Source: 2013 Q4 Beartracks, Jared Yates
I’m happy to report that I successfully flew our 4-place Bearhawk, N805TB, for the first time on December 11th, 2013. The flight went very well, with about 30 minutes of circling high over the airport. N805TB started as a quick-build kit from Avipro (now known as Bearhawk Aircraft). We purchased our kit from another builder in 2009 and have somewhere around 1800 hours of build time since then. The engine is a normal-compression Lycoming O-360 that Bob built for us. He estimates that it produces 190HP. The Hartzell prop came off of a 2005 Husky, and has 7666A blades. These blades are a little bit shorter than the usual 80” prop, but the harmonics are such that a dampener is not required, which saves some weight and cost. The instrument panel includes a Dynon D180, D100, and HS34, which connects the Dynons to the Garmin 430 GPS. There’s also a Garmin GTX327 transponder in there.
With so many electric gadgets, I wanted to have a robust electrical system, so I used the architecture from Bob Nuckolls’s Z13/8. The skylight and windows are .060” polycarbonate, and as the in-flight GoPro image exaggerates a little, cockpit visibility is spectacular. The weight per square foot of the polycarbonate is slightly less than that of .032 aluminum. 805TB’s exterior finish is Polyfiber Aerothane, and it looks great from a distance. Let’s just say that by the time I finished with it, I had learned lots about how to make a nice paint job! We chose the scheme for its high contrast and high visibility, so that it will be easier for other planes to see us in the air. The empty weight came to 1328. That doesn’t include a few parts that I’d like to add later, such as a floorboard covering, rudder cable guards, and wheel pants. Our home airport is a small grass strip with no good landing options in the event of an engine failure after takeoff. As such, we relocated the airplane a few miles north to the main municipal airport for the first few flights. The Hickory airport was very well suited for final assembly and flight testing, with a pair of nice long runways, a fuel pump, a fire station, and a tower. I thought that the most pressing threats for the first flight would be engine-related, such as high CHTs, or worse, a loss of engine power. Fortunately everything worked out well, with the CHTs very seldom above 400 degrees F. Since the engine is a new overhaul without any test stand time, I planned a first flight of circling the airport, as to facilitate a quick landing if necessary. I climbed to 3000 feet first, and did a few shallow turns to validate the most basic handling characteristics. Then I climbed to 5000 feet and made a few simulated traffic patterns and go-arounds. The elevator trim is very sensitive, such that having it in the wrong place for takeoff makes for a shock. Even with the newer small trim tabs, I’m still only seeing about 1/4 turn of travel throughout the flight envelope (as tested thus far). On subsequent flights I have had the speed up to 130 knots, and without any fairings I’m seeing a level cruise speed of around 100 knots.
On the fourth flight I returned the airplane back to our home airport (left) and was glad to be finished with the relatively expensive second hangar in town. In all the final assembly process took about three weeks longer than it should have, due to delays with getting the polite but understaffed guys from the FSDO to come do the airworthiness inspection. If I had known that it would taken them that long, then obviously a DAR would have been a cheaper option. I’m looking forward to a productive Phase 1 full of data collection and plenty of family adventures in the coming years. My building log (complete with tales of many trial and error learning sessions) is available at http://bearhawkblue.com.