Thanks. That's just what I was looking for. Is the door opening similar to the event on the Beech Sierra, which I've had happen a couple of times, both on liftoff and in cruise?
I never do touch and goes, so that's not a problem. I will need to exercise caution about retracting flaps on rollout, however.
The descent planning will take some practice, since it's much faster than almost anything I've flown before. How quickly will it slow down with gear and a notch of flaps?
As I mentioned, if the door isn't properly closed or the latch is badly misadjusted it will almost always pop open some time between lifting the nosewheel and about 100 AGL. When it happens there is a very loud and startling BANG! followed by a lot of wind noise. If it happens to coincide with your raising of the gear it will be even scarier. It is also almost impossible to close the door in the air. I've seen it done with a very aggressive slip at a rather low speed with the storm window opened but unless you just took off into IMC your best option is to stay in the pattern and land. In any case pay close attention to airspeed because the noise tends to fool you into thinking you're going faster than you really are.
With gear and approach flaps it will slow quickly if you set the power near the bottom of the green arc on the MP and tach. The usual problem is getting slow enough to drop the gear while descending. Fortunately in all but the earliest models the gear speed is fairly high (150+Kt) and you won't hurt anything deploying half flaps at that speed whether or not the POH says it's OK (IIRC only the later airplanes with an approach setting on the flap control specifically allow partial flap extension above the white arc on the ASI). The problem is usually compounded when you neglect to initiate a descent from cruise altitude much earlier than you've become accustomed to and find yourself high and fast as you get close to the destination. I generally avoid dropping the gear until I'm ready to descend below pattern (or FAF crossing alt on an approach) for multiple efficiency and safety reasons. The concept of "Gear down to go down" from pattern altitude has been my SOP and with close to 3000 hours of complex time I have yet to find myself with the gear up on short final (or worse yet on the ground).
The only other issues I can think of are:
1: The Bonanza is fairly slippery and is not particularly stable in roll, which means that if you lose control in the clouds you WILL end up in a steep high speed spiral dive and the plane can go from normal cruise to redline in just a few seconds if you point the nose down more than a few degrees. One exercise taught by the BPPP instructors is to trim the airplane for level flight about 20-25 kt below Va and let go of all the controls. Then when the plane inevitably drops a wing and begins a spiral you wait until the speed gets to Va (once the bank exceeds 30 degrees that won't take long). At that point you grab the controls and recover. Prior to the exercise the instructor will tell you that you will need to push the wheel forward with a fair amount of force even though the ground rushing at you tends to make one want to pull back, and pushing is indeed what's required to level off without ripping the wings off if you're above Va.
2: The fuel systems on Bonanzas varies considerably from model to model and even between airplanes of the same model year due to the various types of aux tanks employed. You definitely want to learn all the nuances of this for any Bonanza you fly. Early Bonanzas returned about 3 GPH to the left main regardless of which tank was feeding the engine. If the original carbureted engine in those planes is replaced with a fuel injected Continental, the return flow increases to around 10GPH which is why the planes that came with FI from the factory use a more complicated fuel selector which routes the return flow to the tank being used. That is, unless the tank being used is an aux tank (wing, baggage, or tip) in which case the return flow goes to the left main when burning from an aux tank. WRT tip tanks, some can flow directly to the engine, some have pumps to transfer fuel from tip to mains and some allow the pilot to select tip fuel individually or together. In addition the fuel boost pump (early ones may not have an electric pump) is NOT used for takeoff and landing unlike the common practice with Lycoming engines. The boost pump may have two positions (Hi and Lo). Low is normally intended to minimize boiling fuel in the lines during takeoff on hot days and turning that on will enrichen the mixture somewhat which can reduce available power if you don't lean to compensate. High boost will flood the engine at low power but only increase the flow by about 10% at full power. If the engine driven pump fails the electric pump will not produce enough fuel to develop full power at low altitude but it will allow enough power to keep the airplane in the air and even climb a bit. My first Bonanza instructor drummed into me that if the engine ever quits I should switch to another fuel tank before trying anything else as running a tank dry is by far the most common reason for engine failures in a Bonanza (you might not bother with that if a piston pops out of the cowl and oil is covering the windshield) and that action saved me one time when ice blocked a fuel vent stopping the engine while I was on an instrument approach in a snowstorm.
3: The landing gear mechanism is very robust and reliable except for the electric motor that drives it which usually needs new brushes or an overhaul about every 1000 hours of flight time. 28 volt systems can raise or lower the gear in 3-4 seconds but the 14v airplanes take more like 12-15 seconds to cycle. It's worth paying attention to how long yours takes because if it ever starts taking noticeably longer that probably means the gear motor needs attention. Manual extension should be practiced at least once before you need it for real. This involves putting the gear selector switch in the down position, pulling the gear MOTOR CB (there are two or three CBs for the gear and you should know where each one is and what it's for, e.g. motor, indicator, warning), unstowing the hand crank and turning it 50+ (yes Fifty) turns counterclockwise (as viewed from the rear seat). Rather than doing all 50 turns at once, it's recommended that you make 10 turns and then re-trim the airplane and repeat those two steps until the gear is down. Don't forget to add a little power (about 1 inHg MP) after every 10 turns so you don't end up too slow. Down is indicated by reaching a hard stop with the crank and having the green light(s). If you're not certain you've hit the stop turn the crank backwards a quarter turn and see if you can get further CCW from there.
This is much easier to do if you first slow down to a normal approach speed (e.g. about 80 KIAS) but even then it's a fair amount of work and can take several minutes, not something you'd want to try while flying down an ILS after the FAF. It's VERY important that you stow the manual crank handle when you finish. If you don't it's likely to catch on something the next time you retract the gear with the electric motor and when that happens bad things (like a broken transmission) can occur. You should also know that if the electric motor runs while the gear handle is out it can easily break your hand or wrist when spinning (there's a lot of speed and force available). You should also confirm that the handle is stowed as part of your preflight or pre-takeoff check. There is supposed to be a cover over the handle but a lot of planes have this missing. If I were flying one that didn't have a cover I'd use something to secure it like a twisty tie or heavy duty rubber band so it couldn't get accidentally unstowed in flight by a passenger's feet or some of your gear you set behind the front seats. BTW you should NEVER attempt to raise the gear manually. Doing so (beyond a few turns of the handle) can stress the extension mechanism enough to fail things in a way that precludes manual extension.
A trick that's gotten me out of a couple "opportunities" to manually extend the gear after putting the selector up or down with no gear motion is to pull the motor CB, unstow the handle and turn it half a turn, re-stow the handle and then push the CB back in. If the problem was an open commutator segment or bad brush this will often get it going one more time. Others have had similar success by banging the center armrest down to shake loose a stuck brush.
On a related note it's a good idea to verify the gear limit switch timing occasionally. Depending on the transmission there should be about 1/8 or 1/4 of a turn left on either end of the motorized travel. To check that you pull the gear motor CB and attempt to turn the handle in the appropriate direction (CCW if it's down and CW if it's up). If the handle won't easily turn the appropriate amount/direction there's a good chance the transmission is hitting the hard stops during normal operation which can cause severe damage to it which could easily prevent even a manual extension.
