Beechcraft Starship

Uncommon card · No. 153817

The Beechcraft Starship is a twin-turboprop business aircraft designed and produced by Beech Aircraft Corporation. It is the first civil aircraft to feature an electronic flight instrument system as well as being one of the first to make extensive use of composite materials. The Starship originated in an effort to replace the Beechcraft King Air; development work commenced in 1979 as a relatively ambitious civil programme for the era. The use of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite materials throughout the airframe was radical for the era, as were other design features, including a forward canard wing design, a pusher-propeller arrangement, and an early glass cockpit implementation. As part of the design's refinement, Scaled Composites produced an 85%-scale proof of concept (POC) aircraft that first flew in August 1983; two months later, the programme's existence was publicly revealed, after which the POC aircraft flew a demonstration flight at the 1983 National Business Aviation...

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