Famed Aircraft Designer James Bede Dies

linuxwrangler writes with a bit of news overlooked from last week, but worth noting: Prolific aircraft designer James "Jim" Bede has died at age 82. Although Bede designed numerous aircraft he is most commonly associated with the BD-5J, the "world's smallest jet", that was famously used to help James Bond escape in the movie "Octopussy." Bede's company currently has that aircraft for sale.

Comments

BD-5

[Camel Pilot]

When I was a kid I dreamed of building and owning a BD-5... Now that I read that of the first 10 BD-5's built 5 resulted in fatal crashes (50% is pretty steep ratio). Sometimes you have to thank God for unfulfilled dreams.

Re:BD-5

[RubberDogBone]

The BD-10 kill rate was worse, which is a shame because the design looks amazing. A supersonic private jet made of plywood? Yeah it worked out kinda like you might expect.

Sad.

On the other hand, Bede's machines did fly unlike Moller's stuff that's been "almost ready" for 50 years.

Re:BD-5

[Irate Engineer]

That had NOTHING to do with the fact that former pilots of Cessna and Piper prop aircraft were jumping into a freaking jet

and getting way over their head, nothing at all.

Transitioning up from low speed propeller aircraft to transonic jets is a steep learning curve. If the pilot can't keep ahead of the airplane, bad things happen. It has nothing to do with the design of the jet, just merely the fact that jets go places faster.

Re:BD-5

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a cartoon plane that I wanted to be real when I was a kid...

http://modelstories.free.fr/an...

Re:BD-5

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmmmm.....No. The plane was not designed correctly. In one failure that killed the owner/business CEO that had bought the rights to the BD-10 design, the NTSB "concluded that Bede's" stronger vertical tail "fix was severely under-designed, and offered nowhere near the strength that had been calculated. Fox (company that had bought the BD-10 design) had not performed any testing to verify the redesign of the vertical stabilizer spars before continuing flight testing, instead relying upon the data provided by Bede." The new owner obviously should have tested the tail fix, but the fact remains that Bede didn't do the calculations correctly.

In addition, the owner of the last flyable BD-10 jet kit had the plane literally disintegrate on him.

Read all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-10

Gordon

Re: BD-5

[Anonymous Coward]

The BD 5 and 10 were busts, sure. But the BD-4 was a good homebuilt.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-4.
Despite its squarish look it was fast and relatively quick to build, strong, using a large diameter pipe for the wing spar. Few complex airframe parts were used and it pioneered metal bonding, along with Bede's certificated plane, the American Aviation AA-1 Yankee, many of which were built.

Re: BD-5

[Maury Markowitz]

> Bede's certificated plane, the American Aviation AA-1 Yankee

The original BD-1 never matured as Bede lost interest in finishing the design and spent his time on the network of dealerships he was going to build to sell them.

The investors had to fire him and give the design to someone else to complete. They had to do pretty much a complete redesign on it.

This is a recurring theme, Bede was clearly an "ideas guy".

Unsafe at any speed

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I've always been fascinated with Jim Bede's designs and his "get shit done" attitude. Personally, my favorite was the BD-10, a supersonic jet for folks on a high end cessna budget.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

However, he is also somewhat infamous in the industry for how many of his creations have crashed and resulted int he deaths of their owners. Spark of brilliance with a bit too little attention being paid to safety and reliability.

He's safe now...

[VAXcat]

He's safe http://tech.slashdot.org/story... from all the people who bought BD5 kits who wanted to kill him.

Re:He's safe now...

[hax4bux]

Haha! That would be true of almost any kit manufacturer. I know first hand.

San Bernadino Fire

[PopeRatzo]

Speaking of aircraft, right now the San Bernadino Fire Dept is saying that fire-fighting aircraft are being grounded because of all the private drone activity in the area around the wildfire.

http://ktla.com/2015/07/17/15-...

Re:San Bernadino Fire

[tompaulco]

Speaking of aircraft, right now the San Bernadino Fire Dept is saying that fire-fighting aircraft are being grounded because of all the private drone activity in the area around the wildfire.

http://ktla.com/2015/07/17/15-...

