Vans rv-15

[rv8bldr]

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is an engineering prototype. Van's have no issue with making changes based on flight testing of prototypes (the production RV-8 kit was different in a number of respects from the prototype). I have never known Van's to mislead on performance promises; they really do work at testing and verifying before promising.

I suspect it will be two or three years before there is a (2 seat) kit available. And then several more years before a 4 seat....if they go there.

[way_up_north]

The Bearhawk is a superior plane for a few reasons… but most people make purchases based on emotion rather then logical reasons

my suggestion is the Bearhawk factory make the leap to match hole construction for the wings…

This RV15 may only be a 2 seater… but you can bet a 4 seater will be coming … and it will suck all the oxygen out of the room… it won’t be safer.,, it won’t have a big useful gross… it probably won’t be better then the Bearhawk in any way

But it will be damm easy to build…and very low cost to get into … just buy a tail kit and start banging

The Bearhawk factory made wing kit takes skill to assemble….so the only option is a quick build

so you are between …a steep learning curve to build Bearhawk wings from factory parts or a substantial cash layout to buy a quick buil with a Bearhawk

There is no low cost way to commit to a Bearhawk other the scratch building it.,,, I believe this will drive some potential Bearhawk buyers into the arms of the RV crowd

if the factory was producing match hole parts … they could offer a flap introduction kit… low cost… easy to put together… gets people into the plane at a very low cost..

[Russellmn]

Add in real instructions/manual with the match hole and it'd be a winner. Too much of the Bearhawk's is left to the builder to figure out on their own. I realize it would be a large investment to create instructions near the level of Vans, but I think it would be worth it.

[zkelley2]

I'd be very surprised if anything less than 95% of van's kits are quick build. The market is in the quick build segment.

But ya, instructions. Compared to a van's the bearhawk doesn't even have them.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

On the flip side, I like that the Bearhawk is hand made by meticulous craftsmen one at a time. IMHO, you want to drive up the price of the Bearhawk, bake in the cost of a CNC machine to do that.

I also like that the Bearhawk challenges me. It makes me better, approaching the skills of those meticulous craftsmen. But I'm wired weird.

[spinningwrench]

CNC machines are not that expensive anymore and the market is flooded with commercial grade machines, especially the Milwaukee market. You will find the cost to build an airplane drops dramatically when parts can be produced very repetitively with a high degree of accuracy at an automated level.

[zkelley2]

I totally agree. That is why I am surprised by some of their decisions! They've gone to the trouble of the oleo springs and a complex slotted flap, but they seem to have left a lot of possible performance gains on the table in other areas. But I will wait to hear the performance specs and handling reports (not from Vans though, of course the test pilot reports at Osh will be shining).

It makes sense they would start with a smaller 2 place to get experience and compete with the mass market - which is mostly a 2 place market of late, if they are successful then a 4 place is the next obvious move.

Personally I don't understand the 2 seat market. Bush airplanes, even the Bearhawk, can carry half the amount of seats they have in people, and the necessary stuff to make it worth flying to where you're going in the first place.
A BH4, C180, M5,6,7 are all 2 seaters way in the back country or on any hunting trip. Maybe 3 if the round trip is under 200 miles. If I wanted a to fill 4 seats, I'd have bought a 185, 206 or Helio.
A cub, patrol, sportsman, S21 are all single seaters with requisite gear. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not really big on solo trips to nowhere.

The 2 and 4 seat high speed cross country machines get a lot closer to actually hauling their rated pax, since you're going to be landing at a ginormous airport, with fuel and a hotel. You don't need to bring 50lbs of stuff per person and fuel for both legs of the trip.

The way cubs are used for hunting here is they do extraordinarily short legs, supported by ground vehicles as close as they can get them and then a LOT of trips.
Which is why all you have to do is be 150 miles from fuel and you'll never see a cub hunting. Land at a 600ft strip that far out and you'll take 85% of the 180 drivers out of the competition as well.

