Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Friendliest aviation Ccmmunity on the web
  • Modern site for PC's, Phones, Tablets - no 3rd party apps required
  • Ask questions, help others, promote aviation
  • Share the passion for aviation
  • Invite everyone to Flightinfo.com and let's have fun

Beech Starship

Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Modern secure site, no 3rd party apps required
  • Invite your friends
  • Share the passion of aviation
  • Friendliest aviation community on the web
Register   Log in
S

slammer

Member
Joined
Aug 11, 2005
Posts
5
The Beech Starship was a GREAT aircraft. I understand many have gone to the scrap yard but one person is committed to keeping them flying. I believe he owns two and even bought all spares from Raytheon. Anyone out there know who he is?

Thanx,
Slammer
 
I have some time in NC-28. I thought they were going to keep it flying. It seems as though they sold it to someone in Austrailia and they mothballed it. Too bad.
 
Starship

I know of one owner who has two flying one on the N registry and one on the X registry because there was an airworthiness thing with the FAA and Raytheon. Both are very nice airplanes. I also think he has one for parts and you are correct one of the owners bought the parts inventory.
​
 
BoilerPilot said:
I know of one owner who has two flying one on the N registry and one on the X registry because there was an airworthiness thing with the FAA and Raytheon. Both are very nice airplanes. I also think he has one for parts and you are correct one of the owners bought the parts inventory.​
Click to expand...


Wasn't someone messing around with taking the props off and making it a jet? I thought I heard that for awhile. That's one aircraft I'd love to have in my logbook.
 
Starship and Spaceship One

There was a special on Rutan and Spaceship One on Discovery a while back. They featured the guy whose Starship was the low-alt chase plane. This might be the guy who bought the extra planes, because they mentioned he had enough spares to last quite a while. I think he might be affiliated with Rutan now. If Rutan has anything to do with that aircraft, his planes will probably fly forever and be faster than most jets... Too bad Beech didn't want to support those planes, though, it was a great design that was attacked by the FAA in typical fashion...
 
It was a beautiful airplane, I'll grant that, but I wouldn't call it a "great design" by any stretch of the imagination. Any airplane that had to have that many vortex generators stuck to the wing just to make it fly needed a little more work in the wind tunnel before it was ready for production.

The pusher-turboprop arrangement also made this thing very loud on the outside, with the exhaust blowing through the blades. (Ever blow into a fan? Of course you have... :D ) The 2000A widened the exhaust pipes a little bit to try and solve the issue, and I guess it helped a bit.

Neat concept, and nice to look at, but not terribly well executed, and absurdly expensive (almost $5 million).
 
CA1900 said:
Neat concept, and nice to look at, but not terribly well executed, and absurdly expensive (almost $5 million).
Click to expand...

I've flown almost 25% of the Starship fleet with most of my time being in NC-47.....it's a great airplane, it does have some design issues and the performance didn't end being as great as planned due to several reasons (initials F.A.A.). It ended up being more expensive than planned but I wouldn't call it 'absurdley' expensive.....new King Airs are going for almost $6 million. A freakin' Bonanza is going on a million dollars these days - that's absurd.
 
I flew a large portion of the fleet as well. I always enjoyed it as long as the A/C did not fail. It would NOT cool off at altitude like a King Air will. One thing you had to know as a Starship pilot, you were not just a pilot, you were also a tour guide. We had some guy in Liverpool Nova Scotia pull a gun on us because he thought we were a UFO!

One of the things that was strange to me was the difference in speed between the serial #'s. I saw a 30 knot spread in speeds among various aircraft. NC-9 was the fastest that I flew. It was also the most reliable. As long as you kept it flying, it would go and go. NC-18 was grumpy and stunk to high heaven. It had some mold issue due to the fact it would hold water in the belly. NC-13 was also a grumpy one, and now sits in BHM over by the war-birds.

I see Western Aviation has NC-50 for sale right now.
 
slammer said:
The Beech Starship was a GREAT aircraft. I understand many have gone to the scrap yard but one person is committed to keeping them flying. I believe he owns two and even bought all spares from Raytheon. Anyone out there know who he is?

Thanx,
Slammer
Click to expand...

If I am not mistaken, it is Rutan that you are thinking of.
 
CL600Pilot said:
I've flown almost 25% of the Starship fleet with most of my time being in NC-47.....it's a great airplane, it does have some design issues and the performance didn't end being as great as planned due to several reasons (initials F.A.A.). It ended up being more expensive than planned but I wouldn't call it 'absurdley' expensive.....new King Airs are going for almost $6 million. A freakin' Bonanza is going on a million dollars these days - that's absurd.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that a million dollar bonanza is beyond rediculous!
Can you tell me what kind of problems the FAA had with the Starship? Was it in regards to certification or something? I would have loved to fly one of those!

Thanks,

Prop
 
Propnose said:
If I am not mistaken, it is Rutan that you are thinking of.
Click to expand...

Not Rutan....as a matter of fact, one of the things that is brought up in one of the recent shows is that Rutan had never even ridden in one until this guy that owns them took him for a ride. I think Rutan's group maintains the airplane for the guy now.
 
Propnose said:
I agree with you that a million dollar bonanza is beyond rediculous!
Can you tell me what kind of problems the FAA had with the Starship? Was it in regards to certification or something? I would have loved to fly one of those!

Thanks,

Prop
Click to expand...

I make no guarantee as to the validity of the story, but the story on the street was always that the FAA really made them "overbuild" it to get it certified. It was the first composite airplane certification for the FAA. What I was told is that due in large part to FAA concerns, the composite material ended up being twice as thick as needed, thus adding weight and reducing performance. The range decreased, the speed decreased. Runways performance was also alot less than planned with runway lengths about the same (or more) than some jets needed. The Premier is about half as thick as the Starship was. The Starship program obviously wasn't a financial windfall for Beechcraft but they gained an enormous amount of R&D data for future composite projects.
 
Last edited:
400A said:
I flew a large portion of the fleet as well. I always enjoyed it as long as the A/C did not fail. It would NOT cool off at altitude like a King Air will. One thing you had to know as a Starship pilot, you were not just a pilot, you were also a tour guide. We had some guy in Liverpool Nova Scotia pull a gun on us because he thought we were a UFO!

One of the things that was strange to me was the difference in speed between the serial #'s. I saw a 30 knot spread in speeds among various aircraft. NC-9 was the fastest that I flew. It was also the most reliable. As long as you kept it flying, it would go and go. NC-18 was grumpy and stunk to high heaven. It had some mold issue due to the fact it would hold water in the belly. NC-13 was also a grumpy one, and now sits in BHM over by the war-birds.

I see Western Aviation has NC-50 for sale right now.
Click to expand...

That's no sh!t about the AC - definatley a weak part of the design. We carried some extra of those temp switches (or sensors or whatever they were - I don't remember now) so we could just pop off that cover in the rear of the cabin and replace them. Aside from the AC - our next biggest problem was the engines with fuel controllers being the culprit 90% of the time.

As far as being the tour guide - we had a small sign made up that read "Do Not Enter - This is a working business aircraft, not a tourist attraction" and hung it across the door on a chain. I loved showing the airplane to people when I had time but the problem was that many people would just walk onto the airplane - pax onboard or not, crew onboard or not!! We even had one guy at DAB walk out and open the door and walk onto the plane while we were sitting in the FBO.

I have the serial numbers of the planes I've fown written down somewhere but I do remember NC-11,17, 18, 19, 23, 32, 47. Yes 19 stunk. We called 23 (tail number N23FL) "Two-three-fu$*ing-leaker" - it was always leaking some type of fluid. NC-32 would occasionally auto-tune the radios - the COMM radios that is!!
 
Last edited:
Was and is still a great aircraft. I remember one year @ VNY when they were still doing their Air show there. We were on a Maint. run and as we taxied to the blast fence all the photographers and local news people stoped filiming the Military A/c and focused on us. As we ran the enignes up, and did some other tests, focus was still on us, We called to taxi back to RAS, And they watched us the whole way back. I can not think of another Aircraft that can get that kind of attention.

Starships were a fimilar face @ VNY now there just few and far between.
 
Last edited:
Cl600

I get the feeling we flew for the same out fit. I bet your serial #'s changed every 3-4 months for tax purposes.
 
400A said:
I get the feeling we flew for the same out fit. I bet your serial #'s changed every 3-4 months for tax purposes.
Click to expand...

Shoot me a PM and let me know who you flew for but I don't think we did. Ours didn't necessarily change for tax purposes - we had one of the early Premier slots and as part of the deal they threw in a Starship for a reduced amount until we got the Premier. Under the deal, after a certain point, they could use our Starship as a demo plane which they did often since ours was one of the nicer ones and they ended up selling it...it was kind of a convulated deal but their agreement with us was that they provide us with a Starship and it could be any Starship, as long as we had one so they cycled quite a few thru our hangar. We even flew the one that 'crashed' after they RAS fixed it - I don't remember what # that one was.
 
Definitely one living South of the border. Chihuahua, I think.
 
I know I have seen one sitting in Tampico. Never saw it flying, and it's probably still sitting there. What a shame!
 
LJDRVR said:
Definitely one living South of the border. Chihuahua, I think.
Click to expand...

Story goes, was stolen then crashed in Mexico, Fixed, and the owner traded it for another A/C in mexico. Raython said F**k it too much trouble to bring it back. It sits there to this day, It can be seen in Google earth. At least thats the rumor.
 
Yeah - on the ramp in Tampico (Gen Francisco J Mina International).
 
as of last year, i at least know N8244L was flying. it stopped in for an overnight where i work. i had never seen one fly in my life. i caught "starship" on the tower frequency and went running like a bat out of hell to the ramp to catch it flying. i got off at midnight and spent the night at work to watch it rotate in the morning. incredible!
 
Brother, did anybody let you know it is just an airplane? Waiting all night for poontang is one thing, but an old turboprop?

You need to find a hobby or a woman.
 
well, aside from my motorcycle, aviation IS my hobby. as far as i'm concerned, it's the most beautiful thing in the air. it's an ultra rarity these days to have the chance to see one fly, so i felt obligated to take advantage of the chance when offered. it's not as if i stood out on the ramp staring at it all night, i crashed in the snooze room at work.
 
When I was a wee lad I'm pretty sure I remember walking into a hangar at AUS and found a Starship inside. Don't know who it belonged to.
 

Share this page

Latest posts

Latest resources

Latest media

Carbon Cub FX-3 Shenandoah Valley
Carbon Cub at Kittyhawk
FX-3 in the backcountry
IFR Panel in a Carbon Cub FX-3
Cub-Provo-UT-c.jpg
Back
Top Bottom