The original 1963 Model 23 had a 160-HP Lycoming, following the lead established by the Piper Cherokee two years before. A23-24 Musketeer The Musketeer family was developed by Beechcraft as a lower cost and lower performance four seater than the Bonanza, intended to compete with the Cessna 172 and Piper Cherokee. The Beech Sundowner chugged along for a few more years before being sucked under by the great GA depression and sales downturn of the 1980s.In its original incarnation, the Sport got socked with an AD due to poor climb performance at gross weight. Indeed, every time we’ve looked at the safety records of the Beech Sport and Sundowner, the story has been the same—lots of hard landings and lots of overshot landings. The airframe is very robust, roomy and comfortable; big folks really like this airplane. One owner said climb rates of about 500 FPM through 9500 feet were possible. If you’re the type who likes to tack on a few knots for the insurance company and another couple for the wife and kids, buy a Cherokee or some similar, more forgiving design.Both the Sport and Sundowner have nice, wide-stance main landing gear, so once the aircraft are firmly on the ground, they handle and track quite well. Despite its origins as a sliced-up IO-520, it’s a rare mechanic indeed who’s familiar with this engine. There just aren’t that many of them out there and they are far outnumbered by Skyhawks and Cherokees. This winter, she and I will be entertaining an FAA examiner for an instrument checkride. Its smooth, burns a single quart of oil in 15 hours, its easy to start and there is no lead buildup on the spark plugs.The Sport and Sundowner demand precision handling down final and into the flare. Join a type club, and if you own one of this great series from Beech, join BAC.It is interesting to me that a lot of pilots are not familiar with this particular aircraft or its siblings, despite the fact that 4000 of this family of aircraft were built over the 20-year production cycle. That’s true of other types, too, but it’s doubly true of this model.
So, theres safety in type-club numbers. The Continental IO-346 has never given me any problems. There are two areas, however, that I would caution prospective buyers to be aware of-weight/balance and approach/ landing speeds.
Still, the airframe feels more substantial than a Cessna 172 and the Piper CherokeeNevertheless, cap replacement and/or overhaul every 10 years is not a bad idea as a prophylactic measure. I bought her a little more than halfway through my private-pilot training.