[Battson]

Totally agree with all the above. Solid points which any prospective backcountry pilot needs to take seriously.

[Pbruce]

ZK, did you mean have “half the amount of people as they have seats”? I think that would be a fair comment. Did you also just make an unequivocal case for the BH Companion? I’m guessing the Companion fulfills a rare but profoundly-appreciated niche with its hybrid capabilities: Two seats, lots of fuel, weight and volume capacity to bring what you need, a decent turn of speed and great short field low speed capability. Also, a reasonable instructional platform and a respectful way to treat your significant other. Perhaps this RV-15 will also do well, in a package which includes thorough hardware spec and building instructions in a well-engineered prefab package. I’m dubious about any significant cost savings, but I could be wrong. I know big volume helps the bottom line somewhat. An aluminum fuse should be less costly than tube/fabric.

I went for the Patrol because I think it’s a more “mission capable” plane than the Highlander, Superstol, Kitfox or even a Cub. (one person’s 2-cent opinion, of course). I think it will provide a Supercub-type flight experience with an easier build and a speed/economy proposition which is hard to match. No offence to the BH4 and 5, Maule, 185 or any other four-seater, but in my opinion, they simply won’t provide that kind of tactile flight experience. It’s also my opinion that if I can’t fit a like-minded soul and our gear into the Patrol, we aren’t trying hard enough to lose the junk and improve the essential experience. It’s a philosophical choice, to be sure. Perhaps one of the greatest attributes of the BH line is that it offers something for just about everyone in the bushplane space, like Vans does in the sportplane market.

I’m enjoying this discussion immensely.

[zkelley2]

ZK, did you mean have the amount of people as they have seats? I think that would be a fair comment. Did you also just make an unequivocal case for the BH Companion? I’m guessing the Companion fulfills a rare but profoundly-appreciated niche with its hybrid capabilities: Two seats, lots of fuel, weight and volume capacity to bring what you need, a decent turn of speed and great short field low speed capability. Also, a reasonable instructional platform and a respectful way to treat your significant other. Perhaps this RV-15 will also do well, in a package which includes thorough hardware spec and building instructions in a well-engineered prefab package. I’m dubious about any significant cost savings, but I could be wrong. I know big volume helps the bottom line somewhat. An aluminum fuse should be less costly than tube/fabric.

I went for the Patrol because I think it’s a more “mission capable” plane than the Highlander, Superstol, Kitfox or even a Cub. (one person’s 2-cent opinion, of course). I think it will provide a Supercub-type flight experience with an easier build and a speed/economy proposition which is hard to match. No offence to the BH4 and 5, Maule, 185 or any other four-seater, but in my opinion, they simply won’t provide that kind of tactile flight experience. It’s also my opinion that if I can’t fit a like-minded soul and our gear into the Patrol, we aren’t trying hard enough to lose the junk and improve the essential experience. It’s a philosophical choice, to be sure. Perhaps one of the greatest attributes of the BH line is that it offers something for just about everyone in the bushplane space, like Vans does in the sportplane market.

I’m enjoying this discussion immensely.

Ya, how ever many seats it has, it can do half that. The reason I never understood the companion is you can take the back seats out of the 4 and it's better than the companion. I rarely have the back seats in my 4. It only takes a minute to remove them or put them in.

The highlander and kitfox line are not strong enough to operated in the back country. There's a reason there's only a couple of them up here. They have such light tubing it just gets beat to hell and fails. They also hold very little fuel and are very slow in cruise. Yes, they land short, but they don't take off all that short with the rotax when they're at gross. And it doesn't matter how short you can land if you can't get to where you're going and back with how slow and little fuel they carry. Those videos you see are never at gross. To actually get somewhere and back you have to fill the tanks plus multiple bags of fuel until you're at gross, or over it with 2 people and fuel and nothing else.
I know, I owned one. It didn't work at all. I had to do a lot of welding on that fuselage as it just would not put up with the punishment bush planes get. They're perfect for back yard putting greens though.

