I had 5 kits at one time , sold them . I have had a fascination of them ever since 1972 when I saw one of the factory demo pilots flying one in California. Went so far as to build one sitting on the gear. The people that attempt to build and fly these aircraft usually end up dead . There has never been a proven reliable piston powered engine for these , the Honda Civic was the best to date . Most of the people have claims that their Suzuki engine or the Rotax all the way to go none of them have as much time as Keith Henshaw and the Honda engine . The jet Version is the only way to go probably? The only problem with a BD-5 is you are the first one to the Scene of the accident ! Best thing I did was getting rid of them !Take two aspirin and lie down until your affliction goes away.But seriously, I have played with mine for years and the only way I would get involved in a BD-5 again is if I planned to use a jet engine. Bede-Micro in Oregon https://www.bd-micro.com will install a jet for you but it will cost a bundle. I have looked for documentation about installing the jet on the web and come up empty.
There are kits coming up all the time, still, very few get completed. There are good reasons for that.
Install a Honda Civic engine and you're grossly overweight. The biggest problem with the BD-5 is that it's a rather mild little airplane whose looks tempt people to try to make rather unwise changes, like this one.There has never been a proven reliable piston powered engine for these , the Honda Civic was the best to date .
Yeah I had that same opinion. But once I found all the MV groups that were WAY more active than any forum I got in touch with resources that would never join a forum because, well, its nowhere near as easy as FB.I've got a BD-5 project, but I don't do facebook
I don’t care if you use FB or not, just like I don’t care if you order a Raptor kit or not, but the fact that I choose not to use FB does not make me a hermit.Seriously, the hermit gig is not impressing anyone.
Do not agree. Yeah, there are some interesting things on the aviation FB sites but (1) FB is filled with newbies that don't know squat, (2) Replies often consist of a lot of one-liners with minimal information such as "contact Jim Jones", (3) nothing is archived and it disappears to the bottom of the feed never to be seen again, (4) replies-to-replies get buried several clicks deep. Who has the patience to follow every one? (5) no one on FB ever sends a link to an old FB post with good information as is often done here on HBABut the cold hard truth is that most of the REALLY, REALLY good stuff is on FB
I've seen the HBA website without ad blockers and ghost script running. THIS SITE IS 100000 TIMES WORSE THAN FB.Sites like HBA allow searching, archiving and encourage lengthy replies. FB is just good for casual chit-chat but it takes attention away from the really useful sites like HBA.