Beech ownership and musketeers!

[practice]

Howdy all.
Few questions about aircraft ownership.
Are beech aircraft more costly to maintain than others?
anyone own/have owned a musketeer? what are they like?
spare parts availability for them?
insurance costs roughly..?
Cheers..
:cool:

[Rich-Fine-Green]

Never owned a Beech Musketeer but had a BE58 & A36.

Anything with the word Beechcraft on it - will be expensive to buy parts for.

Insurance costs will mainly be determined by the usage and experiance of Pilots flying the aircraft.

The good side to the equation is that a Musketeer will be cheaper to aquire compared to the similar Cessna or Piper due to a lower demand in the marketplace.

[Fred Gassit]

I dont know much about parts costs but performance sucks, thats why they are cheap. They do the least with the horsepower they have of anything I have flown, though they handle nicely enough.
A friend has one with 200 hp and it barely does 120kts.
One I flew with 150hp did 85kts and the back seats could not really be used for full size pax.
I have heard something about the flaps but cant remember what it related to, corrosion and inspection panels I think.. someone will know.
They have a reasonably comfortable cabin, quite roomy hence the guppy appearance,
They have a fairly small wing too but I never found it to be much of a problem.
I think they really are a case of getting what you pay for, someone told me once that it was the plane Mr Beech made while Mrs Beech was on holidays!

[J430]

Hey Practice,

What do you want it for anyway??I went through this exercise a couple of years ago, even looked at a few C172's and Musketeers, did lots of costings and went plastic instead.

There is usually one around $35-$45K but they are ancient. If its just for private flying and not hire for a school or charter work, buy a Jabiru or one of the Tecnam and friends from the RAA types.

In fact a J400 Jabiru was for sale recently (really good one too) for $90K. It would be a steal at that price and its only going cheap I guess due to the owners new Lancair being ready to take the hangar space. I don't think the money is a problem for him.

Anyway they will do around 120 knots on 20LPH and carry a similar load as any of the C172's or Cherokee's etc. and a fraction of the cost to operate.

If you want more info PM me and I will offer you my experiences on the plastic planes.

Cheers

J

[Matt-YSBK]

I am not sure of other types but i can say from experence any duchess parts are not cheap. Only the ones that are the same as the Baron and they are few and far between.

[tinpis]

Mousecatcher when stalled in a turn does the most magnificent teeth rattling snap roll I ever seen.:ooh: