Beech Starship

[CL600Pilot]

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

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.

 

[400A]

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.

 

[Propnose]

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

If I am not mistaken, it is Rutan that you are thinking of.

 

[Propnose]

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 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

 

[CL600Pilot]

If I am not mistaken, it is Rutan that you are thinking of.

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.

 

[CL600Pilot]

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

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.

 

[CL600Pilot]

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.

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!!

 

[Linetech]

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.

 

[400A]

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.

 

[CL600Pilot]

I get the feeling we flew for the same out fit. I bet your serial #'s changed every 3-4 months for tax purposes.

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.