They should find the owners of those drones and let them pay all of the insurance claims and damages resulting from the fir. To be fair, only the part that occurred after the equipment had to be grounded and the fire leapt from 500 acres to 1500 acres.

Re:San Bernadino Fire

[PopeRatzo]

From the link:

The North Fire was at 500 acres about 3:45 p.m., and firefighting aircraft were temporarily grounded due to drone activity, the San Bernardino County Fire Department stated on Twitter. Two hours later, the fire was at 3,500 acres.

I definitely agree that whoever was flying those drones should be culpable for part of the damage. It's a shame that some people just don't know how to behave.

Ashamed of you, Slashdot editors

[FooAtWFU]

Ashamed of the submitter/editors for messing up this opportunity and letting us all down. The correct title of this story is that the venerable aircraft designer James Bede has died.

Re:Ashamed of you, Slashdot editors

[darthsilun]

I bet The Register will get it right.

Watchout for statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Aerodynamically and structurally the BD-5 is fine (Burt Rutan was involved) but there are four issues that affect the stats for this plane (disclosure: I own one) but are not generally pointed out in these conversations:

1. The engine was never really solved. Jim started selling the kits with a scheme where people bought them in portions; a builder would buy as much as he could afford, build that much, then go back to buy the next portion, and so-on. By the time they got them fully built except for the engine, Jim did not have an ideal production solution (not an uncommon situation with a certain subset of "visionary" entrepreneurs). A bunch of builders adopted engines from small cars, snow mobiles and such things to their planes out of desperation to get their expensive toys finished and flying. These "solutions" were each custom, unique, and outside of the experience and influence of the airframe's designers. The BD-5 is not particularly spacious in the engine compartment, so these were always sub-optimal solutions.

2. These were home-built kit planes. While some such planes (like Rutan's canard-based designs) are very forgiving and aimed at first-time builders, the BD-5 is a bit of a sports car (both less-forgiving and attracting the sort of builder/flier who is more of a risk-taker and speed junkie).

3. There was a design change in the wing partway through the process that I think was not implemented by all kit-builders. Can't recall at the moment if it was an airfoil change or a wing washout (a slight twist from root to tip for you non-aero types) change, but it affected the flight envelope. Any BD-5 that did not implement the change would have different flight characteristics and almost certainly a different subset of stats.

4. There is a bit of a Corvair syndrome here: The Corvair, particularly the later sleeker-looking models, was a neat little car with rear engine that performed quite nicely and was quieter and cooler in the cabin thanks to that rear-engine. The very things that made the Corvair nice also meant that it handled differently because it was not nose-heavy like most cars. You do not want to put an inexperienced driver in a Corvair on ice. A very famous lawyer made quite a reputation for himself trashing the Corvair in the eyes of the general public even though the vast majority of those cars were driven safely for the full life of the product. The simple fact is that if you design a product that behaves differently from what the average Joe expects, the average Joe who is not paying sufficient attention will be more likely to get into trouble. The result is that the general public has a very-different impression from that of the owners with firsthand experience. The question for our society is this: Do we homogenize everything to the lowest-common-denominator and make everything bland and safe for the idiots, or do we still say that individuals are both free, and responsible, to make their own decisions and risk assessments?

Incidentally, this is all hardly unique. Rockwell used to make a beautiful high-wing twin called a Shrike Aero Commander. They had Bob Hoover fly around the country doing some of the most-amazing dead-stick aerobatics ever in the thing. The Shrike also had a less-than-stellar safety record (wing spar cracks issue). Properly maintained, inspected, and flown, the Shrike was a really neat plane. In the hands of a lesser-owner it could be a death trap. Welcome to the world of human-designed, human-built, and human-operated systems.

The BD-5 will always be there, even when the last one is scrapped or hung-up in a museum, as inspiration to the young future aerospace engineer. RIP Jim Bede. Not a perfect airplane guy, but always pushing to make things better for aviators while others went with the mainstream flow.

Re:Watchout for statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but hard drives got better therefore we'll 3D print planes at home.

Re:Watchout for statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I deal with a lot of jet warbird from the same era, I'm curious, how have you managed the airframe fatigue problem over the year?

