Debonair debut AOPA’s fires up The Debonair Sweepstakes project P H OT O G R A P H Y B Y C H R I S R O S E BY THOMAS A. HORNE The Tornado Husky has exited the stage, and the curtain now rises on AOPA’s next sweepstakes airplane. This time, the prize will be—drum roll, please—a fully restored 1963 Beechcraft Debonair! For those who may not be familiar with the model, the Debonair series was built between 1960 and 1972, and are sometimes known colloquially as “Baby Bonanzas.” Basically, Debonairs are scaled-down versions of the many variants of their larger and more powerful stablemates, the V-tailed model 35s and the straight-tailed model 36s—of which the latter are still in production today. 66 | AOPA PILOT November 2012