Unless you have ground vehicle support, an airplane up here needs to be able to do 2 people and 2 weeks worth of camping gear and two 200 mile un-refueled legs plus an hour reserve. With the 2 climbs in my airplane that means 60 gallons of fuel. With 2 of us it leave leaves enough for the bigger tent, cots, sleeping bags, packs, rifles and food.
That leaves nothing for the extra weight out, which means it's 2 trips out. You're patrol in this scenario would be a single seater, as you'd not have room for the stuff you need for that kind of mission with a second person in it.

I do take 4 people in the BH4 on occasion. It's just that we're really close to fuel or don't need to bring much of anything with us.

We did a raft trip in June, in which I was able to fit 3 people, rafts, food camping gear, etc into the 4 place. It was bulked out volume wise. But it was only a 90 mile flight in from where we were able to get a truck. If we had to do that from 200 miles like more remote spots, it wouldn't have been possible.

[svyolo]

Exactly my thoughts on everything. Plus, as a business, pick your customers. If you don't actually like your customers, don't go there. Vans are great airplanes, but are very "cookie cuttter". Lots of folks dream of building things, but have never done so. They buy something very easy to build, but still don't follow through.

Some might consider Mark's "no plans" approach as not very good. To me, it weeds out those who don't love to build things, as I love figuring things out, as do others.

My kit is beautifully made from the factory, and the rest is up to me. For me, that is perfect.

[schu]

Personally I don't understand the 2 seat market. Bush airplanes, even the Bearhawk, can carry half the amount of seats they have in people, and the necessary stuff to make it worth flying to where you're going in the first place.
A BH4, C180, M5,6,7 are all 2 seaters way in the back country or on any hunting trip. Maybe 3 if the round trip is under 200 miles. If I wanted a to fill 4 seats, I'd have bought a 185, 206 or Helio.
A cub, patrol, sportsman, S21 are all single seaters with requisite gear. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not really big on solo trips to nowhere.

I didn't really understand the desire to go fast in a "bush" plane either until someone explained to me that many of the RV guys live in the south or east side of the country and thus need to fly 1000 miles to get to the "backcountry" (defined by manicured grass strip near a mountain or stream). With that in mind, what they want is something that doesn't have fragile nose gear, can run bigger tires to look the part, but also something that can go 170kts. I know, I know, nothing that will even come close to performing in short strips will go that fast, more realistic is maybe 140kts and 1500ft of grass, but honestly that is what that crowd is after.

As for 200 miles away from fuel, that only exists in Alaska. Operating in the lower 48 for the last 3 years and flying a lowly 170 to Osh really showed that fuel is everywhere here, so much so that I've debated on omitting my aux tanks. I'll probably keep them anyway because there is lower fuel costs to be had, and I do want to spend a summer or 5 in AK, but what you define your mission as really doesn't exist here.

As for Vans and why they are popular: CAD and CNC. Every part is drawn out fits very well and generating amazing documentation is trivial. You do nothing more than assemble and RV, while with the bearhawk you must do some level of fabrication. It can be as simple as drilling, trimming, and fitting, or as complex as flat inventing new parts if you want different doors or whatever.

In line with the thoughts above, flying 1000 miles to go camping, nearly every RV gets an autopilot. 2 axis works fine, and there are bolt in kits for anything you can think of. Same with electric trim. With the bearhawk you need to invent the autopilot mounts which isn't super hard, but the 3rd axis can get more complex, and there is nothing standard about putting an electric trim in one of these.

The biggest pro to the bearhawk in my mind is that it has the rear baggage door and its strength. That said, I've seen a lot of crashed Cessna and I'm nearly always impressed how much the beer can folding up absorbs the impact and protects people. I don't think it's as good as rag and tube, but I think it's much better than I previously thought.....

schu

[robcaldwell]

Just say NO to Yokes!

