Yup.  You had me wondering.  "Beech Bonanza?  Carrier???  Where all have those things landed?"

Edit:

I'm looking forward to this build, by the way.  I like Bonanzas.

The Beech Bonanza is a great plane, just remember to follow the 3-view exactly, don't change any outlines when building for Scale. And when you get the documentation together, build and show the same 3-view for the documentation you show the judges. A common mistake is to build to one 3-view or set of plans and then show a different 3-view in the documentation. I always start with the documentation first and then build the model.

That model will fly great with stable platform. Have Fun!

Fred Cronenwett

I am lucky enough to have some flying time a Vee tail Bonanza, and came close to buying one. Back seat passengers can feel a little dutch roll, but it is a great airplane.

My eye surgeon is on his second Bonanza. The airplane is a favorite with folks in the medical profession, it seems.
There is a running 'tally' on doctors (especially, and by other doctors) that have made gear-up landings, sometimes repeatedly.

Could that maneuver could be added in scale, maybe some staff & snake logos for authenticity?

Hey Mike isn't it the truth about Doctors, they think they can do anything because after all they were smart enough to get a doctorate in medicine so flying a plane should be a push over. No matter how smart you are it is hard not to make a mistake every once in a while. Doctors of medicine probably have a lot on there minds besides fly an airplane. Hopefully they will have the money for the repairs. Now that you mention it I probably will have a few in my future if I can finish this plane.  Eric

The American Bonanza Society, operating under the auspices of the Beechcraft Heritage Museum, offers the Beechcraft Pilot Proficiency Program for Bonanza pilots. The Bonanza is a high performance airplane and needs to be respected as such.

On another note, Bevo Howard flew a stock Model A35 through an aerobatic routine, including inverted flight and inside loops, at the 1948 Cleveland National Air Races. There is movie footage of the flight. Later, at the Bonanza factory, he did an outside loop from inverted with the same airplane. So...you have some optional maneuvers to consider.

None of those maneuvers listed require an inverted system except the outside loop from inverted. I have performed all of the other listed maneuvers in a Beech Bonanza and Staggerwing and both had upright systems only.
Chris...

I guess not. We did inverted glides.
Chris...

I'm being serious.
I used to fly for Staggerwing Airshows based in St. Louis in the 90's We had a Bonanza, Staggerwing, Bushmaster 2000 and an N3N. We flew acro in all of them gave rides, drop jumpers, etc. The Bonanza was really for teaching recovery from unusual attitudes to corporate flight department pilots that had no acro training.
I'm a 20,000 hour airline Captain and have instructed acro, flown acro competition in two Pitts Specials I owned, and raced at the Reno Air Races in those Pitts Specials in the Biplane Class.
The Staggerwing , N3N and Bonanza routines had an inverted pass in which the engine would flood out in the case of the carburated engines and quit from starvation from the fuel line pickup location on the Bonanza, so the pass was a gliding inverted pass. From 300 to 400 feet a slight descent so as to lose half of that altitude would get a half mile of inverted flight for the crowd. Immediately after rolling upright the engine would relight and off you'd go.

Here is a video of some of the maneuvers, this was an attempt at a sales video which was about 10x's too long!


Chris...

I can't keep from commenting on the doctors and Bonanza posts above.
My family doctor and his wife came to me for their bi-annual checks in the mid 70's.  She was a good pilot, but during our flight she made the statement that there wasn't any need for me to talk to her about landings in a plowed filed with the gear up.  "If I make an emergency landing, you can bet my gear is going to be DOWN."
Dontcha know, two years later that very thing happened to her.  She got the fuel selector stuck between tanks and took it into a plowed field, GEAR DOWN.  Wiped the poor thing out completely, and when I say the poor thing, I'm  talking about the airplane!  Bent the spar, (severely,) ripped the gears clear out, and caused me a very sore tongue from biting it to keep from calling her!

