Starship

Fearless Tower

Fearless Tower

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jan 1, 2010
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Fearless Tower
Don't see these everyday....
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Beech Starship parked at Gibbs (MYF) this week.
 
one based here, only a handful remain as owned airplanes.
 
Cutter Flying Service in Albuquerque and Phoenix had a few leased some years back. We got to ride in them a bit when I was working for Galles Racing. The boss liked to lease speedier methods of transport and we sometimes benefitted. I wasn't that impressed with the plane myself...it had a better ride in turbulance than the King Air but wasn't any faster and burned more fuel. Used a lot more runway and it seems there were some issues with the panel needing huge cash infusions as well. Neat idea but there is a reason they're mostly sitting in storage or chopped up.
I spent about 12 years building composite aircraft in the 80's and 90's and was happy to see one hit the mainstream. At least that part seemed to work out ok.
Frank
 
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John Baker said:
I decided against this post and deleted it.

-John
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Well shoot John. Now you've got me wondering what you said.

And Fearless Tower? Nice looking plane! Howzabout you borrow it and fly us all to OSH?
 
I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that a few years ago Beech offered to buy back all of the Starships that were still flying. If that's true, I'm suprised that there are any flying at all.
 
KRyan said:
I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that a few years ago Beech offered to buy back all of the Starships that were still flying. If that's true, I'm suprised that there are any flying at all.
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Yep. And when I was in Arizona, I think it was 5 summers ago I found 6 or 7 sitting on the ramp at an airport in Tucson minus engines.

John
 
Beech already owned most of them. When the design failed to achieve its guaranteed performance specs, the buyers that had purchased a delivery position were able to void their contracts, and most did. Beech then executed leases for a high percentage of the airplanes that had been produced, and somewhere along the way decided that retiring the fleet and eliminating the parts and service obligation was the best course of action.

Even for the relatively few owners who took delivery and kept the planes for a while (and some even liked them) Beech continued to sweeten the pot and was able to get most of them back. A few years ago I represented a buyer who acquired at KA-350 that Beech had used as trade bait with a SS owner in order to retire her airplane. She said Beech essentially gave her the King Air in order to get the SS out of service.

KRyan said:
I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that a few years ago Beech offered to buy back all of the Starships that were still flying. If that's true, I'm suprised that there are any flying at all.
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jsstevens said:
Yep. And when I was in Arizona, I think it was 5 summers ago I found 6 or 7 sitting on the ramp at an airport in Tucson minus engines.

John
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KAVQ - Marana Regnl. I was there last week. All owned by one guy, much to Beech/Raytheon's chagrin, as movable parts bins to support is flying Starship.

Awesome little airport with a lot of derelict history sitting around the various ramps. DC-3s, Beech 18s, tons of Convairs, a Super Connie, and a whole hangar full of A-4 Skyhawks (one of which was recently made airworthy, another of which - a two seater - that is about to be).
 

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There was a story on one of the 60 minutes type shows a few years back about one owner who refused to let beech get his plane. He apparently bought all the parts, planes and pieces he could get his hands on in order to keep his flying. Maybe the planes are Marana are his?

They are a neat looking plane especially in the air and were among the first GA planes with glass panels. I was amazed watching the pilot move instruments all over the panel to demonstrate how the thing worked. It appears that glass panel was one of the causes of the planes demise due to its cost of maintainence. That was the $50K per year cost I'd heard about.....
In talking with the guys from Cutter Aviation it was said that most of the planes were leased from beech for the reasons listed by another poster. It gave them control over them and allowed them to cut costs.

Frank
 
I was under the impression the reason Beech killed it was a certification issue. I had heard the composites were hanging up the FAA and they wouldn't grant it normal category so it was doomed in the experimental category.

That's how I heard it.
 
Piaggio seemed to get it right.
 
Great pics Teller... Thanks:yesnod::yesnod:..

I nominate you to be the POA roving reporter.:idea:.

It is sad to see historic airframes sitting there rotting in the desert sun.:sad:
 
Teller,

That's the place. You got better pictures than I did, I stopped on the road outside and took a couple through the fence over the objections of my wife & kids.

John
 
Used to be one that visted Teterboro, pretty often, back in the 80's... My guys used to service it when it came in.

Gosh I hate to see any airplane sent to the boneyard...
 