[zkelley2]

If get into the back country is a 1500ft putting green, then just about every aircraft will do that. You can get a Bonanza, Mooney, honestlu any piston single and a good amount of piston twins, retracts, etc into that. You might have to ferry to the 8000ft paved airport 30 miles away, but that's not a big deal for a once a decade type trip.
Big tires and high lift wings is wildly wasteful in that scenario. Both in fuel and time.

If my idea of backcountry was something like johnson creek, ID, I'd probably own something like a Glassair III, RV10, Lancair or Velocity. Aside from the Density altitude issue in the heat of the summer, those places are so well maintained, they should put a CBP office in there so they can take international arrivals. Extend the runway a tiny bit more and I'm sure we can put a 737-200 in there to.

We operated King Air 200's out of shorter runways at gross albeit with a lot less DA, you'd just have to watch your weight.

[schu]

Yea, I know, I was just trying to explain the typical RV mindset, which is interesting because as you say you can get a banana or a mooney into what they call backcountry, but not your typical RV because of the very fragile nosewheel and the fact that most RV people insist on a nosedragger.

[rv8bldr]

.....

my suggestion is the Bearhawk factory make the leap to match hole construction for the wings…

.....

if the factory was producing match hole parts … they could offer a flap introduction kit… low cost… easy to put together… gets people into the plane at a very low cost..

I doubt very much this will happen. You would need a VERY expensive CNC machine and have the design in CAD. It was a huge deal when Van's did this back in the early 2000's (after I bought my RV-8 kit, of course) and they already had 4,000+ aircraft flying and (probably) 10,000+ tail kits out in the wild. I don't think the numbers of Bearhawk kits being sold could justify this kind of expense, although I may be wrong.

[spinningwrench]

I think it was automation in construction that drove VAN’s to the level they are at. The “bolt together philosophy” encouraged many builders to tackle a project. CNC mill/drill machines are very inexpensive these days as the market is flooded with used equipment. Having a design at the CAD level is fundamental to a modern manufacturing approach, it can all be done incrementally however.

[zkelley2]

The Dark Aero guys have built their whole airplane with CAD, CNC, 3D printing, etc. I'm not sure what their budget has been or the source of their funding, but that looks to be an incredible machine, and it's just a couple grads in a hangar.

[Archer39J]

I doubt very much this will happen. You would need a VERY expensive CNC machine and have the design in CAD. It was a huge deal when Van's did this back in the early 2000's (after I bought my RV-8 kit, of course) and they already had 4,000+ aircraft flying and (probably) 10,000+ tail kits out in the wild. I don't think the numbers of Bearhawk kits being sold could justify this kind of expense, although I may be wrong.

I wouldn't be that expensive. With model based definition and embedded part manufacturing information, you wouldn't even have to bother with drawings in the traditional sense.

If only I didn't already have a day job...

[way_up_north]

I doubt very much this will happen. You would need a VERY expensive CNC machine and have the design in CAD. It was a huge deal when Van's did this back in the early 2000's (after I bought my RV-8 kit, of course) and they already had 4,000+ aircraft flying and (probably) 10,000+ tail kits out in the wild. I don't think the numbers of Bearhawk kits being sold could justify this kind of expense, although I may be wrong.

This is a debate I don’t want to win…,

I hope I’m wrong and people will want to take the road less travelled … and the good times last forever and people can drop $60,000 in one shot all day…

im going to post here an example of where the state of the art of this industry is… there is a one man plane being made in Eastern Europe called the Merlin

it’s match hole construction … and you get a quick build kit for $18,000…usd … it would be cheap as parts… this is put together for you..

The dollar store is now making match hole construction.

https://www.aeromarine-lsa.com/merlin/

[Battson]

Ya, how ever many seats it has, it can do half that. The reason I never understood the companion is you can take the back seats out of the 4 and it's better than the companion. I rarely have the back seats in my 4. It only takes a minute to remove them or put them in.

Yes. Right with you there again.

I acknowledge the Companion will be lighter and better in a STOL contest, but for real backcountry ops I am recommending the 4-Place or even a lightly built Model 5 to anyone who asks me. There are few places you can reliably take a Patrol, where the 4-Place cannot follow.
The other advantage is cost, with those smaller aircraft designs. But that comes with limits.

