Poll: best looking GA prop plane of all time?

The Piaggio with its four lifting surfaces (the fusilage
also provides lift) incredibly tight tolerance surface finish and low drag
shape is simply an amazing airplane. It is light years ahead of the King
Air.

From the perspective of an aircraft structural design engineer, the
King Air appears to be the result of generations of add-ons. Most
fuselage stations look different from each other. Note the different
windows and skin panels. It appears that rather than spend a few
dollars to clean up the design they just kept adding on as the airframe
models got larger. Even the outboard wing looks like it is added on to
a center wing. Scabed together compared to the clean Piaggio. Can
anyone verify if this how the Beechcraft developed?

When I was 13 years old I thought Jim Bede's BD-5 looked great. In
hindsight he was selling a cute design that was hard to fly bordering
on unsafe. But then Kitplanes are a whole another area from GA.

The variety of aircraft over the past 100 years is amazing. Quite a
survival of the fittest - evolution going on. For every plane in
service, others did not get past the prototype stage. For each
prototype, many more were tested in the wind tunnel and detailed on
paper. The 1930s to 1940s were an explosion of aircraft design. I love
it.

James

James,

King Air appears to be the result of generations of add-ons. Most
fuselage stations look different from each other.

You broke the code. The King Air evolved from the Twin Bonanza and
then the Queen Air.

It's a lovely flying airplane, so it's beautiful in that respect, but
it's slow as molasses for a turboprop.

I always wondered why Beech had allowed such poor aerodynamics on the
Duke (the thing is drag incarnate); then realized that had they cleaned
it up, it would have been substantially faster than the King Air, which
would not have done their turbine marketing any good at all.

All the best,
Rick

I always wondered why Beech had allowed such poor aerodynamics on the
Duke (the thing is drag incarnate)

Doesn't the Duke cruise around 220-230kt? Isn't that about avg for
pressurized turbo'd piston twins?

You're correct on the cruise speed of the Duke, however it makes that
speed on very large engines and poor aerodynamics. The larger Cessna
421 goes as fast on less power and the Aerostar 601P is nearly 30 knots
faster on less power.

All the best,
Rick


wrote:
I always wondered why Beech had allowed such poor aerodynamics on the
Duke (the thing is drag incarnate)

Doesn't the Duke cruise around 220-230kt? Isn't that about avg for
pressurized turbo'd piston twins?