Registered Gross Wt

[bergy]

Bob says I should be able to keep the gross weight of my Patrol down so low that I can register it as having a GW of 1320#, As I understand things, my Patrol would not be an LSA aircraft, but would simply be an aircraft in the Utility category that would allow me to fly it as a Sport Pilot. Reason I ask is that I am trying to find a DAR in my area, and the only one that has answered my query says he is not FAA certified for LSA aircraft. I would think that does not apply to my case. Any thoughts?

[marcusofcotton]

You can't register it as an ELSA or an SLSA. You must register it it as an experimental amateur built. If he can do experimental amateur built, you're golden.

[BTAZ]

When I had my LSA inspected, it was explained to me that it would be inspected as an "Experimental, Amateur Built". The resulting airworthiness certificate just reads "Experimental" with a purpose of "Operating Amateur Built Aircraft" IOW, nothing the DAR does is specific to it meeting LSA performance limitations/guidelines.

Meeting the LSA requirements to allow it to be operated by an "LSA Qualified" pilot is a separate concern that requires the builder to review and set the appropriate limits as needed(I.E. the 1320 lb max gross, limit max engine RPM to make sure the max speed limits are met, review the anticipated stall speeds, foxed pitch prop. etc.)

Note the big one up front is the weight declaration as that is established and basically unchangeable after the inspection has taken place. Same for the "equipment" like fixed pitch prop only,

In my research, I saw discussions that it would need to pass a "Sniff test" that the plane can be legally operable before any DAR would willingly be involved though. If you have set the GW to 1320 lbs and have an empty weight of 1220 lbs it is unlikely anyone will be willing to get involved.

[JBC]

I agree with BTAZ. I built a legend cup that could be registered either as LSA with a gross weight of 1320 or EAB with a gross weight of 1650. My choice. Same physical airplane and I draw comfort knowing that if my gross weight ever exceeds 1320 lbs. I am still safe structurally.

But at Bob's estimated empty weight of 950 lbs for the Patrol + 55 gal of fuel at 330 lbs, you are 40 lbs short of LSA gross of 1320. A hard sell.

John Ciolino
Patrol Builder

[Bcone1381]

(I have a few hours to kill, and thought I would post a rather long, entertaining, nevertheless serious one for you all to consider.)

FAR 61.23 (b) lists operations where a pilot is NOT require to hold any medical certificate. One of these operations is when exercising the privileges of a Pilots certificate with a Glider category rating. Gliders come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are single seat, some have two seats. Some gliders have motors that are used just for Cruise Flight, but others motor gliders have powerful enough engines and are Self Launching Motor gliders. A pilot who flies a motor glider is not flying a airplane, he is flying a glider, and does so legally by exercising the privileges of his Glider Category Rating. Thus, the pilot needs no medical certificate.

Now, not all gliders are alike, some perform well, others do not turn out so well. The old tired Scweizer 2-22 from the 1950's is the worse one I have flown with a glide ratio that was about the same as Boeing 727, at 18:1. A glider with less than 28:1 is pretty rare these days. But, I know of one Motor Glider built in 2012 that the Soaring Community is particularly critical of. Its N123WW. To put it bluntly, N123WW sucks as a motor glider. Darn the luck.

The amateur built, experimentally certificated N123WW has something like a 10:1 glide ratio, and a poor choice of engines too, opting for the 180 hp Lycoming O-360. Additionally, few motor gliders sport such a spacious cabin and baggage area, outstanding visibility, 1000 lb useful load, and 150 mph cruise. Who needs a Self Launching Motor Glider with 9 hour endurance at 100 mph? I guess thats why they call it Amateur Built! I know, I can sense your pity and disappoint the builder must have felt after his failure...I just hate it when something doesn't turn out like it was suppose to. One big expensive error, I suppose.

It was built by a well known, highly skilled but now descesed builder of numerous aircraft including both a Four Place and Patrol. You may be familiar with its designer... Bob Barrows. You may have caught on by now. N123WW is a Bearhwak Patrol that is registered with the FAA not as a Fixed Wing Single Engine Airplane, rather as a Self Launching Motor Glider!!

But lets look on the bright side. At least is has a reliable engine, and room to store camping gear. Yes, I just hate it when a Motor Glider climbs too fast and is designed with too big of fuel tanks and misses the mission it was designed for!

The down sides don't stop there. The Pilots who fly it must exercise there Glider rating and have a self launch endorsement. In fact there is not a requirement to even hold an Airplane Single Engine Land rating. So, flying this aircraft requires a glider liscense and does not require a medical certificate. There is no gross weight limit for the certification of a glider. Numerous glides exceed 1320 pounds, A schweitzer 2-32 is a three seater with a max gross weight of 1430 lbs.

So, be careful and register our projects with the FAA with thought and prudence. There are options that may not be obvious at first with appealing consequences. Anyone, includeing Bergy may be able to register an amateur built poor performing motor glider and fly without a medical certificate and without having a 1320 pound restriction placed on a 2000 pound design.


Brooks Cone
Bearhawk Patrol kit