Good Old Days

ROBERT G. LOCK

Tram A Wing

TRAMMING A WING IS essentially squaring wing bays. It is accomplished by alternating loosening and tightening of internal brace wires called drag and anti-drag wires. It should always be done when constructing new wings and should be checked when recovering existing wings. It is not a difficult job and requires a set of trammel points. Trammel points are simply a length of spruce stock that measures about 1/4” x 3/4” x 38” (or whatever length needed to diagonally bridge the bay). I tram on the bottom side of the wing and start at the root. Small indentations are placed in the spar at the junction of a point where spar centerline intersects with the compression member. A bay is a complete structural component of the wing consisting of the front and rear spar and two compression members. The wires diagonally brace this bay. Most small aircraft wings will have four bays—smaller wings could have three bays and larger wings could have more than four bays.

Snug the wires but do not tighten to final tension. Set the points to bridge diagonally across the bay in one direction, and then move the trammel points to bridge the diagonal in the opposite direction. Loosen and tighten brace wires until both points are the same length. Proceed to the next bay and do the same thing, proceeding outboard until all bays have been trammed. Then return to the root and check the tram. You will probably have to make a small adjustment and then proceed outboard to the tip bay. Return to the root and check bays again. Chances are good that you will not have to make adjustments. Now it is time to check and set wire tensions. If you have a wire tensio- meter, set the wires to between 350 and 450 pounds for most small wings. If you

don’t have a tensiometer, tighten the wires until they make a good bass sound. Do not over-tighten. the brace wires. Note: always tighten each wire the same amount so as not to distort the tram that has been set. Tighten each wire the same amount until proper tension has been reached.

After the wing has been trammed, the ribs may be glued in place (if it is wood) or nailed in place (if the ribs are of aluminum). The above wing is from a Hatz biplane that I had just repaired. New aluminum leading edge is being installed and nailed in place.

Right, the Hatz wing completely assembled and ready to cover with fabric. In this photograph, the compression members and brace wires are plainly visible. This wing has three bays.

N MARCH 25, 1947, Beech Aircraft Corp. received Type Certificate A777 for the Model 35 Bonanza from the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Production began shortly afterward, with 1,500 Model 35 Bonanzas delivered in 1947 and 1948. What began as a revolutionary post-World War II general aviation aircraft evolved and was produced in the following four series: • 35 series Bonanzas (1947-1982) — original short fuselage, V-tail • 35-33 series Debonairs (1960-1967) — short fuselage, conventional tail • 33 series Bonanzas (1968-1994) — short fuselage, conventional tail • 36 series Bonanzas (1968-present) — long fuselage, conventional tail

Bonanza Development: 1944-1947

With the end of WWII approaching, Walter Beech sought to enter the postwar civilian single-engine market. In his autobiographical Birth of the Bonanza, chief engineer Ralph Harmon described instructions from senior management: Build a single-engine, “2 and seven-eighths passenger” (i.e., two-place and baggage), low-wing monoplane with retractable tailwheel landing gear. The concept was designated Beech Model 33 because it was “the 33rd Beech model study.” Harmon and other engineers were ordered to donate their time to design the Model 33 after work hours and away from Beech facilities to avoid conflicts with the company’s wartime contracts.

Olive Ann and Walter Beech inspect a 1947 Model 35 Bonanza. Other photos show a 1947 Model 35, the first newsletter issued by the American Bonanza Society, and a 1947 Bonanza’s instrument panel.

Harmon and a small team agreed to the unpaid “volunteer” work. But he did not agree with the design of the Model 33. “Being a tail-wheel type,” he wrote, “the aircraft sat … with a steep nose-up angle such that visibility was limited. Also, the main gears folded up and inward to wheel wells located under the calves of the legs of the two passengers. There was no way to bring your feet back to a comfortable position.” Instead of being the first of an all-new breed of comfortable, small business airplanes, the Model 33 was “just another prewar pro-pilot airplane.” Further, the “design looked too much like the prewar Globe Swift.”

Harmon’s vision was to “transport people from Point A to Point B with the least interruption of their normal environment.” For the 1940s businessperson, this meant a spacious, comfortable cabin with great visibility and tricycle landing gear. It meant “an office that is quiet and heated or cooled comfortably,” and “minimal changes in [the pilot and his guests’] spatial relationship to the outside world.” In other words, Harmon advocated a speedy and comfortable flying version of a successful businessman’s high-end automobile.

Harmon continued: “Walter Beech made frequent trips through the plant and one of his favorite places to visit was the Preliminary Design Department. ... One day when I knew he was coming … I laid the concept drawing out on the upper corner of my [drafting] board where he would see it. He looked at it and said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘That’s what I think we should build after the war.’ He asked some questions about the concept and the tricycle gear. ‘By God, that’s what I think we ought to build,’ he said, and he walked off.”

The result was the Beech Bonanza. The unique V-tail aircraft emerged from an extensive three-year engineering and testing program. Design goals included a fuel capacity for flights of a sensible duration, instrumentation and lighting for flight in reasonable day or night weather conditions, a comfortable and safe cabin, adequate space for luggage, and a cruise speed comparable to contemporary commercial airliners.

Using flight tests with an experimental V-tail on a Beech AT-10 trainer plus the results of wind tunnel testing (a first for a private airplane), a V-tail with a 30-degree dihedral was chosen for the new Model 35. In addition to the highly publicized attributes of reduced weight and drag, the V-tail was also considered to impede spin entry and promote spin recovery. Addition of an elevator-down spring reduced dynamic pitch instability at low speeds with the aircraft’s CG at or aft of the rear limit. In his classic, Those Incomparable Bonanzas, Larry Ball noted the V-tail also “simplified manufacturing, tooling, and parts stocking, and reduced the risk of ground damage from rocks thrown back by the wheels.” Further, “another benefit [was] perhaps as important as the others. [The V-tail] became a mark of distinction, identifying the finest airplane it its class.”

One of the two airfoils considered for the wings was the NACA 23000-series used on the Model D17 and later Staggerwings, and also on the Model 18. At the Bonanza wing’s root was the 23016.5 airfoil (thickness 16.5 percent of the chord), with the thinner 23012 airfoil (thickness 12 percent of the chord) at the tip. The airfoil was the thickest at 15 percent of the chord aft of the leading edge. The entire Bonanza/ Debonair fleet through the present G36 uses this same tapering airfoil.

The other airfoil tested was the laminar flow of P-51 fame, noted for reduced drag. However, the advantage of the laminar flow airfoil proved to be negligible at the Bonanza’s cruise speed. In 1947 and today, the Bonanza’s zero-lift drag coefficient is an extremely low 0.0192. By comparison, the P-51’s zero-lift drag coefficient is 0.0161.

Designed for operation on grass runways, which were frequently rough, a welded steel tube truss was the spar carry-through structure in prototype and early-production units. The retractable landing gear mechanism was also robust, with an electrically operated gearbox and pushrods avoiding the complexity and maintenance of a hydraulic system. Completely enclosing the retracted landing gear reduced drag and cabin noise with minimal addition of weight. For a minimum turning radius on the ground, the nose wheel free-swiveled, with differential braking providing directional control. Fatigue testing of the gear simulated over 100,000 landings.

Development of the passenger compartment size and interior appointments engaged a Mercury automobile as an engineering example. The resulting Bonanza interior accommodated up to four tall occupants and also provided the rear seat passengers with ground ventilation and emergency escape paths through the hinged aft window on each side. A hefty cabin structure plus a strong keel forward of the passenger compartment provided occupant protection in the event of a crash landing.

The fuselage was designed to be built in three sections that were later joined together on the production line: nose bowl and keel, cabin, and tail cone. Each wing was also designed to be built in three sections with piano hinges joining them into one assembly: leading edge, front spar, and box section. Today the G36 is still built in these sections.

Beech used its own R200-series electrically operated, controllable-pitch propeller. With a steel hub and laminated birch wooden blades, the overall length of the propeller was a long 88 inches for low-rpm operation, which reduced cabin noise.

Continental and Lycoming each developed a flat opposed-cylinder engine to Beech performance and weight specifications. The Continental 475-cubic-inch, six-cylinder E-165 produced 165 hp at 2050 rpm, while the Lycoming 290-cubic-inch, four-cylinder GO-290 produced 160 hp at 3000 crankshaft rpm and 1925 propeller rpm. The E-165 was selected because Lycoming could not build the quantities required for the Model 35 program.

Five prototype airframes were built. Airframes 1, 2, and 5 were dedicated to fatigue testing for the equivalent of 20,000 flight hours. Airframe 3 had laminar flow wings and a Lycoming GO-290, while airframe 4 had 23000-series wings and a Continental E-165. Ruddervators, ailerons, and flaps were fabric-covered on prototype and early-production units, after which they were skinned with magnesium. Flap deflection was limited to 20 degrees. The Bonanza’s first flight occurred on December 22, 1945, and lasted 40 minutes, with Beech chief test pilot Vern Carstens flying airframe 3.

During a high-speed dive test on October 26, 1946, a fatal crash occurred. The engineer riding in the right seat survived, but the pilot was killed. Observations from the survivor, plus those of another test pilot who flew a subsequent test dive in another preproduction Bonanza, determined the cause was not failure of the V-tail. In the fatal dive, the outer door on the right landing gear opened partially and twisted at over 220 mph, initiating a progressive structural failure that resulted in separation of the right wing outboard of the landing gear. Forces then caused the left wing, and finally the tail, to fail. As a result, the gear doors were reinforced and gear rigging tightened to complete the testing. The main landing gear up-lock mechanism was then designed to prevent the gear from sagging and opening its doors in turbulence or other high-g events.

