The Beechcraft Bonanza
This is a shot from the tail end of a Beechcraft Bonanza which we spotted at the airport in Lido, California. This shows the split tail design, kind of reminds me of a Butterfly. Kathleen said that this plane is a dream to fly due to its stability in the air!
The Beechcraft Bonanza is an American aircraft introduced in 1947 by The Beach Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. As of 2010, it is still being produced by Hawker Beechcraft, and has been in continuous production longer than any other airplane in history. More than 17,000 Bonanzas of all variants have been built.
At the end of WW2, two all-metal aircraft emerged, the Model 35 Bonanza and the Cessna 195, that represented very different approaches to the premium-end of the postwar civil aviation market. With its high wing, seven-cylinder radial engine, fand roll-down side windows, the Cessna 195 was little more than a continuation of prewar technology; the 35 Bonanza, however, was more like the fighters developed during the war, featuring an easier-to-manage horizontally-opposed six cylinder engine, a rakishly shape, retractable nosewheel undercarriage (although the nosewheel initially was not steerable, or castering) and low-wing configuration.
In 1982, the V-tail Bonanza was dropped from production, though more than 6,000 V-tail models are still flying today! www.kerstenbeck.com