Bede BD-5

Deliveries end, Bede bankruptcy


After more than 5,100 kits had been delivered to prospective builders, the kits stopped shipping as well. Although the company was effectively [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] at this point, work on the BD-5D continued for some time.

The bankruptcy became official in 1979, by which point the BD-5 project was long dead.

During the bankruptcy proceedings it was learned that the money ostensibly being used to build kits was instead being spent on a variety of projects.

As a result, Bede entered a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] with the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] to no longer accept deposits on aircraft for a period of 10 years.

Many owners stored, abandoned, or sold their incomplete kits, but a few hundred diehard builders finished them with a variety of engine solutions designed by third parties and former Bede Aircraft dealers.

Having to hunt for an engine was only one problem.

The time to build the aircraft was much longer than quoted, as much as 3,000 to 3,500 hours.

Some of this was due to the need to fit their selected engine into an airframe designed for the Hirth, which was no longer available.

Additionally, the construction techniques had improved somewhat since early Bede designs, but fastening the panels still required drilling, deburring, dimpling, drilling again and deburring again for each rivet.

With the original mixed-construction design this would not have been as much of a task, but with the all-metal version this was extremely time consuming.

While Bede claimed the aircraft could be put together by anyone in a garage, builders generally agree that doing so without proper construction techniques could result in a potentially dangerous aircraft.

One way to overcome that issue is to use a set of properly laid-out jigs to align and drill the pilot holes for the airframe, wings and other components.

For all of these reasons, it was some time before completed BD-5s started to appear.

Additionally, some of the kits were shipped with missing parts, adding to the confusion.

All of this led to a rash of kits being sold for [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] prices, although this did allow the builders that were looking to complete their kits to do so at bargain prices.

Flying starts

Over the next few years the aircraft garnered a terrible safety record. Although Bede had suggested using the B wings,
the earliest kits shipped only with the short "A" wings.

All four examples completed with these wings crashed on their first flight, three on takeoff and one lasted long enough to crash on landing. In three of the four crashes, the pilots were killed.

Of the first 25 completed, with both the "A" and "B" wings, 14 crashed with 9 fatalities.

Even when examples with the "B" wings were completed, the safety record did not improve greatly.

Several crashes in the -5B models were found to have taken place due to engine failure on takeoff, both due to the mix of "oddball" engines as well as endemic cooling problems.

The reason this is such an issue with the BD-5 is twofold – the high line of thrust means an engine failure immediately results in an unexpected (for most pilots) nose-up attitude change.

Pilots who fail to fly the aircraft first and then attempt to restart the engine inevitably [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], with the associated consequences.

This was aggravated by the fact the original wing had a very sharp stall with little warning and a nasty tendency to "snap roll."

To make matters worse, a documented manufacturing error in some wing skins delivered to kit builders exacerbated the problem. A rather small [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] range also added to the problems of properly trimming the aircraft.

Further developments

With the demise of the Bede Aircraft Company, the BD-5 entered a sort of limbo while builders completed their kits.

The early safety problems and the challenge of adapting a suitable engine exacerbated delays.

Over the next few years, however, solutions to most of these problems arrived in one form or another.

Many other changes have also been incorporated to improve the original design.

Today the BD-5 is a rewarding, if demanding aircraft.

For instance, the problem of finding a suitable engine with 60 to 70 hp yet still weighing under 100 lbs was a serious problem in the 1970s, but today there are a number of "off the shelf" designs in this class.

The widely available [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] is a 65 hp engine of 80 lbs in standard configuration, almost tailor-made for the BD-5.

Other engines successfully used in BD-5s include the Subaru EA-81, Honda EB-1 and EB-2 (with and without
turbocharging), [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], AMW 225-3 and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

A BD-5A fitted with a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]UL 74 hp two-stroke, two-cylinder water-cooled engine. holds the current FAI C-1a/0 class speed record (less than 300 kg aircraft) with 351 km/h (just over 218 mph).

Problems with the abrupt stall were mostly addressed by Harry Riblett, an airfoil designer who documented a procedure to apply a slight reprofile of the wing root airfoil which softened the stall response of the aircraft without any
significant performance degradation.^{[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]}

The reprofile presents other unique problems associated with the way it is applied to the wing upper surface, essentially gluing [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] to the aluminum skin and covering with fiberglass.

Similarly, the small center-of-gravity range has since been addressed with 5.5- to 13-inch stretch kits for the fuselage.

Several companies were formed to help builders complete their kits, and many of the aftermarket modifications were worked into these services.

Today, BD Micro Technologies of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] continues to offer kit building support, including new-build kits
featuring (optionally) all of these modifications, and even the BD-5T, a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] version of the BD-5 using a modified [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] turbine powering a mechanically-controlled variable-pitch propeller. Alturair, Inc. of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] also offers extensive parts and construction assistance services.

Bede Aircraft Company has since re-formed and has been working on several new designs.

Bede has hinted at a two-seat tandem version of the aircraft called the "Super BD-5" using a certified aircraft engine and a number of modifications and improvements, but to date nothing other than a preliminary design drawing has been made available.

BD-5J

While the new Hirth engine was being tested, Bede decided to create an unconventional variant of the BD-5 with a small [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

The result was the sleek BD-5J, a 300 mph (480 km/h) aircraft. The design used the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]-046 turbojet (now Microturbo, a division of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]), which produced 225 lbs of thrust and was used on a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] certified [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]
design.

The original engines were produced under license by Ames Industrial in the USA.

The wing was modified to an "intermediate" size between the original A and B wings, with a 17 ft span.

Bob Bishop had purchased 20 BD-5J kits as soon as they had appeared, and many of the flying examples started life in this batch of twenty.

Versions from the original batch became a popular airshow fixture.

Throughout the 1980s and until 1991, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] flew two of them as the "Silver Bullets."

[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] also had a BD-5J called the "Bud Light Jet", but that contract has long expired and the aircraft was lost as a result of an engine compartment fire from which Bob Bishop successfully bailed out.

The aircraft also appeared in the opening sequence of the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] film, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

Many of these aircraft have since been involved in crashes.

The loss of the Bud Light Jet was caused by an incorrectly specified fuel flow sending unit which burst in mid-flight and caused fuel to be sprayed directly into the engine compartment.

The fuel ignited when it came in contact with the hot components of the turbojet engine, forcing the pilot to trade speed for altitude, climb and bail out.

The aircraft then went into a flat spin and pancaked into the ground, but was sufficiently intact to allow the cause of the fire to be determined relatively quickly.

On June 16, 2006, while practicing for an air show at Carp Airport in [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] fatally crashed in his "Stinger Jet," the last BD-5J that remained on the airshow circuit.

The [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] investigated the accident and issued a report assigning the probable
cause to the incorrect installation of the right wing, which caused the flap on that wing to suddenly retract in flight and create a "split flap" condition.

The aircraft rolled to the right and Manning was unable to recover in time.

Recently, the BD-5J operates in the national security arena.

The aircraft is certified by the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] as a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] surrogate, with Bishop's Aerial Productions offering a version known as the Smart-1 (Small Manned Aerial Radar Target, Model 1).

The radar return and general performance characteristics make it a useful aid in training.

On June 27, 2006, while flying one of these aircraft, pilot Chuck Lischer, a highly experienced professional air show pilot, impacted trees on final approach to the Ocean City Municipal Airport in [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] in a fatal accident.

The BD-5J has also held the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] record for the World's Smallest Jet for more than 25 years.

Bob Bishop originally garnered the record with one of his jets, and in November 2004 the record changed hands to Juan Jiménez,who purchased the aircraft from the original builder whose BD-5J weighed in at 358.8 lb (162.7 kg) empty weight, 80 lb (36 kg) lighter than Bishop's jet and the lightest documented weight for a BD-5.

Variants


BD-5

Prototype and initial kit production aircraft with short span wings.

BD-5A

Short span wing production, with "short" 14ft 3in (4.34 m) wings tuned for high speeds and aerobatics.

BD-5B

Main piston engined production kits with extended span wings of 21ft 6in (6.55 m) wings.

BD-5D

Factory built aircraft.