35 Series Production: 1947-1982

The Model 35 (1947-48), commonly referred to as the Straight 35, debuted with the 165-hp Continental E-165 engine and 88-inch “butter paddle” propeller, 40-gallon fuel capacity, throwover control yoke, “piano key” control switches, low-frequency radio, and maximum takeoff weight of 2,550 pounds.

Facts, Fixes &Tips

FROM THE PROS

Left: Beech magazine ad Right: Model H35 Bonanza

Structural, power, and cosmetic changes occurred through the 35 series production with both the technical improvement and product consistency that defined the Bonanza. Alphabetic prefixes to 35, such as B35 and C35, designated the individual models of the V-tail Bonanzas, which frequently but not always changed with each model year through the S35 (1964-65). Beginning with the 1966 model year, all V-tail Bonanzas were the V35 with alphabetic suffixes defining the specific model (i.e., V35A, V35B).

On the A35 (1949), the steel tube spar truss was replaced by a stronger style of spar carry-through structure of sheet metal and forgings. An even stronger carry-through structure was introduced with the 1957 H35 and is still used today. With this structure, the A35 and subsequent models were licensed in the utility category at maximum gross weight. Also, the nose wheel was made steerable.

A major airframe change to the V-tail on the C35 (1951) and subsequent models increased the stabilizer chord by 20 percent and its angle of incidence from 30 degrees to 33 degrees. Unanticipated negative effects of this structural change came to be widely known and would be addressed by Beech and the FAA in later years. Also during C35 production, the 35R program converted 13 privately owned original Model 35s to many of the C35 features, which included an overhauled E-185-11 engine but not the sheet metal spar carry-through.

Left: Model V35 Right: V35B panel

By 1952, significant manufacturing cost overruns resulted in little profit from each aircraft sold, with field serviceability problems hindering sales. Unless unit profits and sales improved, the Beech board of directors considered ending Bonanza production. To save the Bonanza, Beech President Frank Hedrick met with production coordinator John Allen, who had years of management and manufacturing experience at Beech and was also an accomplished Bonanza pilot. Within 30 days of that meeting, John submitted an extensive plan to profitably manufacture and support the Bonanza; the board approved it. As part of the plan, the entire Bonanza production and operations were moved to the remote production facility on the southeast corner of the Beech campus, which became Plant 2 — home of the Bonanza and its derivative aircraft for nearly the next six decades. Additionally, engineering would develop one or more improvements for each model year Bonanza to spur sales.

Through the early 1950s, engine power increased incrementally from the original E-165 to the same-displacement E-225-8 with 225 hp for takeoff in the G35 (1956). Beginning with the 240-hp Continental O-470G in the H35 (1957), increases in engine power continued through the 260-hp IO-470N in the N35 (1961), the 285-hp IO-520B in the S35 (1964), and the TSIO-520D in the turbocharged V35TC through V35BTC (1966-70). Installation of Beechmanufactured propellers ended with the P35 (1962).

In addition to the more powerful O-470G, considerable strengthening of the entire airframe also occurred with the H35, making it the de facto second-generation Bonanza. The design changes were so significant that the H35 Bonanza (and all that followed) have a new type certificate, number 3A15. Less dramatic improvements on subsequent models included fuel-injected engines, increased standard and optional fuel capacities, landing lights moved from the wings to the nose, redesigned wingtips, small triangular third-cabin windows followed by large elliptical ones, aluminum ailerons and flaps, an elevator control bob weight, and so forth.

Although instrument panel changes were continuous, a complete redesign for the P35 (1962) eliminated the piano keyboard switches, adopted airline-style “T” grouping of the flight instruments on a shock-mounted panel, and created the vertically mounted stack of radios. New, visually differentiated flap and landing gear switches were put to the left and right respectively of the engine controls. The classic Beech throw-over yoke remained throughout the entire Model 35 series.

Beginning with the S35 (1964-65), the aft cabin bulkhead was moved back 19 inches, creating the long-cabin V-tail Bonanzas with optional forward-facing fifth and sixth seats. To relieve rudder pressure during takeoff and climb-out with the new 285-hp IO-520B, the engine was canted 2-1/2 degrees to the right and 2 degrees down. The S35’s new recessed navigation lights, trapezoidal long rear windows from the Baron, and stinger-style tail cone would last through the end of V-tail production.

The one-piece windshield made its debut on the V35 (196667), while the turbocharged V35TC had a 285-hp TSIO-520D factory-installed under an STC. Following a model year later was the speed sweep windshield in the V35A and V35ATC (1968-69) and beyond. Pressure pneumatics provided improved gyro operation at high altitude, while vertical readout engine and systems instruments beset the V35B (1971) and the entire 1972 Bonanza line.

Throughout V35B production (1970-82), annual changes included, but were not limited to, a completely redesigned interior and ventilation system, large baggage bay door, and contemporary upholstery materials. Annual and midyear airframe improvements featured Cleveland wheels and brakes, series-plumbed dual brakes, optional air conditioning, a 28-volt electrical system, preselect two-position flaps (approach and landing), high-stability wingtips, and an 80-gallon optional (later standard) fuel system. Introduction of the IO-520BB engine occurred in the 1977 model year with the 10,000th Bonanza, a V35B, rolling out in February 1977.

The final V-tail, a 1982 V35B serial No. D-10403, marked the end of 35 years of production of V-tail Bonanzas.

35-33 Series Debonair Production: 1960-1967

In the late 1950s, other manufacturers entered the high-performance, single-engine market with aircraft priced lower than the Bonanza. Beech’s response was the reducedpriced Model 35-33 Debonair (1960) with a 225-hp IO-470J and a conventional tail of horizontal and vertical stabilizers. The horizontal stabilizers and elevators were the V-tail components laid flat. As the progenitor of what became known as the straight-tail Bonanzas, the Debonair was based on the Bonanza airframe and built on the same production line. However, many of the Bonanza’s standard features, equipment, and interior appointments were either not available on the Debonair or were extra-cost options.

The first-year Debonair was bare aluminum with only minimal painted trim, rounded tail cone and wingtips, no third window behind the seats, and no dorsal fin for the vertical stabilizer. Less noticeable were the single landing light on the nose gear strut and no cowl flaps.

Inside was a Spartan interior with a bench rear seat. Neither front seat was adjustable during flight. There were no openable aft-seat windows/emergency exits and only a light for the stall warning. Much of the flight equipment and instrumentation were optional, such as right-side rudder pedals, sensitive altimeter, rate-of-climb indicator, cylinder head temperature gauge, sun visors, and so forth. Because sales of the 35-33 Debonair were lackluster, unsold units were factory-upgraded to the 35-A33.

Refinements to the 35-A33 (1961) and 35-B33 (1962-64) migrated toward standard Bonanza features and prices. These features included a fully painted exterior, small triangular third window, small dorsal fin, P35 instrument panel, stall warning horn, better seat padding and fabrics, improved cabin ventilation, and a 225-hp IO-470K.

Further migration continued with the 35-C33 (1965-67). Features shared with the S35 and V35 of the same model years included the one-piece windscreen, individual rear seats mounted on tracks, optional large third window, long dorsal fin with air scoop for overhead cabin ventilation, cowl flaps, and the landing light on the nose cowling. A 285-hp IO-520B powered the 35-C33A (1966-67).

33 Series Production: 1968-1994

Beginning with the 225-hp E33 and 285-hp E33A (1968-69), the Debonair name was dropped, and the straighttail airframes became Bonanzas. Standard on the 33 series was the speed sweep windshield and long third window of the V-tail Bonanzas.

In 1968 Beech also announced the aerobatic E33B (225 hp) and E33C (285 hp), although no E33B was built. The E33C was specially built to withstand the extreme stresses encountered in aerobatic flight and also included front-seat shoulder harnesses, a g-meter, and a quick- release door. Maximum takeoff weight for the E33C was 3,300 pounds, but the aerobatic maneuvers were approved only with a maximum weight of 2,800 pounds and a narrow CG envelope.

The F33 (1970) was a continued enhancement of the E33, incorporating several of the standard panel and interior improvements as on the 1970 V35B. The F33A of 1970 was an F33 with a 285-hp IO-520B.

On the 285-hp F33A of 1971-94, all standard and optional features, equipment, and appointments were the same as those in the V35B. The only difference between the straight-tail F33A and the V-tail V35B was the empennage.

Model years 1970, 1973-79, and 1986-87 saw production of the aerobatic F33C with the same special construction and features as the E33C. Additional airframe, systems, and interior improvements occurred on a model-year basis, as with the rest of the Bonanza line. The 285-hp Continental IO-520B powered all model years except 1986-87, which used the IO-520BB.

Yet another attempt at a lower-priced Bonanza was the G33 (1972-73). The 260-hp IO-470N last used in 1962 on the P35 was fitted to 50 F33A airframes that were further downgraded with the cheaper curved wingtips last used on the 35-C33.

Production of the Model 33 Debonair/Bonanza ended in 1994. Some ’94 model F33As that were not sold were later marketed as 1995 and 1996 models. With 34 model years, Model 33 production longevity was almost identical to that of the V-tail Bonanzas.

