Beech Queenair
 

Any Queenair's still flying in Australia either on commercial or private operations?

Yes - one goes over our house in Perth some nights - can't miss the distinctive noise it makes....

air frontier in Darwin? owners got a few in pieces too I hear..horrible 6cyl engines..only gets off the ground because the earth's round on a hot day

I think I saw the Cavpower/Cavill aircraft (EYG) up for sale recently. Surely would have to be one of the nicest Queenairs in the country, but then again the competition isn't that strong.

Saw the owner of that aircraft stand up underneath the wing one day & hit his head on the tiedown ring - knocked himself out cold & I had to administer first aid to the gash in his scalp! Despite my protests, after he recovered somewhat he got in it & flew it back to Adelaide.

DF.

A pretty good one based at Caloundra - but he cant keep engines in it either

He was also VERY protective of the parking spot outside their hangar at PF, enough so that after a neighbouring 310 pulled up there for no more than 2 minutes with engines running, he tried to "board" it to give the pilot a serve as it taxied out. Nearly caused himself an injury that day too.

Anyway, I digress. Still remember those Air Eastern machines doing the ADL-KSC-PLC-ADL for a stint in the late nineties. Must have been interesting crawling head-first into the cockpit over the boxes of crays. AEQ and XAE were two of them.

Sorry, looks like it's been covered here

Not only the parking spot at PF Plow King. He would park in front of the bowser at YLEC, refuel, then buzz off out to the coal mine on business for several hours without shifting the aircraft. Often had to work around it to refuel others - didn't have much choice!
Can remember the aircraft going over the top of YLEC one day enroute from YOLD to YBHI. It was given as IFR traffic to an opposite direction aircraft as a KingAir by Melbourne Centre. Couldn't resist calling up the pilot (not the owner) on 126.7 & saying "Hey John - did you give the old girl a sex change?!"

DF.

Looks like at least 11.

Last time I looked the earth is round on most days, hot or cold.

Ever flown them?

Yes there are a few still flying in Oz. GREAT aircraft but must be engine managed with care. They are a great aircraft, the 80's are a big load carrier, but by gee buy/ handle wrong and they will wring your wallet. personally, i love the type.:ok:

THanks for the info.

That's probably XAT, it does a paper-run up to the north west most nights.

Hmmm.... amateur!

TAA flew them out of Brampton Island.
Talair in PNG had one (or two) they took into some very interesting places.
And I have flown them in and out of some pretty crap strips. One of the nicest planes I've flown and never let me down!

Caloundra
 

I have warned him about engine management and meatbombing in Queenairs several times. FWG by memory. Stubborn bugger.
Not the type of aircraft to do it in.
I have logged almost 2000 hours and flown nearly every one of them in the nineties. Once you have mastered it it will never let you down. My all time favourite.

Survived about 1,800 hours in them in The N.S.W. Air Ambulance and a few hundred more in Maslings...not a bad machine if you treat the engines correctly, I always regarded the engine as a hand grenade with the pin nearly out..so gentle, gentle, only problem I had was a dropped valve departing Tamworth about 1:00 am., a quick return and The E-W Engineers replaced the cylinder etc. and airborne about 4 hours later... Performance was adequate but not impressive, even departing Bourke, Cobar, Walgett etc. in Mid-Summer at 38+...at least I can say that I have flown a museum piece, with VH-AMB suspended in Sydney's Powerhouse Museum!

Antique engines on a great airframe, one of the nicest light twins to fly well harmonised controls, easy to load and balance, just a nice airplane, timeless and much nicer to fly than the Kingair.

Capt Fathom, sms777, zlin77 and T28D - well done in defending what really was a very nice handling aeroplane indeed. I flew 1300 hrs in the 65 (both straight-tailed and -8200 versions) and a 65-A80; great machines and very enjoyable.

Yes, the engines demanded smooth, gentle handling! Another "gotcha" that invited expensive noises was protracted operation with high rpm and low MP. Since a parachuting operation involves a protracted climb to great heights, then a few minutes at cruise chucking out the organic lawn darts followed by a long descent back (did I hear you say low MP/high rpm here?), you have to wonder about the mentality of anyone proposing to use a Queen Air, of all aircraft, for this.

Mention has also been made of the runway required. I never thought the take-off was that bad, and you could certainly land in an impressively short distance. Who could forget watching "A-Mac" in the 60's landing on 06 at Jandakot and turning off by the first taxiway (I reckon it was 1200 feet)?

Dora

And what was the cause / result ? ....for those of us who have never set foot in one.

Thanks

J:ok:

Expensive noises resulted when the prop was driving the engine and not the engine driving the prop...the reduction gearbox for the propellor was engineered to take thrust loads in one direction only, from memory our descents were at 20 inches of manifold pressure to achieve this....also Lycoming had many service bulletins about smooth power application and reduction...

In Derby around 1968, there was a photographic Beech D50 Twin Bonanza operating out of there. It had GSO-480's, i.e. caburetted versions of the Queen Air engines. They would climb up to 20,000 feet - being a direct drive supercharger this required climb rpm in the cruise to maintain MP. Fine, but they would then come down from great heights with the throttles closed and still at climb rpm (3000 rpm I think). After a few trips one engine blew up; after a month's delay installing a replacement engine the other engine let go noisily during the test flight - that's the one that had dragged them all the way home from over Fitzroy Crossing!

Those sort of noises, Jaba!