kluge

@ India Four Two - thats the one. Some very interesting exhibits in there and outside.

You must have been a ballet dancer then. I played rugby

bcgallacher

I was involved to a small degree with a BA captain - an experienced home builder - who bought the bd5 kit. Unfortunately Jim Bede was unable to obtain a suitable engine - the first engine was a 60bhp Hirth snowmobile engine which was unreliable and had a very short life. It was cancelled and an American outgoard motor company agreed to produce an engine but after a while this was also cancelled.The Japanese Xenoah company then produced a beautiful 3 cylinder 2 stroke engine but the Japanese airworthiness authority decided it had to have a type certificate which then made it too expensive after which I think Bede just ran out of money.The kits themselves were very well produced,the fuselage pressings were impressive. It was certainly not an aircraft for the amateur to fly,high wing loading with what appeared to me to be a supercritical wing section must have made the stall characteristics a bit vicious.I saw the 5J fly at Farnborough and it certainly had a long t/o run but once airborne I think due to the small size looked spectacularly fast. I last saw the BA captains aircraft hanging in the roof of his garage -he was attempting to convert it to a front engine.

Agaricus bisporus

istr hearing the same engine troubles with the piston version and that the original honda civic engine was just too heavy. Weren't there also problems with reduction gearng - not a well developed science in aircraft like it is now - and especially the long driveshaft as the engine and prop were two feet or more apart - sounds like an engineering nightmare in any production machine, let alone a homebuilt.
Yet another triumph of hope/hype over reality in the homebuilt world I fear, and once again a lot of people lost their shirts. Those cost "promises" published by Bede look especially questionable in terms of achieveability and, frankly, smell to me of snake-oil. My recollection at the time (even as a schoolboy) was that he was promising the earth (for the kits) on the basis of something that wasn't in yet production and no one had actually tried yet. There didn't seem to be much substance to back up reams of extravagant promises.
But I wonder how it would fare with a modern Rotax or similar?

stepwilk

As an editor of Flying Magazine at the time the BD-5 was being promoted, I was fairly familiar with the program. In fact, I remember traveling to Bede's Newton, Kansas factory and meeting a young Bede engineer named Rutan--Burt Rutan. He took me flying in his own homebuilt, the VariViggen. I was half-terrified, it being the first homemade airplane I'd ever been in. (Little did I know that years later, I'd go on to myself build a Falco.)

One of Jim Bede's main flaws was that he was using deposits and payments for kit parts to fund the development of those kits. Though I have to say, Jim was a delightful man--impossible to dislike (unless you'd sent him $5,000 and never saw a thing for it).

Lightning Mate

It was not a supercritical section to the best of my knowledge - far too small a wing.

In any case, supercrits do not have vicious stall characteristics.

Molemot

Then there was Molt Taylor's Mini-Imp...




Home

I remember there being one at Biggin in the 1980's; think Neil Williams test flew it, but the builder was too heavy to get it airbourne!

Found it!! Built by Bill Wilks...

GINFO Registration History | Aircraft Register | Safety Regulation

G-BLWW Taylor Mini-Imp C


Photo from North West Air news...

treadigraph

Neil Williams couldn't have test flown the Mini-Imp as he was no longer with us by then - Bill Wilks also built a P-51 replica G-BEFU, which I recall seeing in the Tiger Club hangar at Redhill in the late 1970s - maybe Williams test flew that?

India Four Two

By a lovely serendipitous thread convergence, the BD-5 at the Western Museum of Flight has this hanging over it:



The gear is not retractable and the empennage is inverted compared to the retractable model. I think I remember that the display placard said it was the prototype.

l.garey

In 1971 I did an FAA IR with an American friend who was a F-111 pilot at Upper Heyford. He acquired a BD-5 kit, and I suggested he register it G-BALL, as his name was Gary Ball. He did this. According to the UK register it now belongs to John Turner in Ascot, UK.
Has anyone details of that aircraft (C/N 206)?

Laurence

Huntair2

Here is a pic of mine.