Source: 2018 Q1 Beartracks, Rollie Vandorn

I have wanted to build an airplane since I started flying in the late 1980’s. Over the past 25 years I have rebuilt motorcycles and a couple Jeeps and have always worked on my own cars so I consider myself mechanically inclined enough to take on just about any project as long as I have access to books and internet to help me along. That’s not to say that there weren’t moments during this past four years of building that I questioned my decision to build a plane. There were several times that I said to myself “what made you think you could build an airplane?” That’s usually a good point to call it a day and go do something else for a few hours.
What led me to the Patrol was years of reading Kitplanes magazine, and especially the issue that lists all the kits currently on the market. I would compare things like speed, useful load, build time and cost. For years I thought I wanted a 4-Place and I had been following the 4-Place Bearhawk for a few years. Finally in 2011 I was in a position to be able to buy a kit and I came very close to ordering the 4-Place kit. But I chickened out in favor of flying right now and bought a Piper Pacer. I quickly started adding every STC I could get for short field performance and as I got hooked on landing off airport in unimproved fields I realized that a tandem seat plane makes it much easier to see exactly what you are getting into in tight places, plus I realized that as much as I wanted to be taking trips with my wife and two dogs all the time, most of the time it was just me and my dog, Rex. Now I had a better defined mission: two seats, tandem, strong for off-airport ops, powerful for short field performance, good useful load for those times that we do all load up and go, and decent cruise speed. As we all know there is one plane on the market that meets all those requirements better than most.
In the fall of 2013 I flew my Pacer down to Bob Barrows’ place and checked out his Patrol. He took me for a ride and by the time we leveled off at about 1000 feet I was sold. It climbed like crazy and leveled off at a little over 140mph. Then we flew around a bit and I found the visibility great even from the back seat, the handling was great, it was everything I was looking for and exceeded the specs advertised on the BH website. I went home, few days and called Mark and ordered my kit.
The kit showed up right around Christmas 2013. For a little while I wasn’t sure where to start. I was scared to start drilling holes in things at first and spent a lot of time just holding parts up against the fuselage and figuring out what went where. Finally I started putting things together and some progress could be seen.
My biggest challenges were mostly the things that I modified. One thing I deviated from the plans on is the belly. I had helped with the annual on a ACA Scout a year or two earlier and loved how you could remove the entire belly of the plane. That was something that I figured would pay for itself the first time I needed access to something in the back of the tail or under the floor. I welded tabs on the longerons and fabricated sheet metal panels to attach with nutplates. This also gave me a nice place to mount the transponder and ADS-B antennae. I used .025 2025. I don’t think it added much weight since I was going to use heavy fabric on the belly anyway and you don’t need as much paint/primer on metal. It has already been a very handy mod as its easy to drop a single panel to access something and much quicker than removing a floor panel and easier that trying to reach into the tail from the baggage area.
For avionics I went to Oshkosh to compare all the latest stuff a couple years ago. I selected a shop that a friend had used for his RV-8 panel and went with all Garmin. The panel in the Patrol isn’t very big so I could have one 10 inch screen or two 7 inch screens. I was setting it up for IFR so I needed 2 screens, and they had to be the small ones. They are useable but it would be great to have the bigger screens. So with the two 7” G3X’s and the GTN625 WAAS GPS and the associated switches and breakers, mixture and prop controls, the panel was full. Everything else had to be remote mounted and figuring out where to put it all caused me hours of setting things in different positions. I think I made three different radio racks before I had one that I liked. In the end, the radio rack is mounted to the floor between my feet, just forward of the fuel selector. I wanted to mount everything under the dash but couldn’t figure out how to get it up in there solidly and securely and have enough access to it in the future. I have since seen some pretty slick installations and wonder if I could have done better. It would be nice to have the floor open between my feet, but honestly I was planning to put something there for storage anyway. On the end of the radio rack facing aft, toward the pilot, I put a sheet metal cover to hide everything and built in a map case and mounted a cup holder on it.
For wheels and brakes I went with Matco. They are very helpful if you call them up, especially since, at least for me, their website can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for. They said their RV-10 wheels/brakes were the best fit for the Patrol and they seem to be good, although I guess they need broken in or seated as they can’t hold the airplane yet above about 1800 rpm. Or maybe I just need to bleed them once more. I went with the Matco parking brake too and with the Grove master cylinders that Bearhawk Aircraft sells. For now I’m running Desser 8.50-600’s. They seem pretty good and are much cheaper than Bushwheels. I kept my 31” Bushwheels off my Pacer when I sold it and will run them when I get to the serious off airport stuff, but really the 8.50s will go just about anywhere.
