But the airplane was great, I think…
No, it wasn’t, otherwise it would have become a success. It was built from carbon composites the way it would have been built from aluminium: Riveted together with frames and stringers, thereby throwing away all the advantages of composites and making it much too heavy. The avionics were a complete nightmare, built only for this aeroplane. Proper glass cockpits for business aircraft were unavailabe when the Starship was developed, but they insisted on a glass cockpit anyway. So they built a little screen for every instrument, 13 in total if I remember correctly. Pure madness. But worst of all was the runway requirement. This thing was supposed to be a business aircraft but ate runway like an airliner. 1500-2000m depending on mass. The similar sized Kingair requires 500m with the same engines. This was entirely due to the stupid canard layout. Piaggio rectified the worst shortcomings of this configuration by adding another horizontal surface at the proper location: At the back of the aeroplane. If only they removed their canard wing, the Avanti could become a real good aeroplane 
My favorite failed proof-of-concept was the LearFan, Bill Lear’s last design. An excellent concept, but the FAA didn’t know what to make of it at the time and took longer to certify it than the funds of the company lasted…
Flyer59, great photos! You’re probably aware that the Starship and Lear Fan shared some internal proponents. The Predator UAV might be considered an example of third time ‘lucky’ in terms of the principal and composite aircraft.
LeSving, I’d love to fly that Saab Safir – other than one or two SF260s it was probably the most interesting plane I saw at AERO in 2014. Taking advantage of old taxpayer investment at relatively low cost can be an attractive thing with aircraft. It’s sure a solid looking ‘real’ plane.
Do you have it from the Grob calender?
That pic appeared in the press and on the Grob website.
My favorite failed proof-of-concept was the LearFan, Bill Lear’s last design. An excellent concept, but the FAA didn’t know what to make of it at the time and took longer to certify it than the funds of the company lasted…
I recall a TV programme where they spoke to Bill Lear, shortly before his death. They also spoke to an ex sales manager for the project, who was rather negative about the way it got bloated over and over. I think he said customers wanted more range which needed bigger tanks, so the whole plane got bigger and needed bigger tanks still, and soon it was way away from the original efficient concept. He didn’t think it would ever get there. It sounded like the FAA was presented with a moving target.
A year or two ago I met an engineer who worked on the Starship. He had all the design drawings on a DVD. Apparently some clever structural work was done on that plane.
what next,
the take-off data i got for the Starship was 4100 ft at MTOM for the earlier models and 3900 ft for the later models, but maybe those were wrong?
Peter,
yes, i sold them those photos. If you want more of the 140, let me know …
Here are two more, i did flying with their test pilot
We attached the heavy Nikon D4 to the wingtip for this one. See my hand with the remote?
We also did some aerobatics that day and later they let me fly the plane.
In the back of the book “Those incomparable Bonanzas” there is a picture of a twin engined Bonanza. Now that’s not the Twin Bonanza, but a “regular” Bonanza with two engines “sandwiched” inside the front cowling, both driving the same prop. Sorry, no copy of that photo on the internet, it seems.
In the book, the author speculates that it didn’t materialize because the FAA would not certifiy it without a “firewall” between the two engines.
They did a lot of such “crazy” stuff in the good old days, when R&D budgets were still significant in piston GA…sigh!
I have that picture somewhere, will investigate next week. That was a funny design!
In the vein of this thread the Cessna 620 was interesting…. I guess four piston engines wasn’t the right solution.
But while not ‘proof of concept’ I like the swoopy mini Skymaster that apparently wasn’t judged good enough to perform like a twin Comanche.
In the vein of this thread the Cessna 620 was interesting…. I guess four piston engines wasn’t the right solution.
With the model 119/220 McDonnell tried something similar, but with four turbojet engines. Unfortunately, not a single buyer wanted to sign the contract:
what next,
the take-off data i got for the Starship was 4100 ft at MTOM for the earlier models and 3900 ft for the later models, but maybe those were wrong?
I don’t know which figures to believe… In the mid 1990ies I had a share in an air taxi company and Beechcraft Augsburg invited us to see a Starship they wanted to sell and had on display either at the Aero Friedrichshafen or at the ILA exhibition (can’t remember which). So we went to see that thing. We talked about figures with the representative, and knowing that JAR-OPS with factored landing distances was about to come, performed a little arithmetic and discarded the whole project right away. The factored landing distance was close to 1500m/5000ft which makes it almost unuseable for a business aircraft in Europe. I probably remembered that figure from then.
But what really killed the Starship was Cessna with their CitationJets. They developed them with the aim of sweeping Beechcraft from the market. In their adverts from the 1990ies they always compared the CJs to the KingAirs: Faster, cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate. Ultimately they achieved their goal, Beechcraft is operating under chapter 11 and the KingAir has almost vanished from the charter market.
