Good Bye Arrow. Hello BD-4C.

My Piper Arrow is gone and my Bede BD-4C kit has started to arrive. I flew the Arrow from St. Charles County Smartt airport (KSET) to Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport (KMFD) on Saturday, delivering it to Jim Bede Jr. as my last flight.

I could not have asked for a better trip. With cool temperatures and light weight, the Arrow did its homesick angel imitation as well as it could; we were at 6,000 feet before reaching Alton. St. Louis departure soon cleared me up to 7,000′ and we had a smooth, fast trip to Ohio. In flight visibility was 30-40 miles, making things seem closer than they were. As I passed Terre Haute, the airport looked close enough to touch although it was actually about 20 miles to the south. Bodacious tailwinds gave me groundspeeds in the 165-170 knot range the whole way in perfectly smooth air. Until…

Little puffs of clouds began appearing below me, tops around 6,000′, as I passed Dayton. Pretty to look at and making me thankful that I was above their tops in smooth air. The airports below were reporting strong, gusty winds so I knew that it would be a challenging landing. Mansfield approach cleared me down to 5,000′ and I hit moderate turbulence as soon as I was below the tops of the clouds. I lowered my airspeed and continued my descent to 3,000′ hoping for smoother air but it was not to be found.

The METAR reported winds of something like 280 at 23 knots, gusting 32 knots. With the excellent visibility, I had the airport in sight about 15 miles away, Mansfield approach turned me over to the tower, and I was immediately cleared to land. No one else was crazy enough to be flying a light plane that morning! The tower controller cautioned me about wind sheer at the tree line on final approach. By the time I was on the downwind leg at 1,000’AGL, I was in continuous moderate to severe turbulence, using large control inputs, and wondering whether I would be able to land. As I turned final, the tower controller gave me a wind check: 32 gusting 43. Yowza! Normally, I fly final approach at 70-75 knots and slow to 65-70 as I cross the numbers. Saturday, I flew final at 90 knots and did not slow down at all as I crossed the numbers. I hit wind sheer at the tree line that required almost full aileron inputs and saw the airspeed indicator swinging +/- about 15 knots. Fortunately the wind sheer and severe turbulence died off as I got below the tops of the trees. With the gusting crosswind, though, I was almost out of rudder authority and seriously considering going around when I made it to the surface “only” about 30 feet left of the runway centerline. Being very thankful that the runway was 150′ wide, I planted the wheels on the concrete, cut the power, and taxied slowly and carefully onto the nearest taxiway.

The last trip had been perfect, giving me everything from wonderful scenery to awesome performance to a challenging landing.

Jim Bede Jr. fed me lunch (thanks, Jim!) while we waited for Jeff Bede to get to Mansfield with my BD-4C. I got in the truck with Jeff and he drove the whole way home (thanks, Jeff!) with a stop in Cloverdale, IN for dinner (but not a hotel because every room was booked because of an equestrian show) and a stop in Effingham, IL for the night. Sunday saw us pull up to my house by 11:00am and my BD-4C made its first “landing” in St. Charles.

(Click the picture to get to a gallery with lots more photos.)

This first “shipment” of parts was mostly stuff that was too large to go UPS: torque tubes 12′ long, fuselage on the wheels, wings, horizontal stabilator, and vertical stabilizer. Considering that many things had been only assembled well enough for trailering, there was very little damage: three small bolts fell out of the top of the landing gear box and one bolt backed out of the brake assembly, jammed against the wheel, and got bent when we tried to roll the plane off the trailer. Since none of these bolts had been fully tightened into their lock nuts or nut plates, the loss of four bolts was turned into simply a request for replacements in the next shipment.

The last job of the day was to, at least temporarily, hang the engine mount on the front of the fuselage and then hang a propulsion system on that.