36 Series Production: 1968-Present

Based on the E33A of 1968, the Model 36 Bonanza (1968-69) was Beech’s answer to the single-engine people and cargo haulers from the competition. With a Continental IO -520B, the Model 36 was licensed in the utility category at its maximum takeoff weight of 3,600 pounds.

To achieve the Model 36’s design capacity of six standard 170-pound passengers seated within the airframe’s CG limits, the original E33A cabin was stretched 10 inches, with its aft bulkhead moved back 19 inches. To widen the CG envelope on the Model 36 with its cabin interior 29 inches longer than the E33A, the 36’s wing was repositioned 10 inches aft relative to the firewall, thus shifting the occupants, cargo, and CG forward. Four-foot-wide double doors at the right side of the aft cabin facilitated easy loading and unloading of passengers and cargo. The aft two of the four side windows were sized to fit those doors. Fuel capacity was 80 gallons.

Initially the target market was air taxi and light cargo operators, so the standard interior for the new Model 36 was utilitarian, with all six seats facing forward. Sales showed the true market for this aircraft was the Bonanza’s traditional cadre of personal/ business-use buyers, so with the 1970 introduction of the A36 (1970-2005), plusher interiors emulating those in the V35B became standard. Club seating became available during the 1970 model year, along with other improvements such as the 285-hp IO-520BB.

Model year 1984 introduced major changes to the A36 that included the 300-hp Continental IO -550B, industry-standard controls with dual shafts and yokes, industry-standard placement of gear and flap switches, new instrument panel layout with vertically oriented small engine and systems instruments, and vortex generators on the wing leading edge ahead of the ailerons. Subsequent model year changes included paint schemes, interior appointments, and avionics as LORANs came and went and GPS became standard equipment.

The 300-hp turbocharged TSIO-520UB powered the A36TC (197981) with a maximum takeoff weight of 3,650 pounds and a fuel capacity of 80 gallons. Lengthening the wings using Baron wingtips created the B36TC (1982-2002), with a maximum takeoff weight of 3,850 pounds and 108 gallons of fuel capacity.

The Bonanza’s glass cockpit era began in 2006 with the G36, the Garmin G1000 integrated flight deck gracing the classic Model 36 airframe. The 2017 Bonanza features the Garmin G1000 NXi system and offers the optional paint and interior of the ABS Sport Package, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the American Bonanza Society.

To date, 4,485 Model 36 Bonanzas have been built. Now in its 50th year, Model 36 Bonanza production has far outlived the Model 33 and even the seminal V-tail Bonanza — a single model in production for almost half of the entire history of powered flight, and still being built.

Then and Now: 1947-2022

Between the 2,550-pound, 165-hp Model 35 and the 3,650-pound, 300hp G36, the Bonanza evolved from the fast, four-place, state-of-the art personal and business aircraft of 1947 to the fast, six-place, state-ofthe art personal and business aircraft of 2017. Throughout this evolution, the Bonanza has remained a stellar performer with a notable ramp presence.

As the marketplace and over 18,000 units manufactured since 1947 have proven, the inimitable Bonanza achieved Ralph Harmon’s vision and Walter Beech’s goal. The Beech Bonanza defined and still sets the standard for performance, durability, and quality in a single-engine general aviation aircraft.

For the Bonanza history aficionado, Those Incomparable Bonanzas and They Called Me Mr. Bonanza by Larry Ball are available from the ABS Pilot Store at Bonanza.org or by calling 316-945-1700.

“OFF AND ON, N4560V has been part of our family for 66 years,” said Scott Crane, EAA 756414. “It went to a new home for about 20 years in the mid-’90s, but the circle was completed when I brought it back home in 2013.”

N4560V became part of the Crane family in 1956 when Scott’s uncle, Lewis Criley, bought it.

“Uncle Lewis and N4560V were directly responsible for me becoming a pilot and getting into aviation,” Scott said, “beginning with my first flight in it when I was 5 or 6 years old in 1967 or ’68. Periodically, I’d get flights in it, but it went to a new home in 1993, when Uncle Lewis lost his medical after 49 years and 3,400 hours of flying and nearly 500,000 miles in the Bonanza. In fact, unknown to me, when it basically disappeared for 20 years, for most of that time it was sitting in a rural hangar in Arizona, gathering dust. Lots of dust.

“I can’t begin to explain how that airplane affected me,” he said. “In fact, in my mind I often relive every minute of every flight I experienced in it as a child. The airplane may have belonged to someone else, but part of me always thought of it as our family airplane. When my mother passed in 2011 and my aunt sent lots of family pictures to me, the ones of Uncle Lewis and Aunt Matilda with N4560V jumped out at me. With no goal in mind, I ran the N-number through my computer, wondering what had happened to it. That’s when I discovered it was still owned by Sonja Green in Wickenburg, Arizona, who had bought it from Uncle Lewis in ’93. I couldn’t believe it! That one simple web search of the FAA registration file set a whole new chapter of the lives of both the Crane family and N4560V in motion.”

Born in March 1948, N4560V immediately went to its first owner in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Then it quickly uickly cycled cycled through through six six more more owners owners before before being ing bought bought by by Uncle Uncle Lewis. Lewis. However, However, Lewis Lewis didn’t b buy uy a a pristine, pristine, 8-year-old, 8-year-old, ready-to-go ready-to-go Model Model 35. In fact, t, what what he he bought bought was was basically basically a a project, project, bec ecause prior or to to his his purchase, purchase, the the airplane airplane had had be ee en n landed gea ar-up r-up at at Denver’s Denver’s Stapleton Stapleton airport. airport. The ere re’s’s generally n not ot a a huge huge market market for for a a badly badly dinged d a ai irplane as com omplicated plicated as as a a Bonanza, Bonanza, but but Uncle L Lewi wis was up for t the he task. task. He He was was an an A&P A&P and workeked d in in maintenance ce for for Continental Continental Airlines. So, o, he he disassembled d the he damaged damaged airairplane, carted d it it t to o his garage work rkshop,shop, and and went went to work on it.

Uncle Lewis and Aunt Matilda repaired all the sheet metal, and apparently Matilda became adept at bucking rivets. She also crafted curtains and generally tidied up the cockpit. Scott said his last flight in the airplane was when he was in junior high school and rode with them from Carson City, Nevada, to Ontario, California. That flight, however, stayed with him and led him into a life in aviation.

“When I graduated from high school,” he said, “I immediately enrolled in an A&P program at a local college and graduated in 1982. For a few years, I worked as a mechanic in and around Ontario, California, where I was born, then went to work for UPS in Louisville, Kentucky, in their maintenance department. Working for UPS tech support, I eventually wound up in management, where I was part of the management team that covered 90 maintenance facilities in the U.S. and another 90 around the globe. Going from mechanic to management, I think I did just about every job the company had to offer, and along the way was able to not only travel the globe, but met and worked with some really great people. It was a job, but it was also a tremendous amount of fun. I retired in 2017. By that time, I had spent some time working in Rockford and had discovered Poplar Grove airport. We moved there while I was still

That one simple web search of the FAA registration file set a whole new chapter of the lives of both the Crane family and N4560V in motion.” - scott crane

TOP: N4560V now lives on the well-known sport aviation field in Poplar Grove, Ill. BOTTOM: A picture of a happy airplane owner who just reunited with a long-lost relative.

with UPS and have been there since. It’s the perfect combination of people, airplanes, and airport.

“I started flying as soon as I was out of high school,” Scott continued. “The college where I was getting my A&P had a flying club for their fulltime students. They were charging the princely fee of $15 an hour (with instructor), so I plunged right into it. At the time, I was a kid just out of high school. I was riding a motorcycle that got great gas mileage and was living at home, but it was still financially tight. However, my granddad and grandmother were very close to us, and Granddad told me he didn’t want me to use finances as being an excuse to miss class. So, he helped me when I needed it and encouraged me to keep after it.

“I bought my first airplane,” he said, “a Cherokee 140 in 1994, then moved up to a partnership in a Seneca I. I got my multiengine instructor’s ticket and was getting pretty busy instructing in the Seneca. I was working full time with UPS, and when they moved me to Rockford, I bought my partner out and kept instructing up there. Then N4560V reentered my life.”

“When I discovered that the lady, Sonja Green, Uncle Lewis had sold the airplane to still had it, I almost instantly sent her a message via Facebook, explaining my connection to her airplane and how fascinating I found it that she still owned it,” Scott said. “It took about a month, but she eventually called me, and we had a really warm, interesting conversation about Uncle Lewis and Aunt Matilda. Her company was All Arizona Real Estate, and she had helped them get their house on Moreton Airpark fly-in community in Wickenburg, Arizona. She also lived on the airport, so she knew my aunt and uncle well and told me lots of stories about them. Obviously, she, like everyone else who knew the couple, liked them a lot. It was a terrific conversation. Then out of the blue, she asked me whether I’d like to buy the airplane. She hadn’t flown it for 20 years and thought it should go to a better home. That kicked off a longer separate discussion that dragged out until I wrote the check and N4560V officially rejoined the Crane family. However, Aguila, Arizona, is 1,400 miles in a straight line from Poplar Grove, Illinois, and I knew the airplane was going to take some TLC to make her airworthy again.