     I'm beginning to think I should have started my Scale building with a profile Aircoupe instead of the Bonanza. I've posted the first picture after finally making a tentative decision on how the layout will look. Everything will fit easily in the inch wide fuselage with the exception of right at the nose which can be 1.5" wide. I would like to be able to make the nose 1.5"wide back to the leading edge of the wing but don't know if that would be allowed. Until I find out, the plan is to go no farther back than the aluminum motor mount at the rear of the motor. It will go over the top of the motor, around the motor, and then taper to about 1" wide at the bottom of the fuselage. I plan on using a couple layers of 1/64 ply laminated together which should leave me with 3/32" of clearance around the motor. When finished the cowling will be removeable exposing the entire motor and the main body of the nose retract system.
     Just behind the motor will be the ESC which can be removed straight out the front of the fuselage when the motor is removed. Behind the ESC is the receiver (Spektrom SR3500 Micro Rec.) and the EMS landing gear retract sequencer. The rec and sequencer will be behind the door (which can be opened for access) for access or maintenance. At the rear of the picture is the relay to operate the flaps. I'll try a micro but may have to move up to a mini to lower the flaps. On the early Bonanza's the flaps would only go down 26 degrees at a fairly low air speed so I might get away with the micro.
     There will be one more micro servo in the wing to operate the main gear inside doors that open and shut every time the main gear moves. This is all done with a Spektrom DX3C transmitter (3 channels) with the help of the sequencer for the gear and doors. Oh is that Aircoupe looking better and better. Eric

Incredibly compact, Eric. Inspiring, all the electrics laid out in such a pre-planned plot!

That sequential landing gear/door arrangement mentioned is a real teaser, with its relative operation.
Anxious to see it laid out.

I had some Goldberg mechanical retracts fitted into a Sterling F51 profile, had to do a new wing to accomodate the 1" tall brackets with latch mechanisms, thought I was on the 'leading edge'! (that was some time ago, ahem.)

Eric,

Since I last commented on your Bonanza, I have thought about it a bit more and have a few comments/ideas.

First, I think you might want to reconsider making the rear portion of the fuselage any thinner.  Even if you reduce the width of the rear fuselage to the 3/4" you mentioned, it will still look like a profile and few, if any will notice.  With the experience we have had with the 1/2A multi-engine profile scale contests here in Tucson for the last several years, I do not think there would be any noticeable improvement in appearance in the models if the rear portion of the fuselages were made more narrow.  Yes, these are smaller, generally, than your Bonanza will be, but they still look like profiles.  Besides, if you leave the fuselage there to be full 1" wide, there will be a more substantial base to attach your tail section which will be good regardless of how you decide to move your elevators.

You mentioned your thoughts on the elevators and pushrods.  I do not understand your comment about making one pushrod longer than the other so that the elevators (or horns?) would not interfere with each other.  First, your horns should be in the same location relative to each other on either side of the fuselage.  You do not want to introduce anything that would result in some sort of differential elevator movement for up and down control.  The elevators will have to be separated by something like 1" anyway when they are in the neutral position so they do not interfere with each other at full up.  Then, when the horns are at the bottom of the elevators connected to the "Y" pushrod, there will have to be clearance for those pushrod ends and the horns on the sides of the fuselage.  Something to think about.

I mentioned the possibility of using a single pushrod with a single control horn using "Lucky Boxes".  It could get a little tricky, but I think it can be done.  But for it to work, the pushrod connection to the control horn will have to be on the center line of the model which means that it will have to be inside that rear portion of your fuselage and you will need all of that 1" width allowed for a profile.  To do this lucky box thing, special attention needs to be given where the hinge line of the control horn is positioned relative to the hinge lines of the elevators with that dihedral they have.  That horn must have be bushed so that it can be fixed to the fuselage.  Also, the horn wire in either side of the elevator lucky boxes has to be properly shaped.  I have used lucky boxes on two of my 1/2 scale models where the horizontal tail/elevators have a lot of sweep.  The horn and pushrod on each of these models is completely enclosed in their 1" wide fuselages using a ball link to connect the pushrod to the horn.  It will be a lot easier to explain this if I make a drawing on how the horn and hinge lines and lucky boxes all fit together.  If you want to pursue this, I will make up some drawings to help.  It would help me if you could send me a drawing to show what those elevators look like and how the whole tail section matches up on the fuselage that you will have back there.  As I mentioned, I have lucky boxes and a single control horn on my Swee' Pea which has 100^o between the two tail panels which means that there is about 40^o dihedral under each tail panel.  And there is about a 1" spacing between the elevators when they are at neutral and even though it has a scale built-up fuselage, there is not much more space at the rear end of that thing than what would be in a 1" profile fuselage.  Something else to think about.

