Not quite. What you’ve said is certainly correct as far as it goes, but there’s a bit more to the story.
The BD-5J engine is fairly high-mounted. Like #2 on a DC-10/MD-11 high. Well above the vertical position of the aircraft CG. Such that the engine thrust provides some nose down trim force. Add power and the airplane tends to nose down. Reduce power and the airplane tends to nose up. That can be partially offset by canting the engine the other way, but I don’t know whether that was done on the BD-5J.
I’ve never heard of what @Magiver is specifically talking about. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong; just that I don’t recall reading it in any of the articles on the airplane. Although it’s been a long time and my memory for details is increasingly flaky.
Here is an interesting paper on the very early flight tests of the early configuration prop-driven BD-5s. And a bit of discussion on the early jet version too. Lots of good test pilot info.
Significantly, there’s no indication the version they finally got flying had any weirdness about pitch control versus stall versus thrust / prop power.
I found an article written by David Noland found in History Net who bought a kit. He chronicles the history of that experience (sold and never finished). He also got to test fly one of them from Bede that had the Hirth snowmobile engine.
It was an eye opener to read both articles. There is something like a 15% fatality rate involved with the plane. It’s possibly a result of people using all manner of heavier engines. Even with the original lightweight Hirth snowmobile engine it was decided by Burt Rutan to add lead weights to the nose of the plane for stability.
I am reminded of the Tintin adventure series comic “Flight 714” where a mid-size commercial aircraft is effectively stopped by an arresting net on a short runway. As Professor Calculus would say, “preposterous”…
Nitpick: the fictional plane (Carreidas 160) is a large business jet. Like maybe a Lockheed Jetstar. Which has an empty weight of 24,750 lb vs that of an F-14 being 43,735 lb.
The plane also has an arresting parachute, and the improvised landing strip they use in the book looks to be somewhat longer than any carrier.
According to the Tintin.fandom page it was designed by Herge assistant Roger Leloup, who also drew the Yoko Tsuno series. Another assistant Bob De Moor, was artist on the Blake and Mortimer series. Both series were chock full of meticulously drawn imaginary aircraft. They had both studied real aircraft quite well to inspire their art, which was somewhat lifeless in their own strips compared to what they helped create in the later Tintin books.
CG is a Very Big Issue. In an airplane that small, the acceptable CG range might be 3 inches, and you really want to be in the middle 1 of those 3. And of course the weight of the pilot is an appreciable fraction of the aircraft gross weight. Which also means the distribution of that pilot’s weight has a big influence on CG. I might be able to safely fly a BD-5 that you’d be out of CG range for. Or vice versa. Just because one of us is a different shape than the other, even if we both weigh e.g. 180#.
Something clear from both articles is that Bede’s engineering was much more in the manner of tinker until it works, rather than the modern CFD and CAD it to perfection, then start cutting aluminum. They built a prototype whose pitch control was so fundamentally broken it’s a miracle the pilot survived, much less that the airplane was reusable. That totally bespeaks backyard engineering, not even slide rule and spreadsheet engineering. Of course this was a shoestring budget in the early 1970s when even the Big Boys relied on slide rules and eyeballs.
Engineering aside:
There were lots of airplanes, both homebuilt and from major manufacturers, that were failures because they needed an engine that was smaller, lighter, more powerful, more efficient, more reliable, and easier to cool than the current state of the art provided. Or may still not provide. Most of USAFs designs in the F-7x, -8x, and -9x series fall into that hole. The famous “Century series” started finally climbing out.
Once Bede was out of the picture and now you had hundreds of folks, many with zero aero engineering skill or experience, homebrewing different marginal engines into their otherwise BD-5Gs (“G” for glider), of course many / most of those who ever got airborne were going to crunch soon enough.
An interesting question is with all the reliable small prop and jet engines available now, and with modern CFD + CAD systems, could someone design & build (or kit) a homebuilt for the same mission? Not re-engineer the BD-5 as such. Just build a different very small, fast, aerobatic slip-on airplane from scratch? I’m sure the answer is “Yes”. I’m also sure the answer is “$uper Expen$ive”.
