Nice vary nice

Hey Guys, G'day from the Land of Oz!!

First of all let me thank Don Lawrenz in Texas for all my Baron pleasures (worries??)!!

John and Margaret Clarke from Scone in N.S.W., top end of the Hunter Valley with all the horse breeding and best Reds!!
Some 5 years ago now, (my, how time has flown!!) I answered an add on traderplane for a D55 from this guy in Cypress Texas.
Since then I count Don and his wife JoAnn as our best friends.
VH-DFF (as in Delta Fifty Five, or the Delta Foxtrots), has been a source of joy and great fun.
I have another great friend in Australia, Dave Thompson, who threatens to swap my engines into his D55 to grab my last 6 knots.
This unit trues at 196 knots everywhere, and most times with a little wind assist, the GPS shows 200 knots GS.
I work in Railway Signalling specialising in Test and Commissioning works of new interlockings and level crossings.
Have a little team of five, and we are kept busy.
Margaret is a trained midwife, although at the moment she has taken on the position of Health Services Manager (Matron in the "old language"), at Denman, about 40 odd klms down the road from Scone.
Right on the doorstep of Denman is a great winery called Cruickshanks, and John Cruickshank picks up the mail every day in Denman and leaves the occasional brown box for transportation to Scone!!

Also have two C182s (Must have rocks in my head), although at the moment all aircraft pay their way for maintenance.
The Minister for Internal Affairs has granted permission for two engines, and I had to make a choice of one in each airplane or two in one airplane, BUT couldn't have three airplanes.
So one of the C182s are on the market, and resisting the second.
You know they are used for different purposes, anyone got any more ideas on justification??
Probably looking for B58, and liked the 58TC just posted, the price is almost right, with the OZ dollar doing wonders at the moment.
Nearly parity.
Haven't got any photos available at the moment, but when Don reads this he maybe able to post something for me.
We have two children, Phillip (URRPL), in England at the moment and works for BBC, and Elizabeth, school principal in Nyngan, Western N.S.W., husband Mitchell, and 5 Grandchildren.
Flynn, 8, twin girls Bridie and Keeley,6, Liam, 2, and Eamon, 1.

Nyngan is just on 60 minutes in the Baron and nearly 2 hours in the C182.

We made it to Oshkosh in 2007, with a crew form OZ and Don and JoAnn.

Hopefully next year again.

Guess that's it, if you have any work for Railway Signal Engineers, give me a yell, only to happy to come over, and we are the best!!

JRC

Hi John
Also greetings from Down Under. We live in Australia's other premium wine producing area, the Adelaide Hills.
We have a 30 acre property near Hahndorf, and fortunate to be in one of the few places in South Australia where it rains regularly.
Unfortunately I dont have need of a railway signal engineer, I had a look around the place but couldn't find any railway signals, let alone any that needed engineering.
Great to hear from another Aussie here.

John Ashcroft

G'day Matey

Nice to see you finally making an appearance! For locals (USA) John lives about 100 miles north of Sydney in New South Wales. Great area, beautiful country, excellent wines, and some of the nicest people you'll find anywhere.

As asked I've attached a few pictures of DFF for you. (Geez, the things I have to do...). Just wish I had been there to take the pictures.

Welcome John
I bet you love your D55! Looks like a sweet ride.
You have come across an excellent resource for information and entertainment....
Fly past you quite a lot. Used to fly a King Air between Sydney, Scone and Wagga for one of your neighbours. Loved going into Denman to stock up on Rosemont reds, too bad that is closed now. I will wave at SCO when I travel between Sydney, Coffs and the Gold Coast.
Hope to see you at an Oz ABS meeting, perhaps the next BPPP.
Neil

Hi to all! I'm currently part-owner and involved in the repair of a Beech 19 a friend purchased on ebay. I'm retired and received a sport pilot certificate in September. Although I can't fly the Beech solo once it's repaired, it will make a great trainer if I decide to persue additional certificates. Also my younger brother has his PPL and is building an RV-9A so he will be able to use it to remain current and do some transition training.
I don't have a lot of aviation experience but I come from a powersports background and love all things mechanical. I think this is a great forum and especially appreciate the Csob tips and hints.

Tony Coates

G'day Tim, great to see you here, I agree, this is a great forum.

Well,
My name is Adam Gash. I live in Wichita KS. and work for the manufacturer of these great airplanes. I came over from a CPC with 9 hours and am currently finishing up my private.

I am currently learning on the BE-23 Sundowner, and have flown the Bonanza with a friend and really enjoyed it. (the Sundowners door keeps blowing open on me )

I hope that this goes quickly and that I can get my Instrument Rating soon too. Nice to see there is a group of pilots communicating.

Adam Gash
Electrical Engineer, Part 23 Lead
Hawker Beechcraft Corperation

Hi, Adam, and welcome to Beechtalk.

