The Commander 500A... I find the 500 A/B's with the Shrike conversion very appealing. What's the story on them?

Watch the spar.... VERY expensive AD. But fast, roomy, comfortable and very STOL & good rough field. Just a pity they did not build the wing strong enough. That is why they hired Bob Hoover.... to show it does not break. No wonder with the smoothest guy in the world on the controls.

That is a beautiful example of a great airplane. One of my customers has two of them that he uses to orbit fires and direct the water bombers. There is one that flies into Cedar Rapids that is used for aerial surveying. A very stable platform with excellent single engine performance.

They are awesome airplanes. Great visibility, very stable. Ted Smith was a design genius!

And if you are at it:
https://www.aircraftonsale.com/details.php?id=768
Turbo Normalized IO-720ies
or
http://www.controller.com/listingsdetai ... 211224.htm?
a much lower time version
But as I said, when I researched the Shrike COmmander, the spar issue finally put me off.

I don't believe the early 500A's and B's have the same spar concern as the later Shrikes. That 500A was really anemic with IO-470's; the Colemill Conversion to the IO-520 made it a much better performer.

Here is a paper related to the wingspar history; http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_assets/main/airworth/papers/aerocommander.pdf

Mike, that article is very revealing - thanks for posting. I was not aware the spar problems were so widespread across the fleet. Sticking with Beech.....

I'd be willing to bet this one was operated by Central Air Southwest ("Central Commuter") on freight runs and just had a major make-over. That has to be one of their lower-time planes. There are several parked without engines at MKC.

I always felt bad for those Central Air guys. I remember one of them had a freight run where they got their FAA mandated "rest" period at the FBO in Gaylord, MI. from about 9 a.m. until 6 p.m.

I don't know if it's true or not, but he told me all their airplanes carried, as standard equipment, a maintenance manual and an extra starter.

From what I understand, that is true of all freight dogs, even the ones who fly Beech products...

The commander isn't a bad airplane...until you start comparing it to a twin bonanza

I was really into the Shrike until I found the TBone also.

I can underwrite this view, the T-Bone is the better airplane. Until you look at a Queen Air 70......

Last year, when I started yearning for a twin, I really wanted a Commander. That is, until I studied the spar issue.

It's real, and if you will read accident reports, occasionally you will still find one that just disappeared from the radar scope, often near a thunderstorm. Last one was a turbine.

There are multiple issues. The original had to do with the design, yes the genius of Ted Smith, where they swept the spar forward and thereby created a severely weak point in the wing structure. Then they put in a spar cap to address that but unfortunately used dissimilar metals. That created a corrosion issue.

On reading all this, I went back to considering a Beech.

Jgreen