Hello guys,
so here I am trying to polish my writing skills while telling you my road to aircraft ownership. It has been long, it has been sometimes difficult and lined with victims on the way.
It was clear from the beginning that I would want an honest “4 person” aircraft. I don’t want to dig too much into detail, but W&B makes it a little easier in my situation (where the pilot weights as much as the remaining family combined, or nearly…), so a list of “acceptable” aircraft has been made. Among them, PA28, Beech 33/35/36, TB20. Classic stuff. I started checking ads onoline, and over more than a year a few interesting offers popped up.
An interesting A36 has been discarded after a pre-buy. A PA28, where I committed already, made no progress to be ready for pickup. So at the end of June an A36 popped upfor sale in Marocco. Contacted the seller, found a good mechanic to assist me… And while we were preparing and considering how to handle this, another very interesting V35A popped up. Checked the logs, with a very helpful seller, and off we went for a prebuy which revealed surprisingly little.
Long story short, at the end of august we went to Hamburg and picked up the baby.
Engine: IO520 non-turbo
The flight home was pretty relaxed, indeed a joy to fly. Very balanced, very stable. And the avionics, while nothing to write home about, did it’s job.
(Okay, the picture has been taken during a slight descent from pretty high up, the plane is quite fast nonetheless :)
The “old” Century III autopilot surprised us by being very smooth and precise, the yaw damper works great. Not alot of other avionics there, but hey, you get what you pay for, right?
So, got it home, and my mechanic took a few weekends to get some initial upgrades done:
Now, to be honest, there were also some not-so-great surprises that only came out when we looked hard for them. The DME turns out to be missing some vital circuit boards (PROB99 has been used as “donor” for another aircraft). But all in all a very nice aircraft.
So, I also decided to add some goodies (hehe) for the future:
So well, yeah, quite a bit of chicken to fry here. Luckily most components were available on the spot (don’t ask me how, I have no clue), and we will do the install in december/january.
Here a few more pictures. Feel free to ask, I forgot probabily a ton of information anyway :)
@lukepower what a nice V35A, and an N reg to boot. I looked for a V35A for a while with input from NCYankee, but no good candidates emerged. They tend to be lighter than the V35B, and have a few evolutionary features over the S35, which make them a very example of the type.
Congratulations and hope you post more on your new aircraft.
I’d be interested in hearing more as time goes on. Bonanza ergonomics don’t really work for me, but they have an allure…
A V35A popped up near me a couple of weeks ago, owned by a lady whose husband passed on at a relatively young age. A mutual friend is helping her (gratis) to get the plane ready for sale and of course says to me “you’d look great in this plane” 
The lady is anxious that the plane go to a good owner as she and her husband flew it for decades all over the place. However my friend’s experience with his Debonair, a project that he bought originally for $40K and has just finished restoring leads us to believe bringing the V35A to the same nice condition as the Debonair would cost about $100K above the purchase price, plus a lot of work for the owner. A lot of money and a big project. So for the time being its just being flown to work out the bugs from a year or two of storage, and readied for sale.
Congratulations on your Bonanza!
Beautiful aircraft!
It’s really nice that you have GAMI and EDM. It has great potential to save quite some money on maintenance and fuel together.
Make sure you become fluent in using your red knob :)
Did you check your “gami spread” already?
Im also considering Gami injectors upgrade in my TSIO360 as my spread is horrible right now.
Congratulations, awesome stuff!
Looks like you have a great mechanic at hand, a very important part of ownership.
Here’s to lots of joy while flying your own plane!
Great news! Happy ownership and enjoy flying your beauty. The Bonanzas are great airplanes.
Thanks all. The most surprising part wasy for me, the relative easy transition from trainer aircraft to this one with retractable gear. The handling feels natural (even if looking at the ruddervators move depending on the input is pretty fascinating) and the landings were, so far, among the best I have ever done :)
Nonetheless, some glitches are popping up here and there. The left gear cylinder lost pressure and needs new O rings. Last Saturday and sunday we cruised around Italy for some transition training and all went well, except we literally ran out of places to refuel. We were at L’Aquila (very nice airfield btw with good restaurant), and while refilling it turns out that they ran out of Avgas.
Improvising some fuel robbery from other aircraft (thanks to the owner for helping) we flew to a neighboring field for top up, and from there back to the north. Due to strong headwinds I had to land in Verona (luckily NVFR rated) and continue the next day. So, all good, but seemingly the Avgas situation in Italy is not really improving :)
lukepower wrote:
Thanks all. The most surprising part wasy for me, the relative easy transition from trainer aircraft to this one with retractable gear. The handling feels natural (even if looking at the ruddervators move depending on the input is pretty fascinating) and the landings were, so far, among the best I have ever done :)
Yes, the Bonanza is very pleasant, and thus easy to fly. And yes, even mediocre landings feel excellent in a Bonanza. The only thing that needs getting used to when coming from a trainer aircraft is energy management in descents. Plus of course the slightly higher system complexity and engine management.
lukepower wrote:
we literally ran out of places to refuel. We were at L’Aquila (very nice airfield btw with good restaurant), and while refilling it turns out that they ran out of Avgas.
In Italy, always keep a reserve of say 1.5 hours in your tanks, so when needed, you can safely fly to a second spot up to 45 minutes away. And always know those spots where you can always reliably get Avgas without needing any staff or so, like Ozzano, Rivoli di Osoppo, Alituscia, Terni, etc. Of course, these could also run out of gas, or suffer a malfunction, but this is rare. Please don’t cut it tight with fuel when flying in Italy, paticularly anywhere south of Rome.
Congratulations. It’s nice to hear a good news story!
boscomantico wrote:
In Italy, always keep a reserve of say 1.5 hours in your tanks, so when needed, you can safely fly to a second spot up to 45 minutes away.
With the V35A, you can’t legally takeoff without at least 13 gallons in each tank. So you need to be sure that you will be able to refuel if you land with less than the 13 gallon minimum in each tank.