Re:Watchout for statistics

[tlhIngan]

The BD-5 will always be there, even when the last one is scrapped or hung-up in a museum, as inspiration to the young future aerospace engineer. RIP Jim Bede. Not a perfect airplane guy, but always pushing to make things better for aviators while others went with the mainstream flow.

Well, don't despair - others have taken inspiration from the BD-5J and created their own version.

The only difference is it might actually be flyable.

Re:Watchout for statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The average car-driver could handle say, an MR2. Or a 911. Etc.

The BD-5 is like if you took that car and gave it a 5 foot wheelbase. It's not a good analogy.

Heheh

[Anonymous Coward]

Pussy.

You are confusing two different aircraft

[Anonymous Coward]

The BD-5 is a propeller-driven plane with an internal combustion engine, which Bede derived from a sailplane version he never sold. The Sailplane version was originally going to be all fiberglass and had higher aspect ratio wings. The BD-5 had the same basic shape, but with shorter wings and was built from aluminum.

The BD-5J is a jet-powered version of the BD-5, and due to the costs, pilot ratings, and limited availability of small jet engines, very few of the J version were built (most kit builders built the propeller version). The BD-5J is the same basic airframe as the BD-5, but with a small jet engine that exhausts through the spot where the (pusher) propeller shaft emerges in the BD-5. Note of interest: The US Military has occasionally contracted with owners of BD-5J's to fly them during exercises simulating inbound cruise missiles [grin]

Incidentally, to clarify for those James Bond fans: the BD-5 (and 5J) are indeed very small and fit in a small trailer or garage but they do NOT have folding wings as the movie prop did. On the real airframe, the wings are removable for transport/storage.

Pilots moving to the BD-5 were NOT transitioning from a Cessna or Piper to a transonic jet. Nobody I know of flew the jet version without firs flying the prop version. Also, given the small single-seated nature of the thing, Bede was quite aware of the pilot training issues in the pre-simulator (for private pilots) era, so he and his team had a trailer with a BD-5 on an articulated arm that could be towed behind a truck at speed up and down a runway. People who chose to train that way could experience take-offs and landings and get a feel for the ground effects handling in relative safety (the BD-5 wing is so close to the ground that the ground effects are significant).

Re:You are confusing two different aircraft

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Note of interest: The US Military has occasionally contracted with owners of BD-5J's to fly them during exercises simulating inbound cruise missiles [grin]

Am I the only one who immediately pictured Japanese Ohkas in his mind?

Re:You are confusing two different aircraft

[Maury Markowitz]

> The BD-5 is a propeller-driven plane with an internal combustion engine, which Bede derived from a sailplane version he never sold

Incorrect.

The BD-5 design was copied, deliberately and publicly, from a Schweizer glider. The goal was, always, to produce a powered light aircraft. The B model, the glider, was an offshoot of the A model. As it turned out, the A model wings were substantially under-designed, and an intermediate length was substituted on most models. All of the designs initially made considerable use of fibreglass, but the entire series was moved to aluminum as the orders poured it.

The design was flawed from conception to construction. It fails due to a well-known issue in aircraft design, as it is "close coupled". The short length of the aircraft means that there is limited distance between the various force points like the CoG and CoF and the control surfaces. Exasperating this is the rear mounted engine, which means there's only, literally, inches between the heaviest part of the aircraft and the control surfaces. That means the controls have to be made larger so they have enough force to operate at low speeds. However, this also means that they are dramatically overpowered at higher speeds. There's no way around this, its basic physics. The "solution" for more expensive designs is powered controls and artificial feel.

Worse, in terms of the length of the aircraft, moving the pilot's seat a few inches is more of a relative shift than it is in, say, a Cessna. This means the aircraft is extremely sensitive to changes in W&B. Even something as minor as burning off fuel will require constant trimming, and that trim point will, for the reasons outlined above, change with speed.

So all of this conspires to make the aircraft difficult to fly on approach. As the aircraft slows the trim keeps changing. Combine that with high approach speeds and ever-more-sensitive controls. And finally, put the thrust line above the aircraft, so if you goose the engine it pushes the nose down, precisely the opposite of what you want it to do.

