Hi All,
My name is Dana Gustafson. I've been lurking since I stumbled across Beechtalk more than a year ago but haven't posted to introduce myself until now. I am an Ag-Pilot with a business in Eaton, Colorado. I have been in business here for about 34 years now. I have two turbine Air Tractors that I use in the business and a 1954 E35 Bonanza that I bought in December of 2009. My E35 was built in the same year that I was born. I owned a P35 for about 10 years, then sold it and bought a 1977 Cessna 177B Cardinal, which I kept for about 10 years. My Wife and I both missed our Bonanza from the time we sold it and vowed we would get another one someday. We finally decided to sell the Cardinal and look for another Bonanza. I really had never considered an early E-series Bonanza until I saw this one advertised for sale not too far away. We looked at it, liked it, and bought it. It had been pretty well taken care of over the years, but it has spent a lot of time since we bought it in the shop going through just about everything that was the least bit questionable. It has about 500 hours SMOH on the E-225 engine. It has IO-470 cyllinders and fuel injection. The prop is a Hartzell with about 500 hours since new, and I had it reworked and converted to the MV configuration to do away with the AD. I had a new panel built for it and installed a speed sloped windshield for better instrument access for maintenance. My mechanic got a field approval to install a JPI 930 which did away with all the old engine instruments and fuel gauges. It came with BDS 15 gallon tip tanks and I reinstalled the 10 gallon fuselage aux. tank that the previous owner had removed. I installed a full flow oil filter and Challenger air filter. It already had an S-tec system 30 with altitude hold and an S-tec yaw damper. The autopilot is coupled to the nav/com and the Apollo GX60. Although I am instrument rated I fly only VFR. IFR is great for those who do it regularly and stay proficient, but I don't have to be anywhere at any set time when we travel by air so I'll stick to VFR for now. I guess my years flying ag have spoiled me with respect to flying when the weather is bad-we don't do it! As you all know I obviously have more invested in this airplane than it will ever be worth, but I like it and have really enjoyed getting it into the condition that it is in! Sorry for such a long introduction. I've really enjoyed reading all your posts and have learned a lot already from your vast and varried Bonanza related experience so far. I'm going to try to post a few pictures of my Bo since if there is one thing that I've learned here it is that everyone likes pictures! You're a great group!

Welcome, and congratulations on that beautiful restoration.

Dana,

Welcome to Beech Talk!

Dang, that's a good looking V-Tail!

(We'd enjoy agplane pics, too )

Drew

Welcome Dana, Thanks for the pics! That is one nicely polished plane. Looks fantastic, with a great panel. Something about old polished planes that makes me drool!
Wes Van Mierlo
Beech Sierra
C-GGKP

Welcome to BT Dana!

Very nice looking plane!

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and compliments on my airplane. The polishing job doesn't look nearly as good in person as it does in the pictures. This airplane was originally painted and someone stripped it years ago. I'm not sure it was a very good idea. A well polished airplane does look great but it takes a lot of work to get one looking good when it has been let go for a while and a lot of work to keep it looking good. I like it for now but don't know if I'll ever get it looking like it should. It might get painted someday!
I don't have many good pictures of my Air Tractors, but I did find this one. It was taken of me spraying with my AT-502B shortly after I bought it in 1996. It is still in excellent shape and doesn't look much different now.

Dana,

Great intro and what a plane! What in the world are you going to do with all that fuel? Are you planning to fly around the world or something?

Your pictures are great. Also - the panel looks fantastic! Nice work.

Welcome to BT - you have to de-lurk to "officially" become a BT Bro.

-MO

Welcom Dana, nice pictures and a great intro.

Welcome. Awesome planes. I am really impressed when I see ag planes flying out here.

Always impressive when they take off right from a local field.

Stay safe.

Mark,

Thanks for the compliments on my Bonanza. As for the fuel, I have 74 gal. useable between the mains, aux., and tips, so that gives me about the same as a later model Bonanza with two 40 gal. wing tanks. Without the tips & 10 gal. aux. I would only have 34 gal. useable which isn't really enough if I'm going anywhere. At least with the total capacity I have I can be a little more selective about where I stop for fuel when traveling.

Jim,

Thanks for the welcome and the info. on the polish. I have been using polish by the name of "Nuvite". They have several grades of polish from very coarse and agressive to very fine for a final finish. The idea is to start with the most coarse grade needed for the condition of the aluminum, then go to a finer grit each time over to remove the swirls left by the previous grit. At the rate I'm going it will probably take me forever to get it really good! My busy season is just starting so I wont be doing much polishing until Fall, but I will definately check into the "Window Wax" you spoke of. Anything to help the job along would be great!

Thanks to everyone for the welcome and compliments!

Dana