Aviation - What did I see ?

[liner33]

Small plane just flew directly overhead , looked a little like a HS-125 but had a canard type wing across the nose

Thinking it could be a Piaggio P180 but could it be anything else ?

[RizzoTheRat]

Beech Starship is the other possibility. I've seen a Piaggio around Farnborough several times.

[Eric Mc]

No Beech Starships flying these days as far as I know. All recalled by Beech a number of years ago for scrapping.

[couzens]

A P180 flys over Farnborough at roughly 16.30-17.00 almost daily. One of my favourite aircraft. Unmistakable noise going overhead.

[ecsrobin]

couzens said:

A P180 flys over Farnborough at roughly 16.30-17.00 almost daily. One of my favourite aircraft. Unmistakable noise going overhead.

This. The P180 has a very distinct and quite loud noise.

[RizzoTheRat]

Eric Mc said:

No Beech Starships flying these days as far as I know. All recalled by Beech a number of years ago for scrapping.

Didn't realise that. It's a shame, they were a lovely looking aircraft.

[bstw]

We had a Rutan thing fly over that looks similar to the Piaggio. There was one at Biggin hill recently with twin pusher props that my wife saw at an event, possibly the same plane?

[Speed 3]

RizzoTheRat said:

Eric Mc said:

No Beech Starships flying these days as far as I know. All recalled by Beech a number of years ago for scrapping.

Didn't realise that. It's a shame, they were a lovely looking aircraft.

Wrong:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/...

http://aerospaceqrd.com


But definitely not what the OP saw, probably an Avanti.

[Eric Mc]

There are a couple still flying but Beech gave up on the aircraft and effectively killed it and tried to get rid of what they had built. They mostly succeeded but one or two survive.

[Tempest_5]

Not a Rutan VariEze or LongEze was it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_VariEze

[liner33]

Cheers all

I'm not near Farnborough , well not that Farnborough anyhow, i'm south of Oxford , we get a lot of military traffic overhead presumably from Benson and this was quite loud and fairly low hence I looked up.

[High flier]

Eric Mc said:

No Beech Starships flying these days as far as I know. All recalled by Beech a number of years ago for scrapping.

Nope, there's still a few flying. This one was at Gloucester (where bizarrely there's an engineer with it on his licence!), in 2014 for a bit of work to be done. I couldn't believe it when I taxied in and saw the tail sticking out of the hangar!