I started on the flaps for my Bede BD-4C airplane this week. The adventure began on Monday when Jim and Patrick and Rich very kindly came over and helped carry the wings out of the basement and into the garage. Each wing is 10 feet long and weighs about 85 pounds. The weight isn’t so […]

I am finished working on the controls for my Bede BD-4C airplane! (At least for awhile.) The last month has seen a bunch of fiddly little stuff that has been hard to photograph so I have not posted anything. Tonight, I finally wrapped up the controls. The rudder pedals are hooked up to the rudder. […]

I am going “off plan” for the tunnel of my Bede BD-4C airplane. The plans call for using sheet metal screws to attach the top of the tunnel to the walls. I am not a fan of sheet metal screws; they always seem to loosen and fall out. After replacing the screws a couple of […]

February was “tunnel month” on my Bede BD-4C project. The floor of the airplane will look like an old fashioned rear wheel drive car, with a tunnel down the middle. The difference is that the BD-4C’s tunnel will house controls, brake lines, and electrical cables instead of a drive shaft. I started by making a […]

After installing the rudder on my Bede BD-4C, I moved on to hooking up more of the controls. First task, since the rudder is on the plane, was connecting the rudder cables. These are about 15 feet long and have to be fabricated in the airplane, because once the ends are swaged, there is no […]

I have gotten a lot done on my Bede BD-4C airplane over the last few weeks. I adjusted the length of the push-pull tubes for the horizontal stabilator so that when the control sticks were pushed fully forward the horizontal stabilator was angled down at least 15°. Here is a photo of the stabilator pivot […]

I finished the aileron cables for my BD-4C airplane at the end of November. Life gets a little hectic this time of year (as you may have noticed) so I am just posting the photos now. Sorry about that. Which reminds me; I have an open position for a blogger/documenter to do a more timely […]

My Bede BD-4C airplane kit looks a lot more like an airplane tonight. I have finally mounted the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage. The front rib, which runs from the top of the fin, downward and forward at an angle, to the middle of the bottom,  is bolted to a custom-fit gusset as you can see […]

I lied in the title. I am not fitting the rudder to my Bede BD-4C airplane. I am fitting the vertical stabilizer. The vertical stabilizer is the thing which sticks up, like a shark’s fin, and does not move. The rudder is the piece attached to the back of the vertical stabilizer and which wiggles left and […]

Real men may have hard lines but sometimes men, even real men, have to be flexible. One of those times comes, at least in a Bede BD-4C airplane, when you need to connect the hard line fuel lines in the fuselage to the fuel lines in the wings. That connection requires a flexible hose about a […]

Over the last month, I have been working steadily on the pieces which will mount and control the horizontal part of the tail of my BD-4C airplane. Since I last wrote about the Horizontal Stabilator Push-Pull Tube, I have fitted the two weldments to the tail of the fuselage, like this:   Once I had the […]

Since the fuel tanks in my Bede BD-4C airplane are in the wings, I very much want to get it safely and securely from the wings to the engine. The plans call for running “hard line” through fully enclosed channels in the corners of the fuselage. Fabricating and installing the hard line is difficult, no […]

Go ahead and do it. Read the title of this posting aloud: Horizontal Stabilator Push-Pull Tube. I’ll bet everyone within earshot is looking at you real funny now, aren’t they? But what the heck; how many times in your life will you get to say, “Horizontal stabilator push-pull tube?” 🙂 Over the last few weeks, I […]

Today was a red letter day, for sure. With the control sticks (temporarily) installed, I sat in my Bede BD-4C airplane for the first time. I even felt the rush of air on my face (and ignored that it was a hot breeze from the fan on the garage floor). Woo hoo!!!

I rebuilt the aileron cables for my Bede BD-4C and began installing them over the last few days. Here is a picture (click on it to see it larger) of the aileron cables running around the right, rear corner of the fuselage. At the top, left of this photo, you can see one of the […]

(When last we visited with our intrepid airplane builder, he was thoroughly disgusted because his first airplane cables were useless. A bit of a contest ensued in which several of avid readers tried to name the error of Art’s ways and John Struhar succeeded. Tonight, we return to Art in his combination sauna and airplane factory just […]

July 14: I’m disgusted. Having made this cable, and five more like it, I get to make them all again. They are all trash. Can you tell why? Post a comment if you figure it out. I made my first control cables for my Bede BD-4C last night! Crimping the ends seemed kind of intimidating […]

I have spent the last month (has it really been that long since my last post?) doing non-picturesque stuff for my Bede BD-4C. The good news is that I now have 368 hours into the project, which means that I am 41% done, if you believe BedeCorp’s estimate of 900 hours to build the BD-4C […]

Since I last wrote, I have spent a busy couple of weeks making good progress on four subsystems of my Bede BD-4C: brakes, rudder pedal tubes, instrument panel support, and control stick torque tube brackets. It is nice to have both the time and the parts necessary. First up was installation of all four brake […]