Gary: Welcome! Good looking V-tail! I hope you will bring it over to the Museum's Beechcraft day on May 15 at Hobby.

Chris: Welcome! I would guess the TRACON/CFI combination would make for an excellent and interesting BFR. I always appreciate the great ATC in and around the Dallas area. Thanks!

DFW controllers are the best.

Some in SAT give you airways

G'day Nathan beautiful Baron, great to see our friends from downunder joins us. Dosen't look like boots, looks like black leading edge tape on there I think Keith, verticle stabilizer looks way to small to be a boot and there is a push strip outboard of the left motor. Don't need boots in OZ do you anyway?

Gary

Chris-

Welcome to BT! I am always telling folks from all over how lucky we are in the DFW area to have exceptionally skilled and professional Approach controllers, so pass it on and...

...thanks!

Thank you for the welcome and the kind ATC comments! Hopefully it will be a rare occurance when you feel you did not get good, or at least reasonable service. But....the new generation in training is....very green. They couldn't tell you which is a DC8 or a B747, or BE33,35,36 from a C210, let alone use all the available rules & procedures to work for EVERYBODY's benefit not just theirs.

Rant off

CH

Cheers Keith, na just LE tape....don't get to much icing to deal with out of Sydney.

G'day Nathan beautiful Baron, great to see our friends from downunder joins us. Dosen't look like boots, looks like black leading edge tape on there I think Keith, verticle stabilizer looks way to small to be a boot and there is a push strip outboard of the left motor. Don't need boots in OZ do you anyway?

Gary

I've been lurking here for a few months while looking for my bonanza... now that it's one week from being delivered, I thought I'd add my profile.

My name is Michael Grommet, I'm 51 with 3 boys aged 16, 18, 22. My wife, Andrea, and I own
veterinary practices in Sacramento, Modesto and Boise. My wife is a veterinary specialist. She has a board certification in Veterinary Dermatology and Allergy.
I began my love of flying from hearing my Dad talk about WW2. He flew P38's. We went to alot of air shows together. I would tag along as he got he sailplane endorcement.

I went to college at San Diego State University where I also learned to hang glide. After college, moved back home to Sacramento and took up ultralights (pioneer flightstar). 3 weeks before my wedding, I had an engine failure in the flightstar and landed in a field that tore out the undercarriage and my posterior cruciate. I was married in a cast and on crutches.

Decided that I needed to take up passengers so I began formal flight training in a Cessna 150 but finished in a Grumman Lynx. (about 1983).

Worked for a large pet food company for 17 years, part of which with Proctor and Gamble. Married my current wife. She immediately saw my love of flying and insisted I buy and airplane.... we bought a Sundowner. We flew it alot between our businesses and cabin in Idaho.

Then, I got the taildragger bug and bought a cessna 140..... beautiful plane.... love flying it. The trips over the Sierra between California and Idaho became more frequent so we decided we needed a faster, more powerful plane...... next week, I take delivery of a 1971 A36 with all the goodies, WAAS I0550 etc..... I can't wait..... This web site was VERY INSTRUMENTAL in helping me make a decision and was/is a valuable resource to this Bo newbie.

I am living a dream life. Wonderful wife, great business, great loving family, 3 airplanes and a perfect yellow lab. I go hunting every year in Idaho for Elk, Deer, chukars, quail etc. I am a very lucky person. I've worked hard but I'm also very lucky.
That's it for me.
Mike

Michael:
Let me be the first to welcome you to B/T. Pictures of the airplane are mandatory. Pictures of the wife (if shes hot) also have value for our friends here and overseas.
You will find that this board has one of the most fluent Beechcraft persona's in known world.
Once again welcome. By the way, your life has little if anything to do with luck. IMHO

Happy New Year!

Leigh

Hello everyone! I have posted a few times but never introduced myself. My name is Don Gumm, I started flying out of HHR in California back in 1969 in a PA28-180 I purchased and placed on leaseback to a flight school. It took about five years to log 750 hours and gain my ratings which include SMEL Comm Inst. In 1974 I purchased a new loaded A36 Bonanza. Other Bonanza pilots used to kid me about not having a real Bo but I didn't care, I loved it. So much in fact that in 1976 it was stolen by drug runners and taken to Mexico. Ten days after it disappeared a friend was fishing in Baja, California (Mexico) at a coastal fishing camp named Palmas de Cortez and there sat my A36 (abandoned) and confiscated. They flew back to La Paz (nearest phones) and called me. The next morning myself and two others entered Mexica (legally). When I reached the aircaft I found it damaged with no brakes and half full of fuel. I bribed the guard and we took off headed for Mulege, the nearest place we could buy fuel without being noticed. We then jumped the border back into the US side and back to HHR. I flew this great airplane for a total of twenty-eight years and almost 4000 hours before replaceing it with my current ride, a 1979 A36 low timer that I've had for about six years now.