BiffJ said:
There was a story on one of the 60 minutes type shows a few years back about one owner who refused to let beech get his plane. He apparently bought all the parts, planes and pieces he could get his hands on in order to keep his flying. Maybe the planes are Marana are his?
SNIP

Frank
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Correct.
Captain said:
I was under the impression the reason Beech killed it was a certification issue. I had heard the composites were hanging up the FAA and they wouldn't grant it normal category so it was doomed in the experimental category.

That's how I heard it.
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Not quite. They had a lot of problems with certification, many of which had to do with the composite construction, but that wasn't their only delay in manufacturing/certification. Not by a long shot! That said, it was (is) a fully certified aircraft.

REF:
Starship Diaries said:
The first full-size Starship made its maiden flight on February 15th, 1986. The second joined the test flight program in June 1986, and the third was ready for flight in the early spring of 1987. In the course of a two-year flight test program, they flew almost 2,000 hours, and on June 14th the Starship received FAA certification. The first production Starship, NC-4, went on flight test late 1988.
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See the Starship Diaries for more.

Anthony said:
Piaggio seemed to get it right.
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In construction materials, perhaps yes. In many other ways...depends who you ask.

And it's not that Starship got it wrong. In fact, they did a lot of things much better than current designs do. They just did it first, before the aviation community could see and appreciate the positives of their, at that time, very unusual techniques and design attributes. Glass cockpits and composite construction are fairly widely used now, thanks in large part to Beechcraft/Scaled Composites paving the way for FAA certification and testing of these elements on civil aircraft. But being first to do something new and unheard of, and completely untested, comes with its risks. Risks that simply didn't pay off, at the time, for Starship.

N801BH said:
Great pics Teller... Thanks:yesnod::yesnod:..

I nominate you to be the POA roving reporter.:idea:.

It is sad to see historic airframes sitting there rotting in the desert sun.:sad:
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Thanks! I wish I had my real camera with me; those were just cell phone pictures.

I'd be happy to do it, but 1) I think Ken Ibold has rights to that title, and 2) you'd have to convinse my company to keep sending me to cool places! Good luck with that. :)

I grew up in Wichita, KS. My middle/high school is <1/4 mile from the Beechcraft factory at Douglass and Webb. A large portion of my childhood was punctuated by the sound of Starships (and F-16s, and B-1Bs, and KC-135s, and B-52s, and VC-25s, and B-2s, and...and...and) flying low over head. While I've never had the privledge of flying a Beech 2000 series aircraft, it feels like a representation of my childhood sitting in that desert.

The Starships are just a small part of the amazing aviation history sitting in the Arizona and New Mexico desert. Hell, they'e but a small part of the amazing history sitting at Marana Airpark! Pinal, Marana, Tuscon, Davis-Monthan - all within 50 miles (or so) of eachother - are all covered, wingtip-to-wingtip, with aircraft worth writing books about.
 
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jsstevens said:
Teller,

That's the place. You got better pictures than I did, I stopped on the road outside and took a couple through the fence over the objections of my wife & kids.

John
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:rofl: Thanks!

After we landed, we made it our all-encompassing goal to get up close to them. And we thought we were going to fail spectacularly when we turned on to that road to find it closed due to the Pima County Sherrif using it to do training for their motorcycle unit.

But then they gave us a police escort through their lines, and right through the gate. And a couple of them even stayed and chatted and asked questions about why we were so interested in these beat up old airplanes.

Awesome guys, with some really nice bikes. I couldn't have gotten those pictures without them! Being in uniform helped us a lot, too. And we didn't have our spouses/children with us... ;)
 
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Here's the one that spends some of its time in Aspen.
 

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i have a friend or two here who worked on that project at Beech back in the day. Some very interesting stories. They are certainly a neat airplane
 
I saw my first Starship in 1989 at the Courtland Airshow in Courtland Alabama. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen. I got to go inside and was in awe of the beauty of the bird. I was young at the time. The only thing that beat the Starship for me was seeing my father's old C170B on the line at the airshow. There were several C170's in attendance, the parked them all on the front row away from the normal flyin parking area. It was so cool to see my dad's old bird again. That day got me hooked on ensuring i'd have a 170 one day. Finally did 2 years ago.
 
Can't remember which year, but sometime in the early 80's the NBAA convention was held in Dallas, static display was at Love Field. The big story was the fly-by of Scaled Composites .8 model Starship. As in WOW! Did you see THAT?
 
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