Is the Bearhawk only sold in kit form? No factory-made planes?

[JimParker256]

Bill, for the purposes of the academic exercise, I'll join the game, and relate why I decided to go with the Quick Build Kit from Mark G. To begin with, I'm not an experienced welder. I'm not even sure I could claim to be a welder, but I have taken the workshop at OSH a number of times. So I figure I would need to purchase not only the torch and other equipment for gas welding, but also a bunch of scrap steel to practice on... Figure 20-25 hours of practice to get my skills up to "barely competent" level, and maybe 50 hours to get decent at it. Now add in the roughly 1000 hours of welding time I figure it would take to build (and re-build when I screwed something up) the fuselage, tail, and landing gear. By my calculations, I'm paying about $4 an hour for the AviPro experts to weld my fuselage together, AND getting the wings, tubing "kit", etc. all for "free"... As a retiree on fixed income, my time isn't worth a whole lot, but $4 an hour???

I think the Bearhawk Quick Build kits are in incredible bargain. I

Like Bill, I hope Mark G is making enough money to stay in business for a long time. Part of that is selfish (I love having the "factory" support for an experimental airplane!), but a huge portion is just the fact that Mark is a great guy who deserves all the success in the world. It only takes a few minutes spent with him to recognize that he's one of the truly "good guys" in this world, who improve the lot of everyone with whom they come into contact. Creating the factory in Mexico was a brilliant business idea, but was an equally wonderful humanitarian idea – providing good jobs to some great folks.

[doss1]

Another mistake I made was saying "scratch" when I meant to say build from a quick-build kit. I had no idea that building from "scratch" meant creating new tubes, welding, etc. Wow, OK, so a quick-build kit is what I am after and as close to stock as possible (not a fan of crazy mods , besides, those get harder to sell down the line from my experience with the Cub).

[Battson]

Another mistake I made was saying "scratch" when I meant to say build from a quick-build kit. I had no idea that building from "scratch" meant creating new tubes, welding, etc. Wow, OK, so a quick-build kit is what I am after and as close to stock as possible (not a fan of crazy mods , besides, those get harder to sell down the line from my experience with the Cub).

Oh yeah, it's a huge commitment alright.

We have one here in NZ which is a scratchbuild and nearing completion, and it's been more than 20 years over two builders. A great signpost of human effort.

I have no end of respect for those like Bob B and Eric N who've actually finished a scratchbuilt plane by themselves, and not just once, but several times over. I think two or three kit builds is a big enough feat from my perspective.