“My initial plan,” he said, “was to do an annual on the airplane, get a ferry permit, and head for home. However, I didn’t get very far into the annual before it became obvious that the intervening years hadn’t been kind to the airplane. While it was in comparatively good condition, taking off cross-country wouldn’t be a smart thing to do, so the decision was made to truck her home. I built wooden racks for the wings and a jig to mount the fuselage on. Then I stayed at Sonja’s house for a couple of weekends, taking the airplane apart and stuffing it into a 32-foot Penske truck. My friend Dave Birgmann came with me, which made the job doable. Also, to show what kind of a gal Sonja is, she borrowed a forklift to help with the loading!

“We unloaded the truck at Poplar Grove June 9, 2013, and what I thought was going to be a two-year, fix-the-broken-things, semi-restoration took on a life of its own that stretched out to seven years.”

The classic lines imagined by Walter and Olive Ann Beech’s designers are accentuated by Scott Crane’s tasteful paint scheme.

N4560V was lost to the Crane family for over 20 years, when Scott stumbled across it in an FAA registration search. It had spent most of that time ignored in a hangar in Arizona.

Scott quickly discovered three basic facts involved in all vintage airplane restorations: It takes much more time and more money than even conservative estimates predict, and when working on what is essentially a flying icon, there is no such thing as “good enough.” When one thing is fixed and beautified, that makes everything else around it, even though they may be totally airworthy, look awful.

“Once we had her in the shop, and we saw how original she was, I set a goal to use as much original equipment as possible,” he said. “Yes, I knew I was going to need modern avionics, and some safety stuff like shoulder harnesses and strobes, but otherwise, it was going to be as old-school as I could make it.

“It turns out that ‘old-school’ isn’t always possible, and I ran into that quickly on the instruments. None had lighting because the ‘glow-in-the-dark’ radium numbers didn’t require it. They glow because they’re highly radioactive and, therefore, are not only very illegal but scary to have around. Fortunately, Air Parts in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, were old hands at this kind of stuff and had a way to remove the radium and replace it with something less dangerous. Also, most of the instruments sport the Beechcraft logo.

“Anyone who has worked with anything that’s old and which includes cloth-insulated wiring doesn’t have to be told how bad it can get,” Scott said. “Even if it still works, it’s on its way downhill, and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a headache. Most of the electrical systems in N4560V worked fine, but some of it looked, and felt, as if it would fall apart if you even touched it. In that situation, fixing it isn’t the way to go. It’ll just cause you heartburn later on. So, we ripped it all out and started over. We replaced all the control cables and pullies for the same reason: They were old and showed it. In fact, some of the pulley bearings were frozen, and the pullies weren’t turning.

“The actual aluminum structure of the airplane was remarkably good, because it had never spent any time sitting around outside and much of its life was spent in Arizona, where humidity isn’t a factor. So, there was little or no corrosion. However, all of the fasteners were 65 years old, so I just replaced them all. Even the wing bolts are brand new. At the same time, we satisfied the AD on the tail, which fortunately was in excellent condition. The magnesium ruddervators on old Bonanzas have reached a critical point where there are zero flyable replacements available. Magnesium loves to corrode, but mine were almost perfect. The ruddervators were already painted and balanced, so we left them alone but painted the flaps and painted and balanced the ailerons.”

This was very much a DIY project. However, there are some things that, even though I’m an A&P, I fully recognize that there are some aspects of rehabilitating airplanes that are best left to those who specialize in such things.” - Scott Crane

Scott said, “Don’t get the impression that I just threw money at the project and let others do it. This was very much a DIY project. However, there are some things that, even though I’m an A&P, I fully recognize that there are some aspects of rehabilitating airplanes that are best left to those who specialize in such things. This includes things like upholstery. I could probably figure it out, but among the many inhabitants of Poplar Grove Air Park, Lorraine Morris is an expert at upholstery. It already had an old Airtex interior, so Lorraine installed a new leather Airtex system that looks great and has an original feel to it. At the same time, the original wooden floorboards were replaced with new ones, which eliminated the smell that is often associated with old airplanes. They had over 7,500 hours on them, so they were due for replacement.

“Incidentally, to give some idea what age can do to an airplane, when I started to replace the bladder fuel tanks, which didn’t leak but it was logical to replace them, they had to come out in pieces. I was forced to cut them into small enough chunks with sheet metal shears that they could be pulled out. Any flexibility was totally gone.

“Paint is something usually left to experts,” he said, “but here again my Poplar Grove neighbors stepped in and helped. One of them, Jim Kidd, had a paint booth, and he helped me lay out the stripes and do the final painting.

“I really got lucky when it came to the engine. It was the original E-225 and looked good, but Uncle Lewis’ overhaul was 30 years old and I didn’t want to take a chance, so I was going to rebuild it. Then, in 2016, a notice popped up on Facebook that said an operation in Texas was replacing a low-time E-225 with a bigger motor. It was priced right, and most accessories, including the exhaust system, were nearly new. So, my very last flight on a UPS airplane was going down to Dallas, where I rented an SUV and brought the engine home. Once there, Poplar Grove Airmotive helped with the Bendix fuel-injection modification and Hartzell oil-driven propeller mods. They then ran it in their test cell, and it came through with flying colors.”

TOP: Scott retained as much of the original instrumentation as he could while still making the airplane into a new millennium traveling machine. BOTTOM: Living at Poplar Grove has its advantages: The new Airtex upholstery was installed by a neighbor, Lorraine Morris.

Aircraft building and rebuilding projects often exist as stand-alone endeavors that exist alongside a family’s life, with little involvement by family members. Just the opposite was true with N4560V. The entire Crane family was involved in many different areas.

“Knowing that Aunt Matilda had made the curtains, which were showing their age, my two older daughters, Shannon and Shelley, jumped in and made replacements,” Scott said. “My youngest daughter, Sami, took on the role of Rosie the Riveter in the same way Aunt Matilda had in the original rebuild in the ’50s. She got good at riveting and was my right hand in so many other ways. I think she spent as much time inside the tail cone as I did. My son, Scotty, who is also a lifetime member of the American Bonanza Society, spent hours with me throughout the project, but was especially involved in working on the landing gear transmission and making that whole system work.”

All airplane projects eventually reach the point that the only thing left to do is go flying. For Scott, that was on June 26, 2020, and it was almost a perfect flight.

“The only squawks were simple adjustments,” he said, “so almost immediately, I took it over to Avionics Place in Rockford to get the transponder, altimeter, and ADS-B, which I had installed, checked and certified. Then it was on to flying it.” So, what did Scott and his family get after seven years of hard work? For one thing, they now have a beautiful and classic traveling machine that is totally reliable and is mechanically new. However, one fact that makes Scott’s project unique is its connection to his past: While flying, he can turn his head to see his kids in the back seat and clearly imagine how he looked as a teenager in the very same position. Not many pilots can do that. Most family heirlooms never find their way home. Courtesy of Scott Crane and against all odds, N4560V did. Congrats, Scott!

The family that Bonanzas together stays together.

IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO PICK T WO AIRPL ANES THAT WOULD BE L ARGER POL AR OPPOSITES AS THESE T WO — MIND-BO GGLING MODERN WAS BEING PRODUCED AT THE SAME TIME AS HARD CORE ANTIQUE TECH.

The Model 35 Bonanza has been with us for so long that we can no longer appreciate what an incredible impact it had on postwar aviation. It was essentially the space shuttle of its day. It was the sleekest, most modern aircraft the civilian aviation community had ever seen. The Beechcraft Museum in Tullahoma preserves that period of time.

JUST FOR THE FUN of it, imagine yourself a fly on the wall in this scenario: It’s late 1944, and it’s obvious which side is going to eventually win the war. Government contracts have already started to dry up or get shorted, so manufacturing companies worldwide are having deadly serious internal conversations about what kind of products they’re going to manufacture that can be sold on the civilian market. In Wichita, Walter Beech and his ever-present and always-involved wife, Olive Ann, are sitting at the head of a long table in their corporate boardroom, with their department heads filling all the other chairs. Their postwar product line is the subject at hand.

As Walter Beech surveys the table, he notes that Ralph Harmon, his chief designer, has his design team with him. It’s a mixed bag of a few gray dogs that had been with Beech since his days with Travel Air in the 1920s and some much younger designers. His new director of marketing is also there, and he knew the sales/marketing guy had definite thoughts as to how the company should deal with the postwar aviation marketplace.

DECISION

Unfortunately, there are no accurate notes as to what was actually said, but we can make some educated guesses. At the very least, the conversations had to have been interesting, and possibly even heated, because the result was that Harman’s team wound up designing an airplane that was radically new in every aspect of its design. That was to be the Bonanza. At the same time, possibly because of the older heads at the table or simply because Olive Ann liked the airplane, they trotted out a revised version of the very first airplane Beechcraft had ever designed, the 1932 Staggerwing. However, it wasn’t just a continuation of the D17S they had been building for the military. It was a slicker, cleaner version of the airplane that on its introduction had become a runaway success in a totally depressed market. The 1947 version was to be the ultimate Staggerwing: the G17S. Unexpectedly, they put both airplanes into production at the same time. It would be difficult to pick two airplanes that would be larger polar opposites as these two — mind-boggling modern was being produced at the same time as hardcore antique tech.

It’s possible that the thinking at the time was that the Staggerwing had always been popular. So, if the postwar aviation marketplace decided the Bonanza wasn’t its cup of tea, Beechcraft would always have the old stalwart, the Staggerwing, at the plate and at least capable of getting on base. Plus, the Staggerwing production line had been active throughout the war, so the startup cost was nil. However, the thought patterns behind building a biplane and an aluminum bullet that would be competing against each other turned out to be unimportant. The resulting sales definitely proved that.

