I wonder if a Guzzi America rep was onboard. (pic)

[Gliderjohn]

Quote from JNMathews:

I thought the Beech Starship was also beautiful.  I had the good fortune to work on the development program to wind the fuselage as one large piece.

One of our glider club instructors was the chief engineer on the Beech Starship project. I think it aged him a lot. My wife at the time worked for Beech and she arranged a tour for me which included seeing the fuselage winding machine. The whole project burned Beech pretty bad.
GliderJohn

[Chuck in Indiana]

Quote from JNMathews:
One of our glider club instructors was the chief engineer on the Beech Starship project. I think it aged him a lot. My wife at the time worked for Beech and she arranged a tour for me which included seeing the fuselage winding machine. The whole project burned Beech pretty bad.
GliderJohn

Oh, yeah. A local pilot used to operate one, and he loved the bird.. but.. Beech bought back all of them and destroyed them, as far as I know. My ageing memory says it was lightning strikes.. ?

[Gliderjohn]

From Wiki:
In 2004 Raytheon sold its entire inventory of Starship parts to a Starship owner for a fraction of its retail value.

As of January 2010, nine Starships hold an active registration with the FAA. Three Starships are registered in Oklahoma (NC-29, NC-35 & NC-45), one in Texas (NC-50), one in Colorado (NC-51), and four are registered to Beechcraft in Wichita, Kansas (NC-2, NC-8, NC-19 & NC-24).[37] NC-51 was used as a chase plane during the re-entry phase of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.[38] In October 2008 NC-29 was the first of the five remaining privately owned airworthy Starships to complete RVSM certification, returning the aircraft's service ceiling to the original FL410 limit.[39]

Evergreen Air Center sold 24 Starships back to private owners for $50,000 each. Most are being used for parts; however, one of these aircraft has since been made airworthy again.[20] Some former Starship parts have been used on the Epic turboprop kitplane.[40]

Salt Lake Community College used a Starship in their Aviation Maintenance program until late 2012 when it was quietly sold and scrapped for parts.

GliderJohn

[kirby1923]

Years ago I had an engineering business at Mojave CA near the scale composite site.

I remember when bert had the 75% scale of the star ship flying test there. He used that to sell Beech on the project but what it took to get them up on it was berts marriage to Olive Ann's (Beech) daughter I seem to remember. (could have been the grand daughter)

They(Beech) made him a VP and he went to ICT to work on the project.

Long story short (and its been awhile so I could be wrong on the details) They became so disgusted with bert that they gave him a $2,000,000 (rumor has it) to go back to Mojave and became, for a while, a part owner in berts Scaled Composites.

I seem to remember that the specs on the Star Ship were not really much better in many way to the King Air 300 which was cheaper to build (read better profit margins) and was quite successful for Beech.The Star ship just didn't sell with big corporate flight departments (too "out there").

Its another example of aircraft needing to look good to be successful( P-51) and IMHO the Star Ship was an extension of berts ego and offered no real advantage over the conventional platforms.

:-)

I never got to fly the Star Ship but knew all the test pilots.

[Groover]

Interesting plane. Never seen one. Piaggio has been in and out of the Aerospace industry since its origins. The Vespa was actually designed mostly by an Aeronautical engineer. The Vespa's front fork/suspension design is based off an Aircraft landing gear - bet you guys didn't know that one! - That's where my knowledge ends however