew
the numbers on various approach speeds because I knew the pilot's handbook.
I knew that intimately. Spent a lot of time studying that. I was as prepared
as you could be without actually flying.

"The F-86 had one nasty characteristic. You could get into trouble on
takeoff. If you lifted the nose too high at 105 [knots], then you get [too
much] drag, and it wouldn't accelerate out of it. You had to put the nose
down to get the speed on up.

"I knew all about things like that, so I flew the airplane largely with
trim. I knew all about over-controlling. I wasn't gonna do aerobatics or
anything like that. It was very stable. And it instantly obeyed where I told
it I wanted to go. I just spent my time at 10,000 feet circling the base."

Though Johnson wasn't worried, the men on the ground were. For one thing,
Johnson had no parachute. His only hope, base officials felt, was to make a
survivable landing with their help. "There was quite a lot of [radio] chat
back and forth," Johnson recalled. "Everything got pretty well stabilized
with me at slow cruise and orbiting the base. I could see everything moving
on the taxiways and runways. I don't recall being frightened, although I was
being very careful with the controls."

Johnson asked the tower to contact Second Lieutenant George Madison to come
and fly on his wing. Madison, an F-86 check pilot, had until recently been
Johnson's supervisor, and Johnson respected and trusted him. One of the
senior maintenance officers, Captain Linden Kelly, also a pilot, rousted
Madison from bed and briefed him on the situation. Madison quickly dressed,
grabbed his flight gear, helmet, and parachute, and rushed to the
flightline, where a crew had readied an F-86. Madison asked Kelly to
accompany him in another F-86. Within minutes, both were airborne.

"The F-86F is very stable in smooth air and the night was smooth," Madison
told me via e-mail (he wouldn't say where he lived). "I knew that if we
could get him in a controlled descent of about 500 feet per minute at around
140 knots [161 mph] and keep him lined up with the runway, there was a
chance he might survive. I told George to just relax when the aircraft
smacked the runway and keep it straight. All the time I was hoping the
aircraft would not bounce or porpoise. I told George to forget about the
brakes and let the barrier stop the aircraft."

Said Johnson: "When we turned to final approach, they [Madison and Kelly]
had me lined up with the runway very nicely. On their instructions, I had
extended the speed brakes and landing gear, and put the wing flaps down.
Madison had me back off the throttle at just the right time, and I touched
down very smoothly, right on the runway centerline. I saw both of them
accelerate and begin climbing away. One of them said 'Good boy' as I touched
down."

Even though he had come in faster than normal touchdown speed, Johnson had
lots of experience in braking and steering the aircraft. Still, he took
Madison's advice and let the Sabre roll the length of the runway and plow
into the cable barrier.

"It seemed to me that I was still very fast and not at all sure about
getting stopped. I stayed off the brakes and was still rolling quite fast as
I hit the barrier target right in the middle. The barrier engaged very
smoothly and quickly slowed me down to a stop."

Johnson opened the canopy and shut down the avionics and navigation lights.
Anderson, the fire chief, ran over, hopped up on a wing, and leaned into the
cockpit, where Johnson was cleaning things up. "This bird really can fly by
itself," Johnson told Anderson in amazement, adding, "It's all over now but
the shouting."

And it was. Johnson had flown an F-86 for one hour and two minutes. For his
adventure, he was whisked off to the base hospital, given a blood test
(presumably to check for drugs and alcohol), and confined for the night in a
guarded room.

The next morning, Page, the base commander, came in and opened the
conversation with "Well, what do we do now?" Johnson had expected a
tongue-lashing, but found the colonel to be a kind man. Page told Johnson
that he had put on quite a show of flying skill, and under other
circumstances Page might even have considered recommending him for pilot
training. However, Page said, a court-martial was inevitable. If he were to
show leniency, he told Johnson, "I would have half of my mechanics trying
the same damn fool stunt tomorrow."

