Well I must be smoking crack if I don't love your beechjet. I HATED flying that airplane and No I don't have big shiny jet syndrome. I love the king airs and would take a 350 over a beechjet any day. I didn't have any problem doing V-1 cuts in it but I always figured if I really lost one at V-1 in the underpowered pig then I would probably climb just enough to hit the tree tops. If you put 600-700 pounds of fuel in the beechjet and fly 1000nm you are either taking off overweight or landing with no gas. Let's not even get into taking it out in the western mountains. It becomes VFR only unless you don't bother with required climb gradients.

 

Many light jets are this way. CJs are the same.

 

Dear Crackhead,
Where to begin.
1.) Hmmmmm, I TOO love the King Airs, to the tune of almost 5000 hrs flying the B200 and B350. Never said I loved the Beechjet, in fact I said it wasn't a favorite, just a decent airplane. Comparing the 2 is apples and oranges. Big cabin and tons of payload? KingAir. 3 or 4 people a thousand miles in two and a half hours? Beechjet. The are totally different animals.
2.) Learn to read. I said range with FULL FUEL, which gives 600 to 700 lbs of useful load, was 1000nm. And that's landing with a solid hours reserve.
3.) Underpowered? It has the same thrust/weight ratio as the Citation V and the Lear 35. Granted, wing design comes into play for climb rate, but 2500 to 3000fpm was pretty standard at max gross unless you were in the big hills. Would it be my first choice for Aspen? No. Did it do a fine job at Telluride and Grand Junction? Hell yes. Like the other guy said, find a light jet that can make all the climb gradients out west and still have decent range. They're few and far between.
4.) I agree that the Beechjet flies like a 1970 Ford F-100 with no power steering. I also agree that the Kingair is a dream to fly, especially when it's a couple months old and has Proline like one of my current rides.

I never said the Beechjet was a wonderful airplane that was the answer to all your dreams. Those airplanes are made by a guy named Pierre and have 3 engines. Just that the Beechjet is a solid performer and a very robust and proven airplane. Passengers love the cabin, it has a great ride, good cruise performance, mediocre range. Take it or leave it, those are the facts.

 

i didnt know how bad the thing is on fuel

 

I've always said that the only thing the Beechjet needed to be a great airplane are some ailerons, a 36 inch plug in the fuselage, 4000 lb. thrust engines, 2000 lbs more fuel, dual main gear, updated avionics, and a candy dispenser.

 

one of my best friends father is the president of hawker/beech....they have their stuff togeather...theres going to be some INCREDIBLE jets coming out of that place in the next few years....trust me!!!

p.s. i dont think the candy despenser is in the drawings for anything coming out of beech any time soon!! lol

 

Flew the Barbie Jet in Air Force UPT and probably have about 120 hours in it. We did stalls, slow flight, unusual attitudes, steep turns, tactical VFR patterns, even flew formation in the thing and although the controls were heavy in the roll axis having just spoiler, I didn't think it was unstable. It was challenging to fly. For the first few months we weren't allowed to use autopilot, so we hand flew the damn thing everywhere we went. Got quite tiresome. It was a fun jet to fly. Got the BE400/MU300 type out of it. Maybe I'll use it someday.

 

I was a captain in a Beechjet for a couple years. Nice plane... fly close to airports! Hehe. What I mean is, they don't have a clue what the true cause of the flame outs were, or are if they've occured since the impulse AFM revision. Raytheon and Pratt I guess determined that it could be an icing situation either on the inlets or stator vanes, and the first power reduction for descent from a prolonged cruise at altitude induce the dual flameouts simultaneously. The fix was run engine anti-ice (w/ ignitors) for 4 minutes prior to descent, then run them through the entire descent. LAME in my opinion. There are plenty of other aircraft using the same engine with the prist requirement that have NOT reported the dual engine flameout as in the BE40.

With that aside, I only had a few things brake- Overhead photo-illuminescent panel caught fire over the ocean at night (that was fun), EFC failure and N1 surge to 106% on climb out (supposedly didn't hurt engine because of maint manual limits for exceedances...), static wics missing a lot which were grounding in our MEL, FMS failure, Rudder Bias fail light which I rejected prior to V1 (transducer failure), generator failure, speed brake jammed in flight from broken bonding strip (wouldn't retract all the way), WEEEE... shall I continue?

I don't think I'm being fair, because the avionics do a nice job. The displays are nice, weather radar is excellent, and when they work, the Collins FMS are so easy to use- especially the VNAV and Visual approach database. I've flown with Honeywells, Universal, GNS XLS, etc, and still think the Collins is easier to use. Doesn't have performance info though, and the database takes freaking forever to load if you forget while on the road. It's best to have the subscription to Rockwell Collins for the web based database updates. Also, Collins has a very simple program you can download to a PC to create your own checklists to display on the tubes. They work great, and the BE40 has nice line advances on the yoke. I made an awesome checklist for the airplane, and we used it through the FMS.

The speed brakes for roll are LAME. It requires a lot of control force to turn the airplane above 200 KIAS, because the controls are not hydraulic. Just a board and a wire... pretty mickey mouse. Came off the old Mitsub design, trying the make the entire trailing edge a flap for short field landings in Japan. The plane was perfectly designed for flying in Japan. No legs over 3 hrs, the japanese are small (light weight) people for the most part (except the wrestlers), and the runways are small there. Not the best US corporate jet. Poor runway performance because of the brakes... the REF speeds are fine. We operated from a 5,700' strip under 135, and if it rained, I was not legal to land using the 135 rules with more than 1 passenger onboard and minimum fuel. Not cool. So pay for a good performance planning software (ultra nav or atlas apg), something to keep you legal and away from the headache of using Raytheon performance charts!

I used contractors from the regional airlines with CRJ time. They both took to the airplane very fast, avionics are very similar. A lot of gotchas in the beechjet. When you go to ground school, go to flight safety in Wichita KICT, and ask for Doug Volmer for initial. He is the most knowlegable BE400A instructor in existence. Bring a tape recorder. The plane has a lot of operating history, and he knows it all and does a good job passing along all of the information. You will get overloaded by him, but record it because it will all become clear after a couple hundred hours in the damn thing.

Did I give you enough of an insight? I could write for hours the BE40. Typical contract pay is $550/day for Captains and $300/day for FO's depending on market and experience. Captain salary will run around $65000/yr to start, maybe as high as $80 ish with time and good negotiating skills. Starting FO's run around $25K to $45k. I personally know an FO making $55K.

Good luck, and sump those tanks every chance you get! no kidding.

 

The guys that flew them at my company liked to say, "Its fuel critical as soon as you rotate..."

 

Two things a Beechjet won't pass? A fuel pump and a Service Center.