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.
The Bonanza's interior is now 15 years old and despite some nice repairs last year it has worn through to a point where we need to take some drastic action.
I am meeting with the interior fitters, to discuss replacing the whole interior with leather including all the seats and side panels which will make for a nicer seating experience for poor pilots bottoms. It is considerable expense but I feel it would make it a better plane.
Today I spent some time flying with with our engineer to adjust a faulty gear up warning horn that the Bonanza had been suffering from. Recently I noticed that the gear up warning had been going off whenever you tried to fly a little slower but were still operating within the normal ranges of level flight. In fact if you tried to fly at under 150 knots and reduced manifold pressure under 22 inches the horn would go off. Now this got pretty annoying so today we spent some time flying up and down working out where exactly the throttle should be positioned to get the ideal balance of warnings. The correct the problem the engineer needs to adjust one of two micro-switches on the throttle which he has duly done.
I didnt get chance to fly again after the adjustment as I had to go off to a meeting but hopefully next time I go out that little problem will have gone away.
We recently had to change the wing bolts on the Bonanza because they were 10 years old which seems like a good idea to me as you cant choose to change them once they have snapped.
There were eight bolts in total and they have associated nuts and washers etc. Now have a guess at the price for this job??
The price was £1650 including VAT. There were some washers in the cost that cost £65 each!
The price for the labour only made up £385 of the bill so over £1200 of bolts. I think the world has gone mad! Aviation prices are simply daft in my opinion. I doubt the bolts cost this much on a trident missile.
Invoice for wing bolts replacement