Johnson's general court-martial was held on March 26, 1957. The mechanic
faced three charges: stealing an F-86F (valued at $217,427), causing $195.64
worth of damage to the aircraft when he hit the barrier upon landing, and
flying the aircraft without proper flight orders or clearance. The trial
lasted a day, and a transcript shows that members of the court were keenly
interested in whether Johnson had seemed distraught or had hinted that he
intended to fly the aircraft. Witnesses who spoke with him on the radio that
night, and those who listened in, were unanimous: He seemed calm and
completely in control of the situation.

Ultimately, the court agreed that Johnson had not intended to steal the
Sabre. He was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge: wrongful
appropriation. He was found guilty on the second charge of damaging the
aircraft but was acquitted on the third on the grounds that the regulation
applied only to Air Force pilots.

The court sentenced him to six months confinement at hard labor, which
reduced his rank to Airman Basic, plus he had to forfeit $65 a month for six
months. But Johnson was not discharged. He served his time in the jail at
Williams, and looks back on his imprisonment as not at all depressing. Daily
he was allowed outside to serve on various work details, such as mowing
grass. His cell door was seldom locked, and he spent many evenings playing
cards with the guards. For good behavior, he was freed after five months.

The Air Force put Johnson back to work in a different maintenance squadron,
and at a desk, rather than on the flightline. Given charge of the technical
and maintenance library, he soon excelled and began to earn back his rank.
Johnson served another two years at Williams until the base began a
transition to training pilots in the new F-100 Super Sabre. In early 1960,
he was transferred to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, and assigned to the
headquarters of the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing. Following his overseas tour,
Johnson opted not to re-enlist, and in late 1961 he was released from active
duty as an Airman Second Class (equivalent to today's Airman First Class or E-3).

Johnson went on to work in the computer industry as a customer engineering
and service representative. He eventually earned his pilot's license, flew
cropdusters, and for a time owned a Mooney M20 four-seat airplane. He did
not consider his Sabrejet flight a big event in his life. "It was kind of a
dumb thing to do, but I got away with it," he told me. "Had a guardian angel
on my shoulder that night."

When the F-86 was rolling out to U.S. bases in the 1950s, North American
Aviation dispatched its legendary test pilot, Bob Hoover, to show the
fighter's safe handling and flying capabilities to Air Force pilots all over
the world. Hoover's demonstrations-which included barrel rolls immediately
after takeoff-were meant to allay concerns about the stability of the new
swept-wing aircraft at low speeds, and to reassure pilots of the ease of
flying the Sabre. Too late came Airman Johnson and his amazing one-hour
flight to provide the ultimate proof.

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Post by Beefitarian »

Ah to be twenty again.
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by Mr-fix-it »

theres one sitting by our hanger at work. ill see if theres a poh in it and ill send it to you. all tho that is the best sounding airplane that ive seen
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Re: Twin Bonanza - anyone flown one?

Post by straightpilot »

Thanks for the kind offer, but there's a Flight Manual in the Twin Bonanza. Did a quick review, and off I went. Flew very nicely. Throwover control column, brakes only on left side. No rudder pedals on right side - but there were another set in the center - go figure.

Started easy. Took off. Non-supercharged, so around 28 inches MP and 3400 RPM for takeoff. Was flying by 90 mph. Left the throttles wide open, backed off the props to 3100 rpm for climb. Levelled off, back to 20 inches MP and 2500 RPM cruise. Didn't mess with the mixtures - pressure carbs. Sped right along.

God, what a wonderful-sounding aircraft!

It had the throttles in the center, and the props on the left, like all old Beechcraft, which I really don't like.

Really weird switches for gear and flap. Only one green light for gear - didn't really like that. Top of the white arc was both flaps and gear speed. I liked that.

Got the gear down on downwind, then all you had for flap indicators were these little lights at 20 and 30. Put 20 flap on downwind, 30 on base. Used 120 on base, I think I was too fast. 110 on final, 100 over the threshold, didn't pull the throttles back until it was very nearly on the ground. Had it stopped in 3000 feet, coulda done much better, but I'll take that for a first landing!

If you ever get a chance to fly one, go for it! What a wonderful-sounding, big old bird! This is a big little piston twin!

PS I found the terrifying story about the Sabre oddly comforting. I find it gives me comfort to know that people considerably stupider than me are living to ripe old ages.
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