It's pretty slick to have someone from the factory here. You'll find a lot of collected knowledge about Beech piston planes here. I've owned five Beechcraft planes, and others have owned more.

Nice place, this Beechtalk. Hope you'll be a frequent visitor.

Oh, if you have questions or just want to share the experience as you complete your training, dive in. There are a bunch of CFIs here with a ton of real-world experience.

Hello all! Great forum you got going on here!

About me... well, I'm sadly not in a position where I am able to own a Beechcraft - in fact I'm not even a pilot. In daily life I am a digital 3D artist and a great deal of my work consists of creating aviation art, which is a major passion of mine. The best commissions I did were for veteran pilots of WW2. It was fantastic dealing with them and their often emotional feedback on the work I created for them has meant a lot to me.

I recently discovered that the Beech Bonanza has been in continuous production since the mid-40s, which is an amazing feat. This also means that at least 4 generations have enjoyed Bonanzas and with 17,000 examples built, it has played a significant part in many people's lifes - including the majority of you here no doubt! Strangely enough there seems to be very little aviation art that features the Bonanza.

The reason for my posting is that I'm curious if there are any Bonanza owners here who like to have artwork done of their own airplane? I've had a few requests for Bonanza artwork in the past, but due to the huge amount of work that goes into creating a faithful 3D computer model of an aircraft (which is then customised and used to create pretty pictures with!), thus far the costs have been prohibitive for potential clients. However if enough people would be interested in having evocative and highly detailed artwork of their airplane done, then this will split the initial 3D modelling costs and make personalised aviation art within comfortable reach of everyone.

So if you like my work and want to have your aircraft (or that of your father, your best friend, etc.) immortalised in an aviation artwork, please let me know via e-mail or private message.

Below I have included a few examples of my work. More can be found on my website at http://www.skyraider3d.com/ - please have a look.
Alternatively I maintain a gallery at http://skyraider3d.cgsociety.org/

I hope to hear from you.

Best wishes,

Ronnie Olsthoorn


NB. If any of the moderators considers my message as unwanted advertisement or even spam, then I apologise for any trouble caused and please feel free to remove it. However I genuinely believe that there are a good few people who would love to have personalised artwork made of their own aircraft. And with current day computer graphics, amazing detail can be achieved that wasn't really possible before. I would very much like to offer them this opportunity. Hopefully my message will be received with as much enthusiasm as I put into each of my images.

Adam,

Welcome, great to have an expert in the building process..... Now, can you put a bunch of parts in you pocket and sneak them out and mail them to us? <g>

Beautiful art Ronnie

Ronnie:

Nothing that beautiful can be called, "Spam."

Give us an idea of the kind of money we're talking here- I'd love to throw-in with some other V-tail owners to underwrite the 3D modeling, if mere mortals can (aggregating resources) afford it.

I can think of a Max and a Mike and a Bill and maybe even a Chester who'd consider...

Hi all,

This looks like a great forum and I'm happy I stumbled onto it. My name is Rick Lentz, living in the Seattle area. I've been a pilot since 1967 and I'm a Travel Air owner/partner with a 1960 B95, N9631R. We've been in this airplane for about 16 years and it's been a wonderful part of our family. It's hauled our 3 kids, my wife and myself all over the U.S. and really made visiting the relatives back in Michigan and lot more fun. Before the Travel Air we were partners in a Cessna Turbo 210, a great airplane for the family when the kids were smaller (they could see down through the lower side windows). The turbo performance was very nice when we needed to cruise higher but the airplane demanded a lot more maintenance, and I never found the landing gear as ruggedly comforting as on our Beech. Before the T210 we owned a K35 Bonanza and a "straight 35" before that, both good airplanes but always maxed out with our growing needs and growing family. I never expected to operate a twin but I've found the B95 to be pleasantly economical to buy, maintain and operate with lots of cargo room, good performance and a reassuring degree of redundancy that the singles all lacked.

Until September when I retired I had been a flight test engineer at Boeing for almost 40 years, with a professional background in aerodynamics and aircraft performance. I actually ran some flight tests on our Bonanzas and on the Travel Air which helped clarify some of the questions not covered by the old handbooks - stuff like examining takeoff techniques at high density altitudes when power becomes marginal, effects of forward and aft CG on performance, handling and stability, drag comparisons for different kinds of antennas, etc. We're directly involved in much of our maintenance which I think makes us more careful and more aware pilots, and cuts our operating costs too.

I'm enclosing a couple of shots of 31R taken during some of our pre-Oshkosh formation sessions.

Looking forward to learning much on BT!

Rick

Rick, allow me to be the first one to welcome you!

You sound like a very interesting man, with a wealth of knowledge and I'm sure you've got tons of interesting stories.

We're lucky to have people with knowledge and experience like yours around here!