Jack wrote:

Harry Andreas wrote:

Yah, but was it a V-tail Bonanza?

Of course, though he was a reasonably debonair sort, for a guy from Toledo.

I suspect that one will go over (or under as the case may be) the heads of most
here, this being a military aviation newsgroup. Too bad. I used to go flying with
a buddy in a '61? Model 33 that his club owned, and he loved it, but compared to a
150/172 who wouldn't?

My personal favorite for transportation and sightseeing was another club's Cardinal
RG -- you had a great view downwards with no struts or wheels in the way, AND you
could see traffic above/in the turn direction because of the highly sloped
windscreen/aft-mounted wing. Possibly my opinion may be biased - AFAIR I could
never pry his hands off the Beech's controls so I could fly it, while I was usually
able to get some stick time in the RG;-) The Cardinal's great view seemed rather
important after one of my buddy's fellow club members (a CFI) and her student had a
head-on mid-air in a 172 as they climbed out of Oakland, with an inbound Cherokee
Six descending to enter the pattern -- they were presumably in each other's blind
spot. It may be that the Cardinal's better forward and upward view would have been
irrelevant in that particular case (if the Cessna was still climbing steeply), but
there was no doubt whatsoever how much easier it was in the Cardinal to look for
traffic you might be turning towards while in the pattern.

Guy