Engine choice is a big one for all of us and I was torn between getting a new one from Titan, or rebuilding one. My mechanic suggested that I get a timed out engine from Wentworth and rebuild it under his supervision. That could count toward my A&P certificate that I am slowly working toward. That sounded reasonable so I called Wentworth and they sent me a timed out engine. What they had for IO-360’s were all out of Piper Arrows. Turns out that is not the best choice for the Patrol. Due to the retractable gear on the Arrow the IO-360B1E has the fuel injection servo mounted to the aft of the oil pan so that required me to fab an air intake system that brings the air in and turns it 180 degrees to enter from the rear and there isn’t much room between the fuel servo and the firewall. Altogether, I would guess that I have easily over 100 hours in the intake system between building, rebuilding, redesigning and rebuilding again. In the end I have a ram air intake going to a box I made with a K&N fliter then on to the engine. I made it all out of fiberglass and aft of the filter I have and alternate air I made by cutting a little under ½ the radius of the tube for about 2 inches and having another tube over that which slides on the tube to open or close the alternate air intake. I haven’t tested it in flight yet, but expect to see a slight manifold pressure drop when I switch to alt air due to the loss of ram air plus the fact that it will be sucking warm air from the inside of the cowl. I built the engine with new Lycoming cylinders from Lycon and had them port and polish them, plus I went with their NFS 10:1 pistons. It has the roller cam and I had all the internal components overhauled at Aircraft Specialties and had them balance everything that they could. With that and dual P-mags and the Trailblazer prop, it is a smooth running and strong engine. Should be around 205-210 HP.
I covered the plane with the used Stewarts System for everything. Their glue is easy to work with and the lack of solvents makes it even easier. Their primer, Ecofil, is easy to work with too. When it comes to the paint though, if you use a gun other than the DeVilblis Finish Line they recommend, you are going to have problems. I bought the right gun halfway through my paint job and oh what a difference. So my paint job isn’t show quality but I wasn’t going for that anyway. For me if its too nice, I’ll never want to take a chance at scratching it and I built it to be a bush plane. Of course I’m not going to try to hurt my plane in any way, but landing off airport, sometimes things happen and if I get a hole punched in fabric with a mediocre paint job it will hurt that much less than if it was gorgeous to start with.
It came in at 1269 pounds, a bit heavy, but I did build the engine to compensate for that. The empty cg is about 1.5 inch from forward limit and I haven’t found a way on paper to reach the aft limit. I set 2100lb for my max weight.
The first flight was a pure adrenaline rush. It was only a twenty minute flight and I had a few issues to address afterward. The two big ones were the tail rigging and the fact that I had swapped the two tubes on the GAP 26 pitot, AOA and pitot were reversed so I had no airspeed indication in flight. As for the tail, I don’t know how I had rigged it so badly. I’d used a level but I hadn’t eyeballed it from the front of the plane. My mechanic saw it right away. The Right stab leading edge was significantly higher that the left stab. I adjusted the struts under the stabs to even them out and adjusted the wires a little and it flew so much better. I was having to keep pressure to the right on the stick and now I don’t. It takes a bit of left rudder in cruise to keep it in trim. I think there may be a little more camber in the vertical fin than necessary, but on my last flight I found that if I slow down about 10 knots, its pretty neutral on the rudder.
I only have about 5 hours on my plane so far. My observations so far are that it’s a great design. Mine doesn’t fly as good as Mark’s yet, but I’ll have that sorted out soon, and with the high compression and electronic ignition, she isn’t very thirsty. I’ve been running it hard for break in and I’m pretty happy with my fuel consumption so far.
The big thing I learned building is not to hesitate to ask for help. I spent way to much time trying to figure some things out on my own (I didn’t discover the forum until over a year into my build) The forum is a great resource. I try not to bother Mark too much because I know he is a busy man, but he is also a super nice guy and is one of the most knowledgeable people out there about the Bearhawks. If he can’t answer a question, he can certainly point you in the right direction. I enjoyed building and I know I will enjoy flying my Patrol even more. I can’t wait to meet more of the people I’ve been communicating with on the forum for the past few years.