Source: 2024 Q2 Beartracks, Paul Minelga



Jared was nice enough to ask me to write an article about my first flight in the Bearhawk, and since then I have been thinking about what that actually meant for me…first flight in an aircraft that I had built. So, my take will be a bit different than what others have written.
I had a fascination with airplanes as long as I can remember, but my desire to build an airplane started in the early 70s while attending high school in Lacey, Washington. I was 17, worked at an Olympia airport FBO and was on the way to earning my Private Pilot Certificate. A friend took me to Tenino to meet the Sorrell family and I saw a Hyperbipe for the first time. Little did I know that it was the first one made and in my eyes it was really strange, almost scary-looking compared to the Cessna I had been flying. After watching a short demo flight, my friend took me over to meet another man on the same airstrip who was building a Stolp Starduster Too in his garage. All I remember was this guy in the middle of a really, really cool workshop with a tube fuselage under construction and surrounded by lots of aviation-related organized chaos. I was astonished that this guy was actually making an airplane…from plans…by himself! Then and there I decided that I wanted to, somehow, someday, do the same.
Fast forward to the mid 80s. I had left Army Aviation in Germany to start another career in the FAA as a center controller in Alaska. I had since married a wonderful German lady and had a son, and soon had another son. We were pretty poor at the time, and as a single income household on a trainee salary in Alaska, money was tight. I didn’t fly privately, but I dreamt of building a Van’s RV-6 and built R/C airplanes as time and budget permitted.
Jumping in time again to 2003, I was well-entrenched in the FAA. I had built my own home, my oldest son was in college having graduated high school in 2001 and son #2 was a junior. By that time I had realized an RV-6 wasn’t the right aircraft for Alaska and nothing else in the homebuilt world looked like what I was envisioning. A good friend of mine named Rob Taylor showed me a picture of a Bearhawk. I immediately said: “THAT’S IT!…ummm…what is it?” That Christmas 2003, Santa (with a little help from Rob) gifted me Bearhawk plans #708 and that’s when the journey started in earnest. Rob and I went to OSH 2005 and had a blast. That’s when I met Budd Davisson and Mark Goldberg for the first time at the Bearhawk booth. Also, I got my first ride in Mark’s (now Jared’s) N303AP and my first taste of what a Bearhawk was like. Not long after I ordered a set of “quickbuild” wings, all the tubing and flat stock to make the fuselage, and started building a shop to put it all in.

This is my first kitlog entry. Notice the OCD force was very strong:
Date: 3-14-2008
Number of Hours: 1.00
Brief Description: First Longeron
I started by laying out the bottom of the fuselage on the jig table. All went well except I found that Station C “pinched in” about 1/8th inch on either side when a line was drawn between Station B and D. Apparently, this should be a straight line. I triple-checked my measurements and found them to be correct. I polled the BH group about this and the answer I got was that it should be a straight line. It makes sense that way anyway. I’m trying to be too exact in my measurements it seems. I guess officially, this is the first day of construction although I never got the longeron bent the whole way. I’m sure when it’s all said and done that I’ll look back on this first log entry and just laugh!

This is my last kitlog entry after 16 years and 4269.2 hours, interspersed with weddings, memorial services, births, career changes, camping trips, and just living life:
Date: 4-26-2024
Number of Hours: 40.00
Brief Description: The end of my Kitlog
Well, this is it. The fairings and panels are all on and the project is complete. I put 40 hours of work on this entry because it spans the many days of the last two weeks that wasn’t logged, getting everything done in preparation for the DAR visit and reassembling everything afterwards. I taxied the airplane today and it’s ready for its first flight. That will happen when I get some refresher training. If you are reading this and building a project…keep at it. It’s not an easy thing to do. But if you do a little every day, it will eventually come together. Good luck!

I have to admit the first flight was a bit stressful. The tach had failed on runup, but it’s not required equipment. I had flown enough to judge RPM, but it did make me think twice and I almost taxied back. I lined up on the runway, but before I put the throttle in I paused a bit as per Ken Frahm’s (AKKen) suggestion. I went over everything in my mind again: I’m in an airplane that has never been in the air and I’ll be flying it at the waaaay upper end of its design speed envelope because the engine is brand new and needs to be run at 75% power or more to be broken in. Will the airplane fall apart? Probably not. I did the best I could and I know everything is right. Am I ready to land it if it make it that far? Yes. I can get it on the ground safely, it may not be elegant, but I’ll survive. A short prayer as the throttle went forward and the rest is, as we say, history. So it really wasn’t a first flight, but the culmination of a life ambition with the help and support of many good friends and family.
The Bearhawk performed very well and others before me have captured that in their first flight reports, so no need to rehash that. But here is a parting thought as I wrap this up. There are many nights I struggled in the shop making parts, remaking parts, correcting mistakes, making new mistakes, correcting those…on and on and on. There were times I just wanted to pack the whole thing up, drive it to a cliff overlooking Cook Inlet and dump it all in. Don’t give up. If you need to, take a short break, but don’t give up. Most times a good night’s sleep did the trick on helping solve a construction impasse.
If you want some inspiration, get this book and read it. It was gifted to me by my oldest son and it is a good read: The Propeller under the Bed: A Personal History of Homebuilt Aircraft by Eileen A. Bjorkman. On July 25, 2010, Arnold Ebneter flew across the country in a plane he designed and built himself, setting an aviation world record for aircraft of its class. He was eighty-two at the time and the flight represented the culmination of a dream he’d cultivated since his childhood in the 1930s.