[zkelley2]

Ya a 5 loaded like a 4 should be able to go anywhere a 4 can go. Then you get the benefit of hauling more weight when the strips are longer. If the wings were a bit longer, it'd probably do just as good anywhere.

If the 5 was a thing a few years ago I would have built a 5, as a 4 seater.

I cannot think of anywhere you can take a patrol that you can't take a 4. The P/W ratio actually favors the 4 with the 260hp. If you put a patrol load into your 4, they have the same landing distance. T/O favors the 4.

[Mark Dickens]

Ok, since I'm building one of these apparently inadequate aircraft, let me chime in here. I chose the Companion because I didn't want 4 seats (oh my, perish the thought!) and I didn't want to spend a LOT more money on a 540 and burn more gas than a 540). I'll be able to haul 250 lbs in the baggage area and this meets my needs. You see, everyone has a different set of needs. It's called defining your mission and my mission didn't include the larger plane. Each to their own!

[whee]

Mark, I know you were just being feisty and I totally get that. The companion is be a great airplane for many people. Like you said; define the mission.

[Mark Dickens]

Who me? Feisty? It sounded like some people were genuinely confused and I felt it my solemn obligation to edify said persons. Yes, I was just being a little salty! And by the way, no offence (note my spelling!) was intended!

[zkelley2]

It's not inadequate. Certainly if your mission is solo 80% of the time, a 2 seater makes sense. I just don't really know what you get from a companion that a 4 doesn't do for more or less the same money.

[schu]

I agree that the 540 does cost a lot, however I don't think it will burn that much more fuel. If you throttle back to the same speed and running comparable mixtures, I suspect the 540 is within 1/2-1 gal an hour. Many operate the 540 lean of peak in the 10 gallon an hour range.

[whee]

I agree that the 540 does cost a lot, however I don't think it will burn that much more fuel. If you throttle back to the same speed and running comparable mixtures, I suspect the 540 is within 1/2-1 gal an hour. Many operate the 540 lean of peak in the 10 gallon an hour range.

Yep. When I started into the BH world I was convinced all I needed was a 180hp O360 and still feel like the performance is adequate with a smaller engine. But, when I was flying an O360 BH with a friend in his 540 Bearhawk I was constantly frustrated that he could cruise a touch faster burning 1 gallon less per hour that I was. Unless your flying behind a fuel hungry engine, like a radial, they all put out about the same power per the amount of fuel burned.

I still very much like my Continental IO360 powered Bearhawk but when it come time for an engine there is a good chance it will get a bigger engine.

[Mark Dickens]

In all sincerity, 99% of my flying is by myself now and it didn't make sense for me to invest the additional funds into a big plane that would drink more fuel. I've been a pilot for 41 years (holy crap) and owned 6 aircraft. I've flown my family all over the place, but they now have their own families and it's down to the wife and me, and she's not thrilled with this "amateur built" stuff so while she will fly with me in my RV-8, it's not the same for her as it was in the back of a 36 model Bonanza. I'm hoping that the side by side seating and the additional cargo hauling capability will give her a little more comfort and make some of our favorite trips practical. But, I didn't need the "full size Suburban" of the skies when a smaller plane would do.

[zkelley2]

If you put the same motor and prop on a 4 place as a companion I'd be surprised if the total build cost wasn't more or less the same. Within 1 avionic piece anyways.
Fuel burn would be identical. Go look at the Lycoming power and fuel burn charts. 360s and 540s are within the margin of pilot mixture setting error if they are producing the same horsepower.
That is a 360 making 130hp(72%) and a 540 making 130hp(50%) both burn more or less the same fuel.

The 540 starts to walk away from the 360 at higher altitudes where the TAS starts to really get up there. I can maintain that 130HP to 13,000ft where I'd have about 13kts on where a 360 powered BH4 stops making 130hp(6000ft), for the same fuel.