Another episode of Flightchops with Bearhawk

[mswain]

Some more video featuring Ryan's Bearhawk and a little Bearhawk surprise at the end.......

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Wow, that *was* a very pleasant surprise!

[whee]

Fun video. Wish I could find a group of pilots like that to hangout with.

Found it interesting that the C180 was struggling to fly slow enough for the BH to keep up even though the BH was pushing it hard. Meanwhile the Maule is just chillin.

[mswain]

I think he's got a 540 from Bob ready to go in, so that will help.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Roverhawk is for sale, too.

[JimParker256]

Found it interesting that the C180 was struggling to fly slow enough for the BH to keep up even though the BH was pushing it hard. Meanwhile the Maule is just chillin.

Made me wonder what is powering that Bearhawk? Seems like even an O-360 would have given better performance than that, unless he has a fixed-pitch prop hyper-optimized for climb... I used to easily keep up with C-180s and Maules with my O-320 powered Grumman Traveler...

[Battson]

Made me wonder what is powering that Bearhawk? Seems like even an O-360 would have given better performance than that, unless he has a fixed-pitch prop hyper-optimized for climb... I used to easily keep up with C-180s and Maules with my O-320 powered Grumman Traveler...

Yeah I watched this last night, I paused to see the IAS - only 100 (kts or mph, I can't say). The spinner looks like a fixed pitch.
I can see why Baloo is going for the -540, you'll enjoy a big improvement in speed from that upgrade.

Noting that the C180 in that video has 285hp at their disposal, we still have no trouble keeping up with any 180 I've ever seen (while I had the 26" wheels on). That includes a Pponk 180 with a huge 3 blade prop - we kept up for over an hour while running lean of peak! Maybe we needed to use 26 inHg MAP sometimes, but we always keep up...

The BH can also climb a lot faster than a Cessna.

How about a dive?
Forget about it. Even a lowly C172 can outrun a Bearhawk in a dive.

No need to mention short-field operations... The 180 comes across really nicely in that video, with miles of room to land on that gravel bar.

[Baloo]

Hey guys! The engine swap is under way. That video was shot last July. The speed is in KTS and it had a constant speed prop. A few months back I did some rigging adjustments to my elevator trip and picked up 6-7 kts. That said, Brandon's C180 is a click machine with that PPonk. He kicked my ass in the climb and cruise. I'm looking forward to flying the 260hp BH in the next few weeks and will report back.

[Bcone1381]

Ah....must be nice to see that much difference! I almost asked if there might be a rigging issue after Whee's pointed out the speed difference in post #3.

[mswain]

I would be interested to hear about your rigging adjustments in more detail.

[Baloo]

I noticed that on a few flights with a bit of a load in the back that I was running out of nose down trim. The load in the back wasn't excessive and there is no way I should have been running out of trim. One thing that I had noticed was that on my overhead trim wheel the takeoff position was very very close to the full nose down trim stop on the wheel. We are talking 1/4" or so.

I set the trim wheel at the position where I had previously marked the takeoff setting to be and secured the elevator with gust locks. I took a digital inclinometer and measured what the angle of deflection was on the 2 trim tabs with the trim wheel set in the takeoff position. I dont recall the exact value but it was close to 4.5 degrees on the left trim tab and closer to 9.5 degrees on the right tab.

Noting the discrepancy between the 2 tabs I took the same angle measurement at full nose up and full nose down trip and noted a similar imbalance between the angles of the 2 trim tabs.

The next step was to disconnect the rod ends from the trim tabs. I then moved the trim wheel so that the trim indicator needle was further aft of full nose down and then with the trim wheel in that position I adjusted the length of the rod that connects to the trim tabs using the threaded rod end and set it so that BOTH trim tabs had an equal deflection of around 6 degrees.

This was the new approximate takeoff trim setting and with the adjustment it gave me ample nose up and nose down trim travel so I wouldn't be running out of trim anymore. There is still more nose up than nose down available. The new rigging netted me several knots as I believe that the 2 halves of the elevator were fighting on another with the only mis-matched trim tab angles. The aircraft was also much nicer to fly.

The next adjustments I am working on are to correct the bearhawk roll and make the aileron feel a bit heavier.

[mswain]

Thanks for that write up, something to be aware of when rigging.


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[DemoDollCate]

I wonder what position your bellcranks are in Baloo.

[Baloo]

All I can tell you is that at the moment it is working nicely.