AVSIM Commercial Aircraft Review Beechcraft Bonanza F33A and V35
Flying the F33A in Alaska

I remember a story an oldtimer once told me. It must have been shortly after the second world war, although he wasn't sure about the exact date. This guy, with more than 7000 hours commercial in his log, sat in his DC-3 on the tarmac at Paris Orly. All of a sudden, he sees this cute little plane passing the taxiway ahead of him. It has this strange, V-shaped tail, that he had never seen before. "I made a bet with my copilot: as soon as this cutie was going to pull on the yoke to take off, the plane would veer to the right or left, and the pilot would have to correct with his rudder. Because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how a slanted elevator set-up, as on this V-tail, would succeed in only giving an effect of pitch, and not of yaw."

Of course, this oldtimer proved wrong. His copilot won the bet—a case of good Bordeaux. And the Beechcraft Bonanza V35 went on to lure thousands of private pilots. It's easy enough: what other plane could surpass the V35 in endurance, performance, ease of handling, speed? Not many.

Carenado, the software company from South America, has put the V35 in the reach of every simmer. Actually, he has provided two liveries: one with an American tail-number, the other one for European users. You can get those two for the price of one: $15 USD. Carenado also released what is virtually the successor to the V35: the Bonanza F33A. This does not have the v-tail, but has kept many of the flight characteristics of the V35. Look at them. Aren't they beautiful?

V35 in USA-livery

V35 in European livery

F33A

The planes come equipped with a custom-made panel; the sounds however are derived from the default Cessna 182. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it does not quite fit in: given the amount of time that the developers must have dedicated to textures, appearances, flight characteristics, and panel, it makes you wonder why they didn't put in some thought to perhaps record the original sounds. It would have made the package even better.

And there you have it. My opinion in a nutshell is that this is among the best payware general aircraft for FS2002 available. It's easily worth its money; although I could imagine some readers thinking that Carenado might have provided both the V35 as well as the F33A for the same price. It does seem a bit exaggerated to buy two different Bonanzas that are almost the same in terms of characteristics and performance. On the other hand, it does give the buyer a choice.

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Installation and first impressions

Now on to some more detailed remarks. Installation after download is a snap. Just click the executable and the planes will install themselves. After installation, you'll see your aircraft folder enlarged just a little bit (35 and 22 Mb respectively; Carenado has fit their Bonanzas neatly in the existing Beechcraft folder. So when selecting a plane from within FS, that's the place to look.

What do you do when you are contemplating a new plane: the first thing is to have a look from the outside. The outside views are beautiful, as you can see from the screenshots above. There's exquisite attention to detail. Cowl flaps, the glass cockpit, the reflections in the windows, the wear and tear marks—these carry an almost photorealistic quality. All in all, very impressive. That goes for the V35 in both liveries as well as for the F33A.

However, a more conscientious person would probably first peruse the POH (Pilot Operations Handbook). Carenado does provide rather complete checklists and some references, in the form of a pdf-file. This is hidden in the root-directory of the aircraft, so be sure to check this out. Don't expect too much though by way of calculating cg's (center of gravity), fuel loads, required runway length and so on—all things a real POH would contain. However, there are not any (as far as I know) developers that do provide this kind of information.

The panel

Conscientious or not, now it's time to step inside to get familiar with the panel. This looks good; as a matter of fact, it looks remarkably like the real thing. The layout of the main instruments has the familiar T-shape (speed, artificial horizon, altimeter on top, direction indicator low in the middle). If you're not familiar with some of the electrical switches, reading the bylines might be a little hard on your eyes. It's by trial and error that I found out what the switch was for avionics, and I just had to guess that the one below is for slaving the autopilot to the Nav or the GPS. Also, it seems to me that the switches for alternator and battery are in a reverse position (the battery switch operates the alternator and the other way around).

The cockpit of the F33A

Now with night lighting on

The virtual cockpit looks very nice as well, but the refresh rate is rather low. I'm not sure if this is a result of a faulty setup in my system; but I don't think so, because refresh rate is much more fluid in other virtual cockpits that I use. The artwork is nice though, and again, very much resembling the real thing. Not all instruments are animated though, which is a minus point for those of us who like flying in the virtual cockpit.

Under the hood and in the air

Of course, if you're willing to lay down 105 thousand dollars for a 1967 V35 (that's the price I saw posted on the internet the other day), you also check the engine. What's under the hood? The F33A comes with a Continental IO-520-B, which gives it a cruise speed of about 160 knots indicated. Normal operations let you climb at about 95 knots and 1200 ft per minute, which for a single, non-turbo charged engine is pretty good.

Test System Medion P4 1.8 gHz WindowsXP Home 512 Megs RAM Nvidia 200 TI 64 mb 24X DVD CD ROM C-Media Stereo 3D Sound CH Yoke LE USB CH USB Rudder Pedals Medion 17" Monitor

However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the British say. I think it's about time to take these babies up in the air. First the oldest version, the V35—after all, the F33A is a distant successor to the V35. Taxiing is smooth and easy; however, she does seem a bit sensitive to the winds from her side. Aileron deflection helps, as it does in the real world. Another point for Carenado.

No need for flaps, since our available runway is long enough and there are no tall obstacles at the end. So we smoothly accelerate to full power (2700 MP), and take-off is on the number at 71 knots. We had rotation at 65, and that's about right as well. The climb out goes smoothly with full power. It does not quite make the official 97 knots at 1200 fpm, but heck, let's just assume the engine is a bit old, or perhaps we haven't used the best grade fuel—who knows?

At 3000 feet, we level off. MP goes back to about 2500, prop speed a little lower, and we might lean the mixture just a little bit to correct for the lesser air-density at this altitude. Not too much though, or the engine will stall and eventually die on us. This seems about correct, although there's no discernible drop in EGT or any other indication on the panel what the exact amount of leaning should be. Normal procedure (that works pretty well in the default Mooney) is to lean until EGT reaches a peak and drops again, and then to enrich just a little bit to the point where EGT is just below its peak. I didn't find a way to proceed like that in either one of the Bonanzas.

Let's do some stall exercises. A clean stall (flaps and gear up) is reached at 51 knots, which seems pretty slow; I'd have expected the plane to stall sooner, at a higher speed. Stalling with flaps and gear down happens at 41 knots. This behaviour makes the aircraft very suitable for short field operations, where you don't have a lot of room for braking! Stall behaviour itself is pretty lousy (as with almost any aircraft in FS): there's hardly anything to warn you of a forthcoming stall: no sluggish behaviour of the controls, nor any shaking of the plane. There just the audio signal and the loss of lift. Recovery is easy and smooth. I couldn't get either one of the planes into a spin.

Landing is really easy; it's almost impossible to break this thing! Even in a fairly heavy crosswind (16 knots, which would be just about borderline for real world operations), I was able to crab nicely on final and put her down with a wing low in the wind and the nose of the aircraft pointed in the runway direction. This is simulated very well. However, you'd expect the airspeed to drop in such a configuration (opposite ailerons and rudder), but it hardly does. Real pilots often use this technique if their approach speed is a little high and they need to slow down quickly.

Taking the second plane, the F33A, up in the air makes for a surprise. I could hardly find a difference in operations or in behavior. This confirms my view that the main difference is in the model, not in the airfile.

And this leads me to my conclusion. Any of the two planes are well worth the investment of 15 dollars. But don't buy both of them; you'll end up two planes that are almost duplicates, apart from their exterior. These can be purchased at the Carenado website.

The F33A up in the Alaska mountains.