Because of this experience I became involved in law enforcement and even though I made my living in the aerospace industry, I joined the Orange County, CA Sheriffs Department as a pilot for their Aero Squadron and stayed for over sixteen years and retired from the department as Operations Sargeant in 1997.

In 1982 I had moved my Bonanza from HHR to CNO next to the Planes of Fame. After meeting some guys from North Texas at Sun-N-Fun camping in 2000 I purchased a lot outside of Granbury. My wife and I had six kids that had all left the nest years ago and in 1996 decided to foster fragile new borns that came into the system. Even though we didn't plan it we adopted three of the fifty we had over a six year period.

We moved to Pecan Plantation in 2003 and built our hangar and home (in that order) the kids are now 12, 8 and 8 (had all since near birth) they're doing well and I've found Beech Talk! Life is great even if it is going by faster than I'd like.

I keep busy now (when not being a Dad) working part time with the local A & P doing annuals, engines changes and installing new avionics packages with complete panel mods. Regards, Don

Don,

Wow! Big kudos to you and your wife and welcome to BT!

My aunt and uncle used to live at pecan Plantation and I have fond memories of family holidays there, including flying to Thanksgiving dinner with my wife and mom not long after my wife and I bought our first plane.

Drew

Welcome Don! If you see Dick Keyt at Pecan Plantation, tell him Neal says hi. He was a mentor to me when I was first starting out in aviation.

-Neal

Hi,

Great forum. My name is Matt Bohnert. I just bought Denny Beagureau's 1960 M35 with an IO-550 conversion, sloped windshield and tip tanks. It was the cover plane for the April 2002 ABS magazine.

900 hours, Instrument, Commercial, Glider and CFI...although I don't do much instructing.

Before I bought my Bonanza I flew a Maule M-5 taildragger for 6 years up here in the mountains in Idaho. It was perfect for horsing around in the backcountry but my job and life demands something with a bit more cross-country utility.

I bought the M35 for that reason, plus I've seen enough of them in the 'easy' backcountry strips to know I could get in/out of the places where my family loves to go camping.

LOVE the Bo. I just flew it back from Denny's home field in Arizona over the holidays and took it up yesterday for my first real day of 'airwork'. Did a 4-point GPS speed run at 10,000 running 40F LOP and averaged 167 knots....Wow! Did I see that right? That's a long way from poking around in a taildragger.

Plus, I practiced slow flight with gear and full flaps at 75-80 knots, making 30 banked turns. Which is S.O.P. for any kind of mountain flying up here. It starts to wobble a little at 65-70 knots but at 75-80 it's rock solid.

This plane is awesome. I couldn't be more pleased with my purchase. The panel needs a bit of upgrading for serious IFR, but that is part of the fun of ownership.

Keep up the good work and the posts!

Matt Bohnert
N9850R
Boise, Idaho

Great write up, Don!

Welcome to BT, Matt. From the sound of things, your M is some treat!

Hi guys, I'm fairly new here but enjoy looking at your airplanes, so here is my dream Bonanza.

Name is Dave Morris of Indiana, got my private license in 1955 in a local flying club when in High School flying a Champ. $3/hr for the airplane and $3 the the instructor when we needed him. The good old days. Got the flying fever bad, so after school I did whatever I could to stay in the air, including being a part-time charter pilot and instructor. As such I have gotten to fly most light planes up through the medium twins, Twin Bonanzas, Twin Beeches, and one turbo prop, the 690A Commander. Now about 4900 hrs.

Since Beech just seems to get it right, I have always come back to the Beeches. When I could get a Bonanza, I choose a 1973 A36 in order to keep the price down a bit and still be able to get most all the extras that I think make a plane special.

This airplane has an IO-550 with 200 hrs SMOH, GAMI injectors, BDS baffle kit, and engine heater up front. With these injectors this is about the smoothest piston engine I have ever flown, almost like a turbine.

The avionics include an STEC 30 autopilot, slaved HSI, Garmin 430 and GMX-200, GPSS, WX-500 Stormscope, JPI EDM-800 analyzer and fuel flow, TCAD, new ELT, and Bose headphones.

Some extras on the airplane are dual controls, Mike Smith speed kit including the gap seals and tail cone fairing, standby pressure pump, VG's, strobes, shoulder harness, Rosen visors, static wicks, and new speed brakes. I know you don't have to have speed brakes, but they really do allow for better flight management. Such as when ATC keeps you high until the last minute, or when going into Greeenville-Spartanburg (a frequent destination for us) where you are at 7,000 ft until close the the airport.

I was lucky to find this airplane well equipped, with the new engine and with recent paint and leather interior so I only had to add the GMX-200, the EDM-800, the new ELT, the VG's, and now the speed brakes. It is a dream to fly, solid but light on the controls. Will cruise at 10,000 ft, 60% power burning 12 gph and trueing about 170 kts.

Hope this isn't too much information, but I'm eager to see more of your airplanes and all the details.