There is a reason a Cessna looks like it does. It is, for the vast majority of cases, the proper layout for an aircraft. Canard and other layouts have well known advantages in particular situations, but these are generally offset by their disadvantages which is why they are used only in edge cases like fighters.

The BD-10 was a joke from start to finish. Bede had no idea what he was doing, which is not surprising because he never really did any of the design on any of "his" projects - the actual design was left to young engineers typically fresh out of university. In the case of the -10, it was designed using a piece of Mac software known as MacFlow which had a number of bugs in both the software and the models. They initially predicted supersonic performance, but this was due to a bug in the model, From that point on the performance of the aircraft continued to degrade as drag and weight increased continually.

Building a transonic aircraft from pop-rivets? Yeah, that will work...

Re:You are confusing two different aircraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Just got to jump in here. I am NOT an engineer. In fact, I have no college degree. I do build certified aircraft, however.

You could very well build a supersonic plane from pop rivets. It would work fine. Use ones designed for aircraft. Good quality cherry rivets?

You could also build a supersonic plane from regular squeeze or hand-shot type rivets. I'd use flush ones for lower drag on at least the leading edge, personally. I'd use them instead of pop rivets. But you know, most of the time you'd use those rivets anyway, they are cheaper and stronger. You'd just pull-rivet when you couldn't get a squeezer or bar in...I don't see any reason why a kitplane builder would do things differently than we do on certified planes. Kit plane builders are not idiots. Riveting is not that difficult though getting good at it does take quite a time especially if you are getting in at an awkward angle. But you'd design your plane so that you'd rivet things in a squeezer or where you could easily see and inspect them, and limit the amount of hard to get spots. Then you'd have large, strong bolts (or adhesives), that connect the assemblies together. Right? At least, one would think. I would want to inspect each rivet clearly. Then once the assemblies were all good, I'd use bolts to attach major assemblies like wing spars, etc. That way you use a known good torque wrench to get them perfect. I'd limit pull-type rivets to only places where I had no other choice. I don't know how the BD planes were designed, but they probably didn't think that far ahead ;P. Could be wrong though.

But I'm not even an engineer, I have no college degree either. Only a GED. And this is obvious to me. I'm assuming most well-to-do purchasers of kit-planes know all this and 100x more.

Or you could weld it. But welding it would probably not be the right choice, because inspecting welds would be expensive, and welding aluminum can lead to deceiving looking welds that look okay but have problems (I am NOT a welder, just what i've heard). I would not weld a kit plane. How would you inspect the welds? Get some guy with some super expensive x-ray inspection machine? Yeah, no thanks. Rivets for the win. Rivets work great on aluminum. Plus you can rivet carbon fiber/fiberglass and aluminum together (very, very, carefully, and inspect the crap out of it afterwards) for some parts. Or use adhesives.

For a laugh, look at the finish quality of the russian stealth pak-fa ... find some high rez pictures. Look at that poor finish quality. It's zero threat to the US made planes, you can tell simply by the finish quality if you know anything about building planes.

The BD-10 failed because the designer didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Not because they used rivets.

It would have probably been a good 250-300mph plane. Trying to make something that goes up against the sound barrier when you have no experience doing it...not too bright. Especially when you aren't using engineers that really know what they are doing. A smarter plan would have been go to find a known-good design like a mig-19 or something and purchase one (or a mig-21 but that might be needlessly complex). Then take it apart, take notes, figure out what they did and why and copy and improve it. I'd imagine you could actually get the plans for the old migs, but if not you most definitely could buy one. That's what I'd do. I'd base my design off of things that I knew worked great, then up the quality by making it hand-made and using a modern engine and avionics.

And the BD-5 looks like a death trap because it is. It's friggin tiny, the pilot has no protection that I can tell...the tail appears to have very small leverage because the plane is super friggin short.

Come on, anyone who has built any RC planes knows how ineffective a rudder on that thing would be...which is why the rudder is relatively large.

But let me ask, what happens when you are coming in for a landing and you

I need a new hobby

[ihtoit]

the BD10 kit would be just the ticket if I had the money. Home built supersonic jet? Oh, yeah!