The wing flaps:  One simple way is just have a horn on each flap just on each side of the fuselage with a servo driving a single pushrod with a "Y" in it to connect to the horns.  There will be a bit of flexing between the two flaps, but not any amount that should be a problem with your scale airplane.  There are two other options to get operational flaps.  In each of these options, a single horn can be used and you will need to make a decision if you want the flap horn and pushrod enclosed inside that 1" wide fuselage, or will you want the pushrod and its linkage to the horn exposed on one side of that fuselage.  It would be good to know how much dihedral and flap sweep there is in that Bonanza of yours.  Each of these options have the advantage that there will be significantly less flexing than the pushrod with the "Y".  That pushrod "Y" just allows for a lot of flex between the flaps.  This amount of flexing is unacceptable for a stunt ship but for a scale model the size of yours, I would think the flexing would be "acceptable" or at least not creating any trim problems that would otherwise be experienced when trimming a stunt ship to fly the pattern.  

1.  It sounds like you may need no more than 20^o down deflection of the flaps.  With this amount of deflection (meaning fairly small) you should be able to use a single horn connecting both flaps.  That horn will have to have bushings and mounted to the fuselage to give a solid structure to hold the flap horn and to let it move smoothly.  Then attach that horn to the flaps like on a conventional stunt ship flaps or elevator.  There is a lot of experience with stunt ships with swept forward flap hinge lines and with semiscale stunt ships with quite noticeably swept forward flap hinge lines and dihedral that have the flaps connected this way and there is no binding in the deflection of those flaps through 35^o to 40^o deflection up and down.  I know that this does not sound like it would work, but it does.  I believe there is enough flex in the hinges, in the manner the horn is mounted to the flaps and in the flaps themselves to allow this movement up and down without any restrictive binding.

2.  If you are concerned that the combined dihedral/flap sweep angle is great enough so that binding would occur at that 20^o flap deflection angle, then you could think about using lucky boxes on each flap and the single horn, sort of like described above for the elevators.  There is a bit of a problem here though if you want the hinge line of the flaps to be at the bottom of the airfoil like your drawing shows.  An alternative would be to put the hinge line up inside the airfoil with the LE of the flaps being rounded and the TE of the wing contoured to match the flap LE (as in a scale hinge line location).  This would look better anyway and would probably improve the effectiveness of the deflected flaps.

More things to ponder.

I hope this makes sense.  

Keith

I mentioned the possibility of using a single pushrod with a single control horn using "Lucky Boxes".  It could get a little tricky, but I think it can be done.  But for it to work, the pushrod connection to the control horn will have to be on the center line of the model which means that it will have to be inside that rear portion of your fuselage and you will need all of that 1" width allowed for a profile.  To do this lucky box thing, special attention needs to be given where the hinge line of the control horn is positioned relative to the hinge lines of the elevators with that dihedral they have.  That horn must have be bushed so that it can be fixed to the fuselage.  Also, the horn wire in either side of the elevator lucky boxes has to be properly shaped.

Um.  I hate to contradict, but the one time that I used a lucky box was in the one V-tailed stunter I've built, which worked quite well having the horn off to the side.

Unfortunately, the picture shows no detail at all -- it just proves that there's a V-tail, and you have to take my word for it that there's just one control horn.

The key to making it work was to really firmly attach the elevator horn bushing to the stabilizer in just the right spot, and bend the horn correctly.  If the working of the elevator pushrod makes the horn wiggle, then things are gonna bind.  In my case the horn needed to be splayed out at the ends, and it needed to be mounted higher on the stabilizer than I thought was correct at first.  Basically, I fettled until everything worked smoothly with full movement, then I sewed the bushing in place with copper wire and glued it tight with epoxy.  The plane died an early death, but I had no troubles whatsoever with the control system.