The Bonanza hit the marketplace in 1947, which looked as if it was exactly the wrong time to be introducing a new, expensive airplane because the aviation market was in freefall. However, the marketing guy was right, and the Bonanza was a runaway hit almost from the beginning. So, Staggerwing sales were unimportant. The result was that only 20 G17Ss were built.

One of the biggest technological improvements that World War II had forced onto aviation manufacturing companies was the ability to build almost anything in aluminum. Some light aircraft companies took note of that; some didn’t. Although Beechcraft had been a rag-andtube airplane company when its Model 18 Twin Beech was adapted by the military, it quickly became aluminum-savvy. The Bonanza was the beneficiary of that learning curve. The age of the rag-andtube light airplane may have continued for another few years, but by 1947, when the Bonanza came out, only Piper would continue working in that medium.

The very earliest Model 17 Staggerwings had fixed landing gear and some had monstrous motors. They carried as much as 710 hp and living room accommodations in the cabin. Throughout their production run (1932-1948), engines as small as 225 hp were installed. The 20 postwar G17s that were built to compete with the new Bonanza had the ever-popular 450-hp R-985 P & W.

The fly-on-the-wall thing would have been really interesting during the early design meetings for the Bonanza. Beechcraft had never built anything but taildraggers. All had been powered by a wide range of radial engines, mostly the 450-hp Pratt & Whitney R-985. They had never designed nor built a single-engine airplane of aluminum. All of their aluminum work had been on the Model 18 Twin Beech. As far as that goes, the only semi-successful all-aluminum, single-engine airplane prior to the Bonanza had been the Spartan Exec, and its aluminum skin had been hiding what was largely a steel tube skeleton.

Plus, Beechcraft had zero experience with the new generation of aircraft engines, the flat fours and sixes. The sixes weren’t commonly available until some were put into production during the war. In fact, when all of the foregoing factors were combined into a single airplane, it’s obvious that the Bonanza was basically the very first “modern” light airplane. What has become the totally normal image of a modern airplane — a low-wing, flat-engine, four-place, retractable-gear, nose-dragging, all-aluminum, easy-flying design — was, at the time, revolutionary. Beechcraft was the first to do it. And it’s still doin’ it! Talk about icons! The Bonanza, in one variation or another, is the longest-produced airplane in history! Deservedly so.

Although there are no facts to back it up, the following statement is arguably true: Because the Staggerwing houses so much complicated woodwork and antiquated internal machinery, it is probable that its parts count — the number of individual pieces in the airframe — is close to twice that of the Bonanza. That’s partially reflected in comparing their 1947 selling prices: $12,000 versus $25,000. Plus, the man-hours involved must have had a similar ratio. There are, however, other factors that management might have thought would be important enough that some customers would be willing to pay the price difference for the Staggerwing.

When the Staggerwing first flew in 1932, the world was decidedly different from that into which the Bonanza was introduced 15 years later. In the early 1930s, the Depression and socio-economic factors had divided the country into two classes: those who were wealthy, and those who weren’t. The Staggerwing and its cabin-class peer group of aircraft were aimed at the segment of society that had the money. It was after the limousine crowd as opposed to the Ford coupe crowd. One has only to open the door of the Staggerwing and poke their head inside to sense the limousine feel the cabin exudes — and it truly is a cabin. It’s big, only an inch and a half wider than a Bonanza at the pilots’ shoulders, but the back seat is a solid three people wide. Plus, the feeling of luxury that surrounds the passengers is impossible to ignore.

Put side by side with the Bonanza, while the interior of the Staggerwing is much more luxurious, it is also dated. It had a modicum of art deco styling to it and the back seat could be a little dark. The Bonanza’s interior is tighter, but it was nicely designed to house four people comfortably and it’s brighter. Bonanza’s rear windows grew progressively larger over the decades in response to market demand for increased visibility.

At no time did the Bonanza designers make any effort to address the limousine market’s desire for luxury overkill. This was because, at the time, that market was slowly disappearing. The way in which the war effort had brought people together had flattened many social and economic differences. In addition, the Depression had long since disappeared, so there was more money available at all levels of America. To match that market, the Bonanza had appointments that were about the level of the top models to come from Oldsmobile or Cadillac.

PRODUCING AN ANACHRONISM ALONGSIDE A SPACESHIP

PERFORMANCE

The initial model of Bonanza, the straight Model 35, was slower than the Staggerwing, carried less load, and had shorter range. However, it was light-years easier to fly, cost half as much to buy, and burned 60 percent less fuel — 9.7 gph versus 25 gph at 75 percent. So, it’s not surprising that lower costs and ease of operation won out over luxury. Later models of Bonanzas totally closed the performance gap in all areas, eventually being not only faster, but doing so at a fraction of the fuel burn.

The figures in the table on page 40 were taken from pilot handbooks for the respective airplanes, so they may or may not represent real-life numbers. Handbooks always present stats in the most optimum conditions, but when comparing one to the other, they both should be off the same amount, which makes comparisons valid, if not totally accurate. Presumably, as is normal practice, all of the performance numbers were taken at full gross weight, zero wind, and “standard” temps, about 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit).

Some of the numbers that are interesting are the takeoff and landing distances. The Bonanza is off the ground in 1,200 feet, whereas the Stag leaves the runway in about half that, even though it weighs a solid 1,700 pounds more. This is explained by the power-to-weight ratios: The Bonanza (remember, this is a 165-hp 1947 Model 35) is 13.7 pounds/hp, while the Staggerwing, with 450 hp on tap, is only 9.4 pounds/hp, which is pretty astounding, so it accelerates like a bullet compared to the older Bonanza. A newer Bonanza would be much more competitive in that area of performance. A V35 (1969) at max takeoff weight is 3,400 pounds and has 285 hp for 12-to-1. That’s better but not a match.

Power-to-weight combined with lots of wing area gives the Staggerwing the edge on rate of climb, too: 1,250 fpm versus 950 fpm. Also, note that both airplanes have nearly the same takeoff and landing distances over a 50-foot obstacle, even though the Staggerwing is much heavier. It’s worth noting that the Staggerwing’s payload is 1,450 pounds, which is almost exactly the empty weight of the entire 1947 Bonanza. So, in theory, it could carry an empty Bonanza. You can talk to almost any longtime Staggerwing pilot, and they will carry on about how good the airplane is at working short fields because its handling is so predictable in slow, power-on approaches.

WHEN THE STAGGERWING FIRST FLEW IN 1932, THE WORLD WAS DECIDEDLY DIFFERENT FROM THAT INTO WHICH THE BONANZA WAS INTRODUCED 15 YEARS L ATER.

The Model 17 was an incredibly complicated, labor-intensive airplane to build. The steel tube fuselage and center section were faired with a blinding number of wooden stringers and bulkheads. The fabric-covered, all-wood wings, although beautiful, had an incredibly high parts count. Translated, that means “expensive. ”

Here’s the bad news about both airplanes, which, except for rare exceptions, is true for just about every four-place airplane ever produced: You can’t fill all the fuel tanks and all the seats and be under max gross weight. As with almost all of today’s designs, they don’t have that much useful load. At some point, fuel has to be traded for passengers or vice versa. For the 1947 Bonanza, that happens at two passengers plus pilot. Actually, at full fuel, the second passenger has to be lighter than normal to allow filling the tanks (39 gallons). In the Staggerwing, with the normal 124- gallon tanks, you can carry the FAA-sized pilot (170 pounds), three passengers, and a little baggage. Impressive! Of course, filling the tanks to feed the big Pratt & Whitney will cost right at $600!

So, you’re on your way to somewhere and stop for fuel. It’s a small city airport, so there are people sitting in front of the café, watching airplanes. You grease it on and taxi up to the gas pumps. As you shut down and climb out, you notice that a number of people have stood up and are walking toward you. They are talking to each other as they stare at your airplane. They are all smiling! Which of the two airplanes we’ve been discussing are you flying?

That’s an unfair question. Four wings and a round engine will, in most eyes (but definitely not all), trump pretty lines and a V-tail. Even a nonpilot recognizes those things in life that are eternally judged to be artful. Oh, wait … that statement fits both airplanes! Oh, well …

NOW FOR THE IMPORTANT STUFF

HOW THEY LOOKED ON PAPER IN 1947

A Bonanza is the logical result of state-of-the-art engineering and manufacturing that came out of World War II. It is, and always will be, classic. It is ageless.

