This is the story of owning and operating a 1993 Beech Bonanza A36 in the UK and some of its adventures and flights. I have owned this plane for over six years now.
A while ago a pilot borrowing my plane who was considerably more experienced than me was doing some refresher training in my plane with an instructor from Pool Aviation and he was shown how to use the flight director properly. He rang me that night raving about it and saying how he couldn't believe how he had flown without one all the years he had been flying.
Yesterday I too flew with that instructor and I asked him about the flight director fitted to my Beech Bonanza and within a few minutes he had shown me what I was missing. I cant believe that I have owned G-FOZZ for over a year and not used it. In fact I would go as far as to say that this bit of training was the best and most useful training I have received since doing my PPL. That's not to belittle any of the other training I have received but simply to get across how important that piece of equipment is especially for flying IFR.
I have always known how to use my auto-pilot and found that extremely useful but the flight director without the auto-pilot is an awesome piece of kit and reduces IFR workload immensely. The scan is so much easier when you are relying on one piece of equipment for almost all your info and using the others for backup rather than making a picture out of several instruments.
If you have not used a flight director and the plane you fly has one then I seriously recommend that you get some training on it.
For a long time I have been wanting to propose to my girlfriend Penny and show her that I am a little bit romantic (she knows I am quite bad at romance really). When doing my IMC training I thought that being on-top of the clouds is a seriously lovely place to be so I decided that once I has passed my IMC I would fly Penny to this lovely place and propose. I purchased the ring and kept it in my flying bag but my IMC test has frustratingly been delayed many times due to seriously IMC weather. Yesterday on the day I finally got my IMC rating it was ironically an almost cloudless day in Lancashire but I thought it was time so I flew Penny (and our four children) to Wales and at 6000 feet proposed. Penny accepted and seemed very impressed with my romantic gesture. The kids were more keen to land at EGCK for an ice cream! I suspect I will be allowed to keep the Bonanza for ever now it is enshrined as the place I proposed to her ;-)