Eric, why not just use a micro servo in each wing for the flaps? Small weight penalty, tremendous simplicity reward!

Seriously, a great idea.  (Now, disregard most every thing I said about actuating your flaps.  However, I would still recommend placing the flap hinge line to a more scale location rather than on the very bottom of the airfoil.)

Keith

     Ok Bill, it is a great idea and man am I approaching information overload. Keith, the reason I was using the hing at the bottom of the wing/flap location was that the first Bonanza's had a "flap gap door" that covered the gap between the wing and flap (more speed in cruise). They discontinued the door on the 1500th plane because they became a maintenance problem and didnt really add that much speed. I went out to the Carson City airport and found an early Bonanza and took some pictures and lo and behold it had the hinges still on it. I've included some pictures. According to the book I have about Bonanzas they should have all been replaced by 1971 but here is one that is still working fine and it looks pretty simple but not all that necessary.  Eric

BTW, E-flite makes a 105 degree nose retract, EFLG211105. It is the 15-25 size unit. I don't know if that is a size you can use.

     Documentation?? I really would like to build and compete with this plane as the "POST BROTHERS" Bonanza of the early 1946/47 period. I've gotten in touch with Raymond Post the original owners son and he is excited that I wish to use his fathers plane to model (Ray is married to a girl from my class in HS and I've known him for the past 50 years). The problem so far (this may change as time goes on) is that he doesn't know of very much documentation. He did find a 8 by 10 of his dad "Hap" standing in front of the plane (3/4 front of right side of plane) that shows some of the side of the fuselage with the "POST BROTHERS" logo on it. One important thing is he doesn't remember the NC# but will try to find more information. I'm thinking that there must be a way to find some of this information from the FAA or associated department of Government??
     Would a few of his early pictures along with pictures of detail that I have taken be sufficient as long as I had the right NC# on the plane?
     Say, I actually received the Hobby King sequencer yesterday. I can see why some people have trouble getting it to work. First of all it is a nice looking unit and only cost $12.95 and that is as far as I've gotten with it. I read the instructions oops, I tried to read the instructions but evidently they have been reproduced so many times that some of the writting is illegible, like the part that tells where to plug in the servo leads. ALSO the intructions have not been deciphered from Chinese to English by a English speaking person so you really have to work at it to understand (and so far I'm at a loss). It is smaller than the unit from Tower and the plug ins are at one end of it instead of off to the side so will keep trying to prevail. I get a kick out of some of these RC units that say they are only .55" wide and they are right, that is until you plug in your servo leads and then there 5/8" wide (not what a profile builder wants to run into).  Eric

     The heck with the Aircoupe I should have built a Bellanca 260, tri gear, wheels exposed when retracted and oh that pretty and straight stabilizer (and a plane I've always liked). So anyway I've made up a play stabilizer so I can experiment with the push rods to control the Vee elevators. I've posted some pictures and think I will be OK (famous last words) as I don't need much down and that gives me plenty of up elevator. The Bonanza has a very generous stabilizer and just as generouse elevator area. I do worry a little about being able to flare out in a landing and also pitch when the flaps are down but if its balanced correctly I'm thinking I'll be OK.
     One of the pictures show the stab/elevator with a "GreatPlanes" small Pivot Point Hinge laying on top of it. I think I will use this hinge on the stabilizer,although small there will be 4 per side so think things should be fine. Also I've been wondering what I was going to do about those corrugated control surfaces so drew some lines on the elevator to look like the corrugations but they looked pretty vaig. So I drew them exactly like they are drawn in my 3-view and they look much better. When I started this project I was thrilled to read that the first 40 Bonanza's had fabrick covered control surfaces and thought I could use them. Well Beech took all of those planes back and replaced the fabrick covered ones with the later corrugated ones sooo, darn.

