Meet Beechcraft Starship
Beechcraft's Starship departed sharply from the conventional King Air outline. The main wing sits aft, a small forward wing provides the canard arrangement, and two pusher propellers turn behind the cabin. Extensive carbon-fibre construction was another defining part of the programme.
Its avionics were equally ambitious for the period. Black Square's simulation centres on the AMS-850 flight deck, including display reversion and supporting systems such as avionics cooling. That combination of unusual airframe and period electronic cockpit gives the Starship considerable depth as a reference subject.
In your simulator
Systems, equipment and documentation for each developer’s aircraft.
Starship
Black Square
A period electronic flight deck with supporting systems
The Starship centres on the AMS-850 avionics suite, including display reversion, cooling and temperature-related instrument behaviour. Black Square also documents the pressurisation and environmental model and optional navigation integrations. These supporting systems explain more about the simulation than the unusual canard and pusher-propeller silhouette alone.
Black Square / Just Flight · Starship operations manual ↗Black Square Starship · PDF p.9; introduction and avionics overview
An electronic cockpit from before routine GPS navigation
Black Square's AMS-850 implementation can estimate position from its initial location, VOR/DME reception and VLF/Omega sources. GNSS augmentation is selectable, so the simulation can also represent navigation using the original equipment. The moving map is therefore not simply evidence of a modern GPS installation: the source of its position estimate matters. The manual explains initialization and position updates separately from importing a route.
Black Square / Just Flight · Starship operations manual ↗Black Square Starship User Guide (2025) · PDF p.122 · No GPS navigation and position estimation
The displays are part of the thermal simulation
The simulated avionics occupy cooled equipment spaces, with airflow and blower operation affecting temperature. The manual describes overheating and equipment failures when cooling becomes inadequate, with an avionics-status view on the multifunction display. It also models the behaviour of the period CRT displays: cold displays can take time to brighten, while excessive heat can make the image fade. A blank or dim display can therefore have a simulated system explanation beyond its brightness control.
Black Square / Just Flight · Starship operations manual ↗Black Square Starship User Guide (2025) · PDF pp.108,110 · Avionics cooling and CRT displays
What persists between flights
State saving is selective. The guide identifies radio settings, stored routes and user waypoints, engine health and oxygen pressure among the items retained. Some primary operating switches are instead initialized from the flight's starting position. Fuel restoration also has a condition: it applies when the next flight loads with the default fuel levels. The guide records a payload-restoration limitation and notes that the simulator must shut down normally for its native saving mechanism to retain changes.
The tablet adds system visualizers and failure management. Failures can be scheduled or generated using configurable mean-time-between-failure settings, and existing failures persist between flights. These features make the tablet useful for understanding the simulated systems as well as configuring the aircraft.
Black Square / Just Flight · Starship operations manual ↗Black Square Starship User Guide (2025) · PDF pp.87,128,151 · State saving, tablet and failures
Manuals & resources
Read the original documentation from the people who created it. Manuals open on their publisher’s website.
Manual
Microsoft Flight Simulator aircraft manualsMicrosoft / aircraft developers Starship operations manualBlack Square / Just FlightAircraft background
Beechcraft StarshipWikipedia contributors · Research background · Wikipedia revision 1373917801 · retrieved 2026-09-12Documented interfaces
Source-documented identifiers. Documentation does not prove that every add-on populates a value correctly.
L:var_PilotCws
Pilot CWS button; aircraft-specific behavior.
- Units
- Boolean
- Access
- hardware control input; explicit readback contract unknown
Archived manual revision
Black Square / Just Flight · PDF page 172 ↗Something missing or a source that needs attention?
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