Bring back the Starship?
 

Name all three airplanes?

This was taken at the Beech Museum party where AQRD flew the Starship in participation!

Starship
Beech 18
Staggerwing

All beautiful aircraft!

There is a Beech Starship, at Caloundra airfield on the Queensland Sunshine Coast. It's not airworthy but an Interesting aeroplane to see in the flesh.

I thought all the Starships were scrapped or grounded at least - how many still flying and with whom - Beech (Hawker Beechcraft/Textron) presumably?

You see those three aircraft and makes you think there's a bit of synergy there with say the likes of de Havilland in so much that they produced essentially good looking aircraft, like Beech, in the main. That said, the Starship's appeal very much in the eye of the beholder. The flight-deck though - half a tonne of CRT screens.

Starship marks out of 10 for beauty vs. Piaggio Avanti folks? Personal view:

Starship - 6/10
Avanti - 8/10 ....and for balance

Hondajet - 4/10 ....sorry Honda.

There are four or so still operating. We at AQRD in Dallas, TX own and operate two. We have plenty of scrap parts and since we have operate an engineering and 145 repair station, we can engineer, repair, and modify anything on the aircraft and also created our own maintenance program to keep our two flying. It is definitely a labor of love for the Beech Starship! It is majority all composite as well.

I attached some more pictures. Feel free to visit us if you are ever in the Dallas area. We also own and operate a T-33.

In 2005, there was a whole apron full of them at PIE (St. Petersburg/Clearwater, FL.) I don't know if they are still there.

Jon

In 2006 I designed a 1:33 paper model of the Starship. At that time my research indicated that four were still airworthy.

I used N541RS as reference which was acting as a chase plane during testing of another pair of Burt Rutan designs: White Knight and Starship One.

The kit can be downloaded for printing and building from:

https://marian-aldenhoevel.de/beechcraft-starship/

I love looks and the history of the Starship and think the Avanti is a lame copy :-).

Looking at Googlemaps, all the Starships at St Pete are long gone. There were a load stored at Marana (or one of the other airfields in that area) but I think they are gone too.

I did note one on FR24 heading northeast just NW of London two or three years ago. No idea if it was really a Starship or an error in the FR24 database! I'd like to have seen it!

Cor, that looks quite complex but very nice MarianA, I'm going to send a copy to my ace kit-building mate Darius - make a change from the plastic kits he makes!

[QUOTE= and think the Avanti is a lame copy :-).[/QUOTE]

to be fair, both were designed at the same time and flew within months of each other, so Avanti was never a copy of the Starship really, both programs ran in parallel. Crazy thing is that the likes of the Avanti still seem 'bang up to date' in looks when it's over thirty years old.

That's because Italians do it better. ;)

Nice pics AQRD. I do wish they'd start building them again. Beech and FAA screwed the pooch on that one - it could have been a magnificent aircraft if allowed to meet its design specs!