Same. I found the article via Google search and didn’t ever check out the rest of the site.
But yeah, that’s @Al128 for the point-out. That is quite a blast from the past. Hobbyist websites still exist in all their now-hokey earnest ad-free glory.
To return the favor:
Here is one of my faves that’s inherently very sad, a living history of the dying thing I’d name “Post-WWII US General Aviation”. WARNING: Do not click this link if you have plans for the rest of the day. You will get rabbit-holed. Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields.
This one isn’t sad at all, but instead is totally awesome. It’s well worth the subscription price to be able to download some of his trove. Avialogs: Aviation Library - Avialogs: Welcome to the aviation library, online since 2010.. Some of the pdfs of scans of ancient paper are kinda eyestrain inducing. And yes, the redundancy in the home page titling is in the original. Cute. OTOH, the webmaster (remember those?) is Quebecois, so he gets a break for being ESL.
The USN has what they call “the barrier” which is a very stout riggable gizmo like a tennis net strung across the deck if they need to recover an aircraft whose hook is inop or whose control is too flaky to reliably engage a wire. Or the ship’s arresting gear has had a failure.
Since the advent of the jet age USAF has had a series of systems for use at fighter bases that consist of one raised wire near each end of the runway, maybe 800 or 1000 feet in. Confusingly, USAF called these wire systems “barriers”. Worked good for the landing gear, brake, and nose steering failures that plagued the early jets with new-fangled hydraulic systems and zero systems redundancy. You know, the jets that also had unreliable engines and unreliable underpowered ejection seats that required you to be well away from the ground to have much hope of survival.
The early barrier versions were permanently in place and you normally landed past the approach end wire so you didn’t run over it and cause it to bounce up and whack the underside of your jet. Later versions were installed in a shallow groove across the runway so they normally were at/below the runway surface. You could land prior to the barrier then run over the groove without issue. If you needed the barrier, a quick radio call to the tower would get them to push the button and the cable would raise in just a few seconds.
If you knew you had gear or brake or directional control problems you landed short of the approach end barrier and hoped to catch the wire before your airplane’s trajectory really went apeshit (technical term) with you in it. If you landed normally and then discovered you had no brakes or steering, the game was to try to stay more or less on centerline all the way to the far end of the runway & catch the far end barrier.
USAF also developed a special device called the MA1A system for use at bases with the T-38 advanced jet trainer. Which had no hook. It looked like a miniature flimsy version of the USN carrier barrier. About 2-3 feet high and permanently strung across the overrun a couple hundred feet past the end of the runway. If you had brake failure and ran off the end of the runway under control, it’d grab the main landing gear & drag you to a stop.
All these USAF systems were a bunch gentler than USN carrier arresting gear. They had a lot more room to let you run out. And USAF hooks were/are vastly lighter and flimsier than USN gear. And bolt into lighter flimsier structure as well.
Lotta good info on the underlying tech, but more shipboard than land-based at Arresting gear - Wikipedia.
Funny coincidence, while at Brother’s house for Thanksgiving we watched the old (1980) movie The Final Countdown which had the use of a carrier barrier net early in the movie. Did it’s job, too.
I think this got missed when it was announced, & from the title, I was thinking it was a feature they could turn on or off electronically. Not that advanced, though
Canadian airline WestJet to restrict seat recline in economy class. One will need to pay for Premium Economy to get the button that’ll take you back those whole 3”.
Another reason to pay through the nose for an upgrade then…
Last time I flew, almost 2 years ago, I would have sworn the upgrade from regular Economy to Premium E. was on the order of $100-200 bucks. My latest check shows that it now closer to $350. [c. $375 vs. $725] Hell at that point I might as well spring for Business or even First Class for a mere additional $100-200 as PE seems like the worst of all worlds. Will they nickel and dime you with extra “perks” for those last two classes or is all of that included in the price?
This is for an approximate 2 hour trip with one brief layover, note.
