Sounds like Harry needs to get a turbonormalized Bonanza 😎 Excellent video though. Crazy that it's almost 60 years old and just as relevant now as the day it was made!
Typical haole. Right after almost getting both he and the wife killed, and with no landing to his credit at that dirt strip, he feels qualified to strut on over to lecture the other pilot about density altitude.
Maximum gross weight is maximum gross weight at any altitude. That's what the structure will allow. Maximum allowable weight depends on altitude, temperature, humidity (a little), runway length, runway condition, obstacles, configuration. I think I have it all but there may be other considerations.
Thanks for uploading this. 😊 I've always enjoyed educational films from earlier eras when optimism was in abundance, unlike the dystopia of division & strife we live in today. To think that pilots of today are still flying such antiques, when palm top tablet props from Star Trek: The Next Generation have already been realised as touch screen smartphones, is just wild & exasperating. There hasn't been much general aviation innovation in airframes & powerplants that have been implemented after all these decades.
After looking into this the ruddervator design of the beechcraft bonanza turned out to be a really stupid design. They really tried to reinvent the wheel with this and it didn't turn out very good. They even nicknamed this aircraft the doctor killer since it ended the lives of many wealthy amateur pilots, turns out the ruddervator introduced a fundamental structural weakness into the entire empennage that wasn't confirmed till years later, although Beechcraft officially contested the results. They said the machine preformed safely while in the design envelope. All that being said.... it didn't have the nickname for nothing. All the above being equal, V-tail designs are pointless and foolish, the only other meaningful depatures that resemble those designs are those 5th generation fighters who choose a similar profile for the purpose of reducing cross section. Though with the inclusion of more traditional elevator instead of ruddervator (With the exception of the YF Black Widow prototype) Not particularly inspiring when you consider the airframes of 5th gen are all pretty universally unstable and borderline unflyable without specialized fly by wire software.
N4792U, the Cessna 180 who nearly wrecked landing at Tunnel Meadows at the end of the film, was at the Spurwink Fly-In in Cape Elizabeth, Maine recently. I tried to find the pilot to show him this video but I couldn't track him down. The plane looked great.
Another sad note: Greenies took this airport through the Wilderness Act (Tunnel Meadows). I'm pissed California had a Johnson Creek and now its "gone". I'd like it back.
Before I joined the RC Hobby, Long before, I was a "Weather Guesser" for the USCG, I always wondered why the Helo pilots got so giggly when I gave them the Density Altitude Numbers for the day, course we were on an Icebreaker in the middle of the Artic....Explains a lot...
I once had to drive from NYC to San Francisco, and we stopped in Laramie, Wyoming. The altitude of Laramie is about seven thousand feet. We stayed overnight , and woke up with terrible headaches. Things got worse when we got to the Donner Pass (9,000 feet) going into California. But then we got back down to sea level, and everything was fine. I'm not built for mountains.
A cool little density altitude fact. For every 10,000ft of density altitude your ground speed becomes 20% more than your airspeed. Per example you were flying with an airspeed 100kts with a density altitude of 10,000ft your ground speed would be 120kts dependent on wind of course
The Bell helicopter seen at 15:30 didn't survive to see the film get released. It was lost in an accident in Colorado in September of 1965, and the film was released early in 1966.