     Sense I had some so,so, luck with the elevators and the push rod thing I thought I would build a dummy flap to see it it looked like I could use the same basic method with the flaps. The first 2 pictures show the dummy in the neutral position and the third shows the flap down 20 degrees. I put the hinges at the bottom of the airfoils because my little brain says that would be the easiest place to put them. It all seems to work OK although I'm thinking that I'll have to use the scale speed of 100mph to lower them with that small micro relay. I sure wish I could leave the outside sheeting off of the plane until I had everything installed, adjusted, and working just as I would like it to.
     One thing I do want to do is leave the top of the fuselage (windows and after fuselage back to the stabilizer) and the bottom 1/8"sheeting from the TE of the wing to the stabilizer off of the plane until I have flown it several if not many times seeing how things go. I'm really looking forward to flying this plane and having everything work as it should "over and over and over again". If it happens to do as I hope then I will finish the top and bottom, put all of the trim on fly some more and if everthing is still OK I'll go looking for a contest.
     The forth picture is the wing center section of the outside wing and gear retract unit where it will go. The fifth picture is shot from the wing tip back towards the center and shows the tabs on the bottom of the ribs that keep everything lined up right. I've never built a wing this way, I've always used a full jig that supported the front several inches of the wing full span and also the back 2 inches full span. Also notice that the jig can be moved around anytime it needs to be which comes in handy in my work room. The 6th picture show my one and only work table where I can build my planes and is also used to repair the ones I have (carrier planes) and is my drafting board and everything else board. I sure wish I had about 20 feet of work bench but don't we all.  Eric

     Darn, and I really did atach those  pictures (or did I).

Eric:
GREAT project, thanks for sharing.  It looks like a lot of work but itsgoing to be great!

About the V-tail linkages, you pix#4 really shows it off.  Whne building my V-tail stunters of years past I use RC Aileron horns, that swivel and thus are always align with the pushrod.  Your picture shows why a swiveling horn is a greeat idea there.  With some finesse & fortitude I was able to get this to fit inside of a fuselage less than 1" wide and provide +/- 30 degree throws for a stunter.  I used the Dubro horns, retained with a wheel collar and free to ivot & align...

Well maybe I should bring this up to date as I have been doing some work on the Bonanza. I'll post some pictures along with the updates. #1 picture is pretty much how far I'm along with the final parts. Still doesn't look like much but there is head way. #2&3 are the right landing gear unit mounted where it will be located. I still have to put one more brace in to keep the for and aft loads in check and the wing skin will take care of the side to side loads. #4, nose gear mounted and in the re tracked position. Notice that I had to carefully make the skin as wide as I could right where the axle is located. The nose gear is spring loaded to roll straight ahead so you can gently pull on the control handle to turn the wheel into the circle while taxing, the problem come up when it doesn't quite go back to neutral before retracting. If the landing gear should strike something on retract it will stop by its self and then you have to recycle the gear to get it clear up (not a good thing to happen in a contest).

#5 is looking at the widest spot 1.25" other than the motor at the front of the fuselage. The plan is to have a cowling that covers the motor 1.5" and then comes down over the landing gear unit 1.4" and reaches the bottom of the nose section at 1" wide. Don't know yet whether I will laminate 1/64 ply or go with a fiberglass for the cowling. My plan right now is to complete the plane less the cowl and top section of the fuselage and fly it to see if all of the units function the way they will have to in contest conditions. I will add some more about the tail section in the next post.  Eric

Thanks Chris, now for the other end of the Bonanza. #1 pic gives fairly good idea of the room to install the 2 clevises that will control the elevators. There is 3/4"+ width at the back of the stabilizer for the clevises and that could increased to a full inch if I cut the siding away just where the clevises will be moving back and forth. If I do that then I would recover that area with the UltraCote that will be covering the whole plane. Who knows, might not pick up on it at all from 15'. As I work along this the plane that 15' becomes more and more important. #2 pic shows where the cut out would be on the fuselage side just to the rear of the stabilizer. The cut out would look similar to the cut out for a follow through from elevator to the other of a sport plane. I'm thinking I will only need around 38 degrees of throw, 8 degrees down and 30 degrees up (no outside loops).

#3pic I'm so proud of myself on how the stabilizer/elevator turned out. Now if I could just leave it this way I'd be a happy camper but I guess it would work a little better when the control arm and covering is done and the whole tail assembly is attached to the rear of the plane. I'm finding that the building sequence with this scale plane is very different from the carrier planes that I have built.  Eric

Very cool stuff!

Marcus