1947 BEECHCRAFT MODEL 35 - BONANZA 1947 BEECHCRAFT MODEL G17S - STAGGERWING

HORSEPOWER: Continental E-185, 165 hp

BEST CRUISE SPEED: 150 KIAS BEST RANGE: 530 nm FUEL BURN @ 75%: 9.7 gph STALL SPEED: 48 KIAS RATE OF CLIMB: 950 fpm CEILING: 18,000 feet

TAKEOFF DISTANCE: 1,200 feet LANDING DISTANCE: 580 feet TAKEOFF DISTANCE OVER 50-FOOT OBSTACLE: 1,440 feet LANDING DISTANCE OVER 50-FOOT OBSTACLE: 925 feet CABIN WIDTH: 42 inches GROSS WEIGHT: 2,550 pounds EMPTY WEIGHT: 1,458 pounds MAXIMUM PAYLOAD: 985 pounds FUEL CAPACITY: 39 gallons OCCUPANCY: crew 1, passengers 3 OCCUPANCY, FULL FUEL: crew 1, passengers 1.8 1947 TYPICAL PRICE: $11,840 (2021: $148,028)

HORSEPOWER: PRATT & WHITNEY R-985-AN-1, 450 HP BEST CRUISE SPEED: 175 KIAS (10,000 FEET, 75%) BEST RANGE: 870 NM, 124 GALLONS, 65% FUEL BURN @ 75%: 25 GPH STALL SPEED: 54 KIAS, FULL FLAPS RATE OF CLIMB: 1,250 FPM CEILING: 20,00 FEET TAKEOFF DISTANCE: 620 FEET LANDING DISTANCE: 670 FEET TAKEOFF DISTANCE OVER 50-FOOT OBSTACLE: 1,130 FEET LANDING DISTANCE OVER 50-FOOT OBSTACLE: 980 FEET GROSS WEIGHT: 4,250 POUNDS EMPTY WEIGHT: 2,800 POUNDS MAXIMUM PAYLOAD: 1,450 POUNDS FUEL CAPACITY: 124 GALLONS OCCUPANCY: CREW 1, PASSENGERS 4 OCCUPANCY, FULL FUEL, CREW 1, PASSENGERS 3.2 1947 TYPICAL PRICE: $25,000 (2021: $312,558)

“I’M A PEOPLE PERSON. … I just feel like my calling was to bring the people to the airplanes,” said Jody Curtis, the executive vice president of the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

And, every October, that’s exactly what happens during the museum’s annual Beech Party, an annual fly-in that celebrates the ongoing legacy of one of the pillars of general aviation.

BEECH BEGINNINGS

Back in 1925, three men whose names would become synonymous with aviation — Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman, and Walter Beech — formed the Travel Air Manufacturing Co. in Wichita, Kansas. After building a series of airplanes, including the popular model 4000 biplane and the record-setting Mystery Ship racers, Travel Air was absorbed by CurtissWright in 1929, and Walter was given a prominent management role in the parent company. Lloyd and Clyde had left Travel Air by 1927 to start their own ventures, and before long, Walter felt compelled to do the same thing.

In 1932, Walter pitched to Curtiss-Wright senior management a high-speed, four-place cabin biplane based on a concept by an engineer named Ted Wells. They turned him down, reluctant to commit to a new and high-end design given the state of the economy at that time. So, in April of that year, Walter resigned. He and Ted, along with Walter’s wife, Olive Ann, formed the Beech Aircraft Co. and set about building airplanes under the Beechcraft brand. Less than seven months later, the first Beechcraft, a model 17R Staggerwing, made its maiden flight on November 5. The successful Staggerwing was followed by another brilliant design of Ted’s, the Model 18, better known as the Twin Beech, in 1937. Of the more than 9,000 built by the time production ended in 1970, roughly half saw military service during and after World War II.

After the war, Beech introduced the Bonanza, an airplane that quickly became a general aviation icon. The type first flew in December 1945, and the first production models rolled out in 1947. Variants of the Bonanza have been built ever since, a staggering 70-plus-year production run that continues to this day. Over the years, Beech introduced the Baron light twin, the turboprop King Air, the T-34 Mentor military trainer, the Model 99 and 1900 airliners, a pair of business jets, and the still- futuristic-looking Model 2000 Starship, among other types.

Walter died suddenly in November 1950, and in a move that seemed novel at the time, Olive Ann was named to replace him as CEO of Beechcraft. But Olive Ann was no novelty. She started at Travel Air and had served as the secretary/treasurer of Beech since the company’s founding 18 years earlier. She was known for her strong business sense and served as CEO until the company was bought out by Raytheon nearly 30 years later.

Walter and Olive Ann Beech.

I like people to think of them together because there wouldn’t have been a Beechcraft without my father. It couldn’t have existed without my mother, so the two of them together were a team that made it happen.” — Mary Lynn Oliver

Mary Lynn Oliver, daughter of Olive Ann and Walter Beech.

John Parish and his Staggerwing, Big Red.

“She wasn’t ordinary in any way,” said Mary Lynn Oliver, Olive Ann and Walter’s daughter. “She was a businesswoman. She wasn’t a housewife. … She wasn’t out there baking cookies.”

Mary Lynn was just a child when her dad died, but she has vivid and fond memories.

“I remember him as a very jolly, happy fellow who was always teasing, always seemed very congenial,” she said.

And she is justifiably quite proud of her parents’ aviation legacy.

“I like people to think of them together because there wouldn’t have been a Beechcraft without my father. It couldn’t have existed without my mother, so the two of them together were a team that made it happen,” she said. “I think my father is often the forgotten one because he died so long ago. I think he was fantastic in his own way, too, as my mother was.”

MAKING A MUSEUM

In 1973, the first steps were taken to make certain that neither Walter nor Olive Ann or the airplanes they built would ever be forgotten. In that year, famed race pilot Louise Thaden spoke at the Staggerwing Club’s annual fly-in.

Louise had worked for Beech as a sales representative in the late 1920s, and flying lessons were included as part of her salary. She started setting altitude, speed, and endurance records almostalmost immediately mmediately after after learning learning to to fly. fly. Then, Then, in in 1936,1936, flying flying a C17RC17 Staggerwing with co co-pilot -pilot BlancheBlanche Noyes,No she became the first woman to to win in thethe Bendix Trophyophy Race from New York to Los Los A Angeles.

When n Thaden Thaden spoke spoke at the fly-in, she said that she would donate donate her personal collection of aviation and racing ing memorabiliamem if only the club wouldwould startstart a a museum. useum.museum. JohnJ John Parish,Parish, EAAEAA Lifetime 43943, , owner owner ofo an early G model Staggerwing named med Big Big Red,R got together with a couple of other membersmember of the Staggerwing Club Club andan decidedde ed to to do do justj that.

John John grewgrew upup in in Tullahoma,Tull learned to fly whenwhen he he was in n college, college, anda bought his first air-airplane in in theth mid-1960s.-1960s. ItI was a Cherokee okee 180, 180, but thanks to regularegular visitsvis to the Antique ntique AirplaneAirplane Association ationAssociation (AAA)(AA(AAA) fly-infly-in inin Blakesburg,Blakesburg,Blakesburg, he fell in love with ith the the classics.cl

The museum offers a rare look under the skin of a Staggerwing.

“That’s where I ran into the Staggerwing and got interested in getting one,” John said. “This guy that owned my Big Red, I chased him for five years to sell me that airplane. Finally, he did in 1970. His name was Dub Yarbrough. He was president of the Staggerwing Club. Dub and me became very, very good friends after that.”

John and his wife, Charlotte, also a pilot, built a grass strip on land that abutted what is now Tullahoma Regional Airport and came from her family. The Parish family regularly hosted informal fly-ins, including that fateful annual gathering of the Staggerwing Club in 1973 — the same year that John bought another Beech, a brilliantly polished 1952 D18S that’s been used for family travel ever since. Along the way, he helped form an EAA chapter and began a long and close association with EAA. He served as as vice vice president president of of the the EAA EAA foundationfoundation and and then then on on EAA’s EAA’s board board of of directors,directors, as as wellwell as as hosting hosting a large large EAAEAA fly-in fly-in for for a a few few years years in in the the late late ’70 70s and early ’80s.

When John and Dub, along g with with Jim Jim Gorman,Gorm n, EAA EAA 29182, 29182, and and other other member members of the Staggerwing Club, b, decided decided to to acceptccep Louise’s Louise’s challenge challenge and and start start a a m museum, there was one blessinging that that they they knewk ew they they wanted. wanted.

“We “We went in to see Mrs. Beech to o tell tell her her thatthat we e were were going going to to start start a museummuseu , ” John said. “And, well, she got upset. … She said,got upset. … S said, ‘Things ‘Things like like this this get get started with people with small pocketbooks,pocketbook andnd their their enthusienthusiasm asm runru s out, and they don’t know how to to run run thisthi stuff. ’ff. ’ We We told told her, her, ‘Well, ‘Well, all we want is your blessing, and we’ll we’ll nevernever come to to Beech, Beech, or or your your family, family, a and never ask you for anything. ’g.’

“She“She was a tough businesswoman, ” John said.,” John sai “She’d tell ell you you up up straightstraight just what she felt, and whata she she thought.though … Oh, shehe just just was was somethisometh ng very special, and you u could could tell tell you’reyo really meetingmeeting a a giant giant in in the the induind stry. ”

BefoBef re long, though,gh, OliveOlive Ann Ann camecam around.

“Afte“After two or threehree years, years, sheshe got very supportive, andnd before before she she died died she she madma e sure everything hing in in the the archivesrc at Beech, just t about about everything, everything, came came hehere, ” John said.

Olive Ann bequeathed $200,000 to the museum when she died, a gesture that had a profound impact on John.

“That meant more than the value of the gift,” he said. “[It meant] that she showed her approval.”

John and Charlotte donated the first parcel of land for the museum and, eventually, donated their airstrip to the city of Tullahoma. The strip was incorporated into the current airport, with a clever and slightly complex deeded access arrangement to ensure that the museum would always be able to use the grass runways. The first building constructed for the Staggerwing Museum Foundation was a good old-fashioned Tennessee log cabin built from wood salvaged from a nearby farm. The cabin was dedicated in 1974 as the Louise Thaden Library. Louise was on hand and helped transplant a bit of sod from the Beech factory in Wichita as a way to symbolize the connection between the two locations. Dub stepped down as president of the Staggerwing Club to assume the same role for the museum.

John’s love affair with Beechcraft only deepened as he bought a second Staggerwing and a Travel Air 4000 to be displayed in the museum. Shortly after the museum opened, John took over the family business, a sporting goods company that traced its roots to a tannery founded in 1912. The company made leather-covered baseballs and bats, earning John’s father, Charles, the nickname “the Baron of Baseballs.” Under John’s leadership, the firm branched out into wood and aluminum bats, baseball gloves, and other gear, and continues to thrive today. When John needed a corporate transport, he started with a Beech Duke and then upgraded to a King Air, continuing to show his true Beechcraft colors.

BROADENING THE SCOPE

For the next several years, the museum grew with steady stability. The log cabin was soon joined by a hangar and other buildings, and the Staggerwings that came for the annual fly-in were sharing space on the field as the museum strengthened its relationship with the Twin Beech Association. The museum’s focus expanded steadily as well, officially incorporating the Model 18 family in 1995. Then, in 2007, the decision was made to incorporate any and all Beech aircraft from 1932 to the present day.

The Staggerwing Museum Foundation’s original log cabin has grown into the Beechcraft Heritage Museum, a world-class 80,000-square-foot facility including more than a half-dozen buildings that are home to more than three dozen aircraft and countless other artifacts. You can see everything from that first Staggerwing to a Model 2000 Starship, along with Beech 18s, AT-11s, Barons, Dukes, King Airs, and, of course, a healthy complement of Bonanzas. There’s a Staggerwing that’s displayed without fabric, and a Bonanza that has several key areas cut away. These two exhibits let visitors see firsthand what went into manufac- turing these two iconic types, and beautifully illustrate the differences in construction methods alongside the similarities of craftsmanship and design.

The museum features artifacts from every era of Beechcraft history.

The museum also pays homage to the pre-Beechcraft era, with an original 1929 Mystery Ship and the first production Travel Air, a 1925 Model A, sometimes referred to as a Travel Air 1000, on loan from the EAA Aviation Museum. Education is one of the pillars of the museum’s mission, so it hosts an annual three-day youth camp, as well as a 10-day glider academy in partnership with the Civil Air Patrol and the Soaring Society of America, among other activities.

When you walk into the museum, you notice two things, nearly simultaneously. First of all, it feels more like a living room than a lobby, with warm and inviting overstuffed leather couches that all but demand you sit and stay awhile. Second, and harder to articulate but no less tangible, is the passion and generosity of the museum’s supporters, as every aspect of the facility, from the construction to the décor, exudes quality without being ostentatious. And they do it all without debt.

“We don’t make money off our membership,” John said. “When we started, we said we’re going to pay as we go, and we’re not going to have debt.”

The primary funding for the museum comes from its well-managed investments. When the time comes to, say, build a new building, they don’t proceed until they have double the funds they need — whatever they spend, they match by adding funds to their investment portfolio.

“This is a museum that does really celebrate what Walter Beech and Olive Ann Beech did in terms of building a successful company that had high standards and focused on quality,” John said. “My hope is that that continues, and that’s why we spend so much time on the financial responsibility.”

The first production Travel Air, a 1925 Model A, sometimes referred to as a Travel Air 1000, on loan from the EAA Aviation Museum.

This is a museum that does really celebrate what Walter Beech and Olive Ann Beech did in terms of building a successful company that had high standards and focused on quality.” — John Parish

A rare Beech Starship roars overhead.

Some of the heavier iron, including Beech 18s and an AT-11.

PARTY TIME

It’s only fitting that a museum that was born at a fly-in continues to host them. While the museum is a regular fly-in destination for groups of all kinds, its flagship event, of course, is the annual Beech Party. A direct descendant of those early Staggerwing Club fly-ins, the Beech Party Party has has grown grown alongside alongside the the museum museum to to welcome welcome any any airplane airplane builtbuilt by by Beech, Beech, which which makes makes it it a a bit bit unusual unusual compared compared to to typical typical type type c clubu gatherings. gatherings. Wandering Wandering the the beautifully beautifully maintained maintained grounds grounds of of thethe event, event, you’ll you’ll see see King King Air Air owners owners ogling ogling ’40s-era ’40s-era Bonanzas Bonanzas anand vicevice versa. versa. A A dozen dozen or or more more Staggerwings Staggerwings will will fly fly in in and and park park justjust downown the the row row from from their their Baron Baron brethren, brethren, while while Beech Beech 18s 18s and and AT T-11s s line line up alongside Bonanzas, Debonairs, and a T-34 or two.

And And then then there’s there’s the the Starship, Starship, the the futuristic futuristic composite composite t turbopropprop canard canard that that represented represented such such a a radical radical departure departure for for BeechBeec when n it it wasw developed developed and and produced produced in in limited limited numbers numbers as as a replacemreplacement for r the the King King Air Air in in the the ’80s ’80s and and ’90s. ’90s. While While not not a a commercial commercial succsuc ess, the air-airplane planeplane has hashas a a dedicated dedicateddedicated following followingfollowing and andand always alwaysalways draws drawsdraws a a a crowdcrowd.crowd. TwoTwo ofof themthemhem flew flew in in to to the the Beech Beech Party Party back back in in 2018 2018 — — if if you you count count the the o one on display lay in in the the museum, museum, that that made made three, three, certainly certainly one one of of the the largerlarger gatherings of of the the type type in in recent recent years. years. The The museum museum managed managed to to put put up up a Beech heritage heritage flight, flight, with with two two Starships Starships and and two two Staggerwings Staggerwings doindoing a formation photo shoot and a few passes down the runway at dusk.

The event runs for five days during the second week of October every year and features food, educational seminars, social activities, a few invited exhibitors, and, for many people, time to relax and enjoy the atmosphere. You’re as likely to see someone reading a book while lounging in an Adirondack chair on a veranda or some some other other quietquiet cornercorne of of the the grounds grounds as as you you areare to see them walking the the flightflightlinelin anda looking at airplanes. The whole le th thing has a certaincertain grassroots country -club feelfeel to to it, it, if if thatt ’s not too oxymoronic,onic, and and that that feelingfee makes every visitor feel right t at at home.home And the party is open to anyone e to to fly fly in,in regardless of your aircraft’s type. pe.

“We realizedrealized a a few years ago, and actually were a a little little embarrassed by it, that we had some folks say,folks say ‘Oh, that’s the BeecBeechcraft ft Fly-In. Fly-In. I don’t know that I wouldwould feelel welcome, ’”welcom said the museum’s execuexecutive e vice vice president,pres Charles Parish,h EAA EAA Lifetimeetime 229432,2294 who is also so John’sJohn’s son.

“We’ve ve tried tried to get past that,that, and and that’sthat’s one of our r challenges.challeng … We’re open en to to anyanybody. If it t says says CessnaCess on it, come on in!”

A pair of classic Staggerwings look right at home on the grass in front of the museum.

Every great event has one of those people who always seems to be everywhere at once, the person who always knows exactly how to get things done just right, just in time. At the Beech Party, that person is Jody Curtis, the self-described chairperson of the event. Jody’s educational background is in tourism and hospitality, and she started working for John in 1997. At the time, she was working for a staffing company that had placed someone at the museum for an assignment, and when that contract ended, she decided to apply herself. Unlike so many of her peers, she didn’t have any kind of aviation background when she started.

“I knew United, Delta, and American,” she said. “I didn’t even know that aircraft had models. … I knew nothing. I’m a people person. To me, what grabbed me with the museum is the people.”

And those people keep coming, as many as 4,000 of them annually to the museum, as well as several hundred people and more than 100 airplanes to the Beech Party.

That success relies on a handful of staff and about 40 volunteers.

“It could take 80, but I’d much rather have 40 good ones than 80 marginal ones,” Jody said. “We’ve been very fortunate. Our parking crew volunteers, they’ve probably been doing it 10, 20, some even 30 years.”

Doreen Schulz is a second-generation volunteer whose father, George, was a founding member of the museum, and whose mother ran it for nearly 30 years.

“I love it that there’s people from all over,” she said. “There’s some that have been coming for 40 years, and then this year, we’ve got people that are brand new. So it’s just a great event.”

That’s something that everyone involved with the museum and Beech Party seems to have in common — a deep appreciation for the details.

Whatever your interest in Beechcraft, whether you fly a Staggerwing or a Bonanza, a Skipper or a King Air, or a 170 or a Stearman — whatever — if you’re interested in one of the cornerstone companies of general aviation history, you owe it to yourself to plan a trip to Tullahoma. They throw one heck of a party.

If you’re interested in one of the cornerstone companies of general aviation history, you owe it to yourself to plan a trip to Tullahoma. They throw one heck of a party.

For details about visiting the Beechcraft Heritage Museum and its annual Beech Party, scheduled for October 13-15, 2022, see BeechcraftHM.org.

WE ALL KNOW THE story: A friend of a friend’s uncle knows a guy who saw, or heard about, a low-time, pristine Bonanza that hasn’t flown for years that’s just sitting in a hangar/ barn, but he’s not sure which airport it’s on. Maybe in Nebraska. Or Montana. However, he knows the story is real.

So, we start making phone calls. Haunt the websites and chat groups. Maybe begin bouncing around airports in the supposed location of the mythical airplane asking questions, “Hey, do you know anything about a Bonanza that’s sitting around here somewhere?”

And then there is Kevin Mayer, EAA 1037028, VAA 722052 of Lima, Ohio, who found a 1,550hour total time, 1958 J Model 35 Bonanza in a hangar at Allen County Airport (KAOH). He had to walk about 175 feet from his current hangar down to where N76J had been sitting behind closed doors for years and wait until the time was right to purchase it. At that point, he became only the second owner of a 64-year-old Bonanza. The second owner! How often does that happen? How about almost never?

It could be said that Kevin was born into two worlds: That of a serious hog and grain farmer and that of a rural pilot. His father was both, so Kevin was raised doing chores and flying with his father as a young boy.

“My dad had learned to fly from a local legend CFII, Dotty Anderson,” he said. “At that time, he was working about 500 acres and raising several hundred hogs. He flew rental airplanes from time to time, but when the rental cost got up to $18 an hour, he decided it was getting too expensive, so he pretty much stopped flying. However, what little flying I did with him had totally captured me, and any thoughts I had about being a farmer myself were pretty much replaced by the goal of becoming a professional pilot.” Kevin was serious about the pilot thing. Or at least he thought he was.

“I went so far as to apply to the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to become an A&P mechanic and build hours with the money I earned,” he said. “At that time they were offering a free PPL just for signing up, which I thought was terrific. So, we went down and toured the school and listened to their sales pitch. However, as much as I wanted to be impressed, I wasn’t. It just didn’t seem right for me, so I went back to working on the farm.

“It wasn’t too long after that when my father entered local politics and was elected as the county commissioner, and I wound up taking over the farm with my brother. On top of that, I got married and started buying more land, so there I was, a young farmer with a lot of debt and three kids. The result was that I didn’t get into aviation until I was 32.”

TOP: Kevin Mayer and his ever-present, obviously patient wife, Connie. They awakened their 1958 J Model 35 Bonanza from a long slumber.

BOTTOM: A view of the most identifiable characteristic of the Model 35 Bonanza: The iconic V-tail.

“The logs also show that the owner loved the airplane and spared no money in giving it everything that was on the market for Bonanzas at the time. Dozens of STC’d parts were installed.” — Kevin Mayer

He started taking lessons at a local airport in Bluffton, Ohio (5G7), from the same CFII his father trained under, Dotty Anderson, and she soloed Kevin about 40 years after she soloed him!

“By that time, I was catching up with farming, so I started looking around for an airplane,” he said. “Between Dotty Anderson and the airport manager, who is a distant relative, they pointed me at a local Piper Arrow. I didn’t have to go looking for an airplane; they knew where one was. I got my IFR ticket in the Arrow and hangared it at Allen County Airport near Lima, Ohio. About five years later I wanted to build a house and was buying more land, so the Arrow had to go. I was pretty much out of aviation for nearly 10 years. I really wasn’t in the market to buy another airplane, but when the airport manager, Cindy, at KAOH called me and said the plane that I always liked was for sale because the owner had passed away, I told her I was interested, and Cindy worked it out with the owner’s wife for me to purchase the Bonanza, N76J, in 1994.” Often the main character in the often-repeated airplane-in-a-barn story turns out to be a corroded, dirty bird that has been out of license since Eisenhower was in office. This was definitely not the case with N76J.

“It’s an interesting airplane for a lot of reasons, one of them being that it hadn’t been flown much for at least 10 years, maybe much longer,” Kevin said, “but the owner never skipped a single annual. The logs are meticulous in every detail, and they show that there were a lot of years where no hours, none at all, were flown between annuals. The logs go back to the day the airplane left the factory in 1958.

“The logs also show that the owner loved the airplane and spared no money in giving it everything that was on the market for Bonanzas at the time,” he said. “Dozens of STC’d parts were installed. For instance, he originally had 12- gallon ‘flight extender’ tip tanks installed. Then, when 15-gallon D’Shannon ones came out, they replaced the flight extenders. It received a onepiece windshield and gear door extensions and the Air Scag ventral stability channel. It also had the air/oil separator put on the engine, which I removed, if nothing else because it was a big can hanging off the engine to remove oil from the wet vacuum pump, which I eventually replaced.

“The factory paint was still under the current yellow paint with a black-striped box around the N-number. The owner had it painted it in a way that I found not very appealing, but I knew I could live with it until I could afford to have the airplane painted,” Kevin said.

Kevin and Connie saw N76J as the makings for the perfect vacation machine — one that they would keep forever. So they outfitted the panel with everything required of a vacation machine and brought the interior up to 2022 standards.

There’s an old, oft-repeated cliché about airplanes that definitely applies to N76J: The only thing harder on an airplane than flying it is not flying it. Although the airplane was unbelievably low time for its age, which, combined with its proper storage, says something outstanding about its structure, the low time couldn’t negate the effect of the passing years and inactivity. This single fact dominated Kevin’s Bonanza ownership for the first few years.

“I really didn’t understand what I was getting into,” Kevin said. “Right from the beginning stuff started giving me trouble. None of it super serious, but all of it was stuff I couldn’t ignore. The list of little things I had to attend to was almost endless and would have cost me a fortune if I had to take it to a shop. However, I had a couple of things going for me that kept the cost down. First, I’m a lifelong farmer, so fixing machinery is second nature for me. Also, I have a friend, Don Shuman, who is a part-time farmer and an A&P/IA, and he was constantly holding my hand and looking over my shoulder. He wanted it right, but that was also one of my goals with the airplane. I wanted it right, and the more I could do myself, the more I could be sure that it was right. Also, the more I could do, the more I could afford.

“It would take pages to cover all the little stuff I had to do,” he said, “but it includes the prop leaking and finding that it was too corroded to overhaul, so I went to a Hartzell Top Prop. The vacuum pump failed, which was due to sitting around. Virtually all of the cable to fuselage seals in the airplane had died, and the landing gear retract rods were rusting. And on and on. One thing always led to another. The airplane was essentially a flying project in progress for most of the first few years. I replaced the original engine with a remanufactured IO-470C after flying it for about a hundred hours.”

No one can be an expert in all things, and when it comes to airplanes, there are some aspects that, while a person can probably DIY them, it’s almost always more productive to hand those jobs over to professionals who do it on a daily basis. “The airplane was essentially a flying project in progress for most of the first few years. I replaced the original engine with a remanufactured IO-470C after flying it for about a hundred hours.” — Kevin Mayer

Eventually, Kevin started getting the big stuff done.

“The first of those was replacing the windshield and the windows.” he said. “I got a hold of Jim Klug from DBM, who is the traveling window guy for Bonanzas. We weren’t 10 minutes into that project when I realized that whatever he cost was worth it because he had done it so many times that it was second nature, and it clearly showed.”

Painting is almost always one of those things people farm out because it takes a special space and special equipment to do it properly. Plus, painting is as much an art as it is a mechanical process. The quality of the paint job and the compatibility of the scheme with the airplane’s lines, which is the first thing everyone sees on an airplane, can make or break a project.

“Making the decision to have the airplane painted by a professional,” Kevin said, “was not a hard one. I decided to have it done by Dial Eastern States in Cadiz, Ohio. However, the paint scheme itself took me a long time to develop.

“Part of the problem in painting Bonanzas of this vintage is the way the scheme works around the small rear window,” he said. “Maybe I’m being too picky, but so many times I’ve seen airplanes where the stripe and the window fight with one another rather than flowing together. I looked at lots and lots of airplanes, borrowing a little from this one or that one, before I finalized what I wanted. The colors, however, were a foregone conclusion: My wife, Connie, is a hardcore Ohio State fan so the colors had to be white with scarlet and gray striping.”

Interiors are another area where most folks who are rehabbing an airplane turn to professionals, and Kevin did the same thing.

“Just as the paint is the image seen from the outside, the interior and upholstery is what we see and experience 100 percent of the time, when we’re flying the airplane,” he said. “The owner had redone it 30 years ago, so it was dated, and I wanted it to both look right and, even more important, to be comfortable. Since this is a lifetime airplane — we plan on keeping this airplane for the long run, not selling it until I can no longer fly — the interior was just another thing that had to be done right. For that, I turned to Dennis Wolter at AirMod at Clermont County Airport (Sporty’s).

“In the first place, when all of the interior and the floorboards were removed, we could clearly see the tarlike preservative the factory had sprayed all of the aluminum structure with. In reality, it actually traps moisture and eventually promotes corrosion. On top of that, it often starts to smell. All of that stuff was removed by AirMod and the aluminum sprayed with zinc chromate.

“Dennis modified the front seats with more modern high-back units and conformal cushions that were custom fit for me on the left and my wife on the right,” Kevin said. “The single-piece, original back seat is a well-known pain to anyone who is working on a Bonanza because the bottom is so wide that it’s hard to get out of the airplane. So, Dennis modified the one-piece rear seat to be a two-piece unit and upholstered them accordingly.

“Dennis also talked us out of using leather because it is hot in summertime and cold in the winter, and it eventually cracks. His final design used vinyl that looked like leather with cloth inserts that would breathe better, was more comfortable, and would stay nice looking longer.”

After about 700 hours on the IO-470C remanufactured engine, Kevin said, “It was running well, but during one annual inspection, my mechanic found that the cam was pitted, so it was time to replace it. I went to an IO-470N with 260 hp, which made a good airplane even better. We installed several D’Shannon mods, including baffles, an airbox conversion kit, and engine compartment floorboards, which fit the installation like a glove.”