2026 Airventure Coverage – Summary


2026 was a great year at Airventure for Bearhawks. By my count there were at least 17 examples present. If the plane title below has a link, click there to see more detailed photos of that plane. Some have seen lots of previous coverage so I didn’t get detailed walkaround photos of those. At times the sky was full of wildfire smoke and that made for some interesting photography lighting.

Bearhawk Patrol – N37BP – Red and White – Carlo Cilliers – “Plans Champion!”:

Bearhawk Five – N847EM – Orange, Black, White, Gray – Elliot and Melanie Abel – “Kit Champion!”:

Bearhawk Five – N812MN – Yellow and Black, in the Kit Booth:

Bearhawk Five – N902EC – Maroon, Black, and Red, with a mountain scheme – Chris Cummings:

Bearhawk Five – N605PS – Metalic Blue and Silver – Dennis Ramsey:

Bearhawk Five – N513EP – Erin and Paul, in the Garmin Booth:

Bearhawk 4-Place – N789WM – White and Silver – Stephen Ingram:

Bearhawk 4-Place – N303AP – Red and White – Jared Yates:

Bearhawk 4-Place – C-GSOI – Blue and White, Maple Leaf – George Huntington:

Bearhawk Companion – N236WZ – Purple, Orange, Green, and Silver – Stol It:

Bearhawk Patrol – N96NH – Green, Cream, and Gold, Hydraulic Float Attachment Provisions – John Meade:

Bearhawk Patrol – N186BP – Red and Silver – Bearhawk Aircraft:

Bearhawk Patrol – N240BP – Black, Yellow, and White – Dennis Reynolds:

Bearhawk Patrol – N241BP – Yellow and White – Donna Svoboda:

Bearhawk Patrol – N62588 – White and Gray – Brooks Cone:

Bearhawk Patrol – N584P – Maroon with Mountains – Jeff and Lynne Stoltenberg:

Bearhawk Patrol – N169PL – Amphibious Floats – James Crane:

Brooks Cone organized a Bearhawk Walk on the Tuesday of the show. Here is more detail about the walk.

Later that evening, Bearhawk Aircraft hosted a catered BBQ dinner and shared some updates about happenings at the kit factory and build assit.


Bearhawk LSA builder Wayne Powell noticed that an AN bolt manufacturer had a tent set up displaying a nice alternative to cadmium plating, using zinc and nickel. They had lots of good things to say about this plating’s durability and corrosion protection, and it is also much more environmentally friendly than cadmium.

I had a nice visit with Donna and Dennis to hear about their corresponding Bearhawk Patrols. Donna especially was motivated to reach 1000 hours before arriving at Airventure, so that she could display the propeller card that says “This homebuilt has flown over 1000 hours”. While she was crossing the mountains on the way to the show, she saw the hour meter getting close, and even got a video of the crossover from 999.9 to 1000.0. Dennis reached the same milestone a few hours later. They are no doubt some of the most experienced Patrol pilots in the world. Last year they were talking about having trouble finding an overhauler for their Whirlwind props. That has been sorted out, and Donna was able to find replacement spinner for her plane, despite the Whirlwind supply chain becoming quite constrained. They both installed plenums under the cowlings to promote cooling efficiency. In Donna’s plane, this led to an unexpected side-effect. With the pressure being reduced on the cowl itself, she found that the piano hinge at the upper cowl door was no longer being held in place. It started creeping forward, towards her newly-overhauled beautiful composite prop. She could see this creeping happening, and also could see the cowl beginning to separate where the pin was no longer in place. She decided to make a precautionary landing to sort it out, and everything turned out ok. Be sure to think about securing this hinge pin, especially if you run a plenum.

There were not any Bearhawk LSAs at the show that I could find.

Here were a few more photos:

These wheels and brakes are being designed by Acme Aero:

The Erin and Paul Bearhawk Five has some special cabinetry that includes a little kitchen. Sorry for not having better photos, but I’m sure they have a video about it.

Airventure 2026 Coverage – BH Patrol N584P Walkaround Photos

This scratch-built Patrol belongs to Jeff and Lynne Stoltenberg, both qualified pilots. It includes a Lycoming 360 and a Hartzell prop.

Jeff installed VGs at 4.5% of chord, or 64.25″ forward of the trailing edge. Like nearly everyone, he says he gets a big improvement in the low speed performance with very little top-end penalty.

Bearhawks with as-designed flap systems require some locks to keep the flaps up when parking outdoors. Here is Jeff’s solution:

Check out this cool back-seat GPS mount. Well, it’s mounted to the front seat, but it’s in the perfect spot for the back seater to have some increased situational awareness.

This airplane as an aluminum skin belly.

2026 Airventure Coverage – BH Patrol N37BP Walkaround Photos

Carlo Cilliers has been scratch building his Patrol in Maryland. I thought his plane was especially fascinating and so did the judges, who awarded him a Plans-built Champion Lindy.

This plane has so many noteworthy details. In most cases, if you see a red anodized aluminum part, Carlo machined it from scratch. This plane has integral fuel tanks which give a slight increase in capacity, but at a much higher build complexity.

The empty weight is 1235, which includes an autopilot. For now he is still running the engine intentionally rich while he sorts out break-in and cooling, but he sees 11 gallons per hour at 115 knots true.

Several of the interior parts like cable guards are custom 3d printed out of ABS plastic. The floorboards are custom carbon layups, with extra thickness in the areas between the flooring tubes where standard floorboards tend to flex.

All of the door hinges and latches are custom fabricated.

These oval panels on top of the wing provide service access to the integral fuel tanks.

The stainless steel tunnel panel is formed and shaped with an English Wheel, quite masterfully.

Note the bear paw detail on the engine baffle. On this side, the bear paws are open to allow more airflow.

On the opposite side of the cowl (airplane left) the paws are merely decorative, because that cylinder didn’t need as much airflow.

The landing lights are retractable, electrically operated.

More carbon fiber floorboard detail:

3-D Printed Rudder Cable Guards (ABS)

On the baggage door side, the rudder cable guard is bent aluminum sheet. Note the custom red hinge parts.

The baggage door is a composite layup, thickened with foam in the center for extra rigidity.

Carlo eliminated the usual handles at the bottom of the fuselage, opting instead for a retractable handle at a more ergonomic height.

Overhead Flap Lever Detail

This is a photo of a photo, of the way the brake line fitting exits the bottom of the main landing gear leg. Carlo brought along a very nice bound book of photos and descriptions of the build process, something apparently valued highly by the judges and also by me. In this photo, he has not yet welded up the bracket.

This is a camera at the wing root, which displays a feed on the Dynon.

More bear paw details on the exhaust:

Electric cowl flap detail:

Spring 2026 News and Updates

Source: 2026 Q3 Beartracks

Sentimental Journey Fly-In
Mike Meador, Bob’s friend and successor in the R&B engine building business, travelled to the Sentimental Journey fly-in in early June. This event is at the “birthplace of the Piper Cub”, William T. Piper Memorial Airport (KLHV) in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Virginia-based pilot and instructor Mike Brown flew Bob’s Patrol to the event, and repeat-builder Tim Weaver was on hand with his blue and white Bearhawk LSA. The event included some spectacular drone shows and activities, and Tim’s airplane made it into the local news coverage.

First Flights
Congratulations to Walter Bolan on the first flight of his Bearhawk 4-Place, N789CB, in Oregon. His empty weight came to 1487 with a 540 and Oratex covering.

Carlo Cilliers completed his scratch-built Bearhawk Patrol N37BP in Maryland. Todd Stock reported on the forum:
Build ran September 2023 (plans in hand) to 31 May 2026. Mods included:
– Wet wing
– Overhead flap actuation (elimination of cables, etc.)
– Electric servo-in-horizontal-stab elevator trim
– Ventral fin added to counter yaw hunting seen on another Patrol
– Two piece clamshell cowl with plenum
– Heavily modified seat design
Test pilot reported well behaved airplane with light roll forces, in-the-groove yaw performance, and solid pitch authority through stall series. Comfortably moderate flap deployment and retraction forces and both clean and flap stalls were drama-free with no tendency to depart or other adverse behavior. CHT were higher than desired, but that reflects the baffle system and cowl sealing still being refined. And that was about it. Strut fairings and a bunch of other minor stuff (including final cowl paint and some work elsewhere to level/buff) to go, but it looks like Carlo can make Oshkosh this year.


That’s Carlo in the middle, half way in the door.

You might have noticed that red is a popular color for 2026 completions, both in this issue and the last! Please send us your updates for the next Beartracks, even if your plane is not red!

Speaking of not red:
Scott Sarkinen flew his Patrol N431NS in Amboy, Washington.
Scott says: “First flight on Saturday May 9th 2026 with my Bearhawk Patrol, Lycoming 0360, Hartzell Trailblazer prop, plans build took 6 years and 2 months, little over 4,000 hours, weighed in at 1153 lbs.
Flew great except a slight heavy right wing.”

2026 Airventure Coverage – BH5 N847EM Walkaround Pictures

This Bearhawk Five has lots of interesting points to study. The owners and builders are the Abels, airline pilots from Indiana. The judges agreed with this plane’s excellence with a Kit Champion Lindy.

The propeller is a three-blade constant speed composite from Whirlwind:

Electrically-actuated Cowl Flap, in the closed position:

Here is a view of the actuator, with the cowl flap open:

Clean landing gear leg fairings

These cabin air vents are very interesting. Here they are from the outside in the closed position. They are operated manually from the inside.

Here is the inside view:

2026 Airventure Coverage – Bearhawk Walk

On Tuesday, July 21st, Bearhawk Patrol builder and owner Brooks Cone continued his tradition of facilitating a “Bearhawk Walk” around the grounds. We didn’t see them all this year, but we saw several.

The walk started at the Bearhawk Aircraft kit booth:

Brooks talked for a moment about what we were going to do, then we crossed the road into showplane parking. Unfortunately the airshow was just starting so it was hard to hear over the speakers. We had to skip the award-winning orange and black plane belonging to Elliot and Melanie Abel, because that plane was staged for its performance in the airshow for the “Homebuilt Review”. We arranged a meetup the next day at their plane instead. The next stop was at the Patrol which was built by Mark Goldberg and now belongs to the new Bearhawk Aircraft.

Next we heard from Chris about his Bearhawk Five, N902EC:


Carlo was not available to show us his Patrol at that time, and we also would not have been able to hear him over the airshow announcers, so we marched next to Dennis Ramsey’s spot at Homebuilt Camping.



Dennis has been a great community resource and is a very experienced builder, owner, even before his Bearhawk. He likes to go fast and land on airports, being less concerned with off-airport capability.
More pictures of his plane from Sun-N-Fun
Next we proceeded over to Donna and Dennis to see their matching Patrols. They each have just over 1000 hours as of this Airventure!


From there we went to visit our plane, N303AP. Since Mark Goldberg was on hand for the walk and he was the builder and owner for the first 20 years of the airplane’s life, he spoke about its history and significance to the community.


Our next stop was at Stephen and Heidi Ingram’s Bearhawk 4-Place, making its Airventure debut:



From there we saw another new-to-us plane, a scratch-built Patrol belonging to Jeff and Lynne Stoltenberg from Texas:


Next up was our walking host Brooks Cone:

Then George Huntington:




By the time we made it all the way out to George’s plane, the group had shrunk a little, but we were still large enough of a group to warrant some explanation to the neighbors. This has become a fantastic Airventure tradition, and I’m grateful for Brooks orchestrating it!

2026 Airventure Coverage – BH4 N789WM Walkaround Photos

While this is in the “Airventure Coverage” section, we were able to meet up with Stephen Ingram a few days before Oshkosh, in Clinton Iowa. I was there for the Cessna 150/152 type club fly-in, and Stephen was on his way from Texas to the New Holstein fly-in with his wife and daughter. Most of these photos are from the ramp in CWI.


A little fuel venting is common unfortunately, especially if the plane is very full of well-priced gas and if the plane isn’t sitting perfectly level. Positioning the fuel selector to Left or Right can minimize, but not eliminate the venting.


Stephen’s Skylight detail. Note that Bob prefers an aluminum backing strip to ensure that the loads of the screw heads are more fully-distributed.


The black circle on the left side of the cowl as pictured (aircraft right) is a duct for the oil cooler.


Cowl Exit Lip, or permanent cowl flap


Stephen’s back seat is a boat seat from Amazon, attached to the original Bearhawk rear set frame. He cut the back of the old seat off and mounted the boat seats to the remaining base. You can see they are carrying lots of stuff for a week of camping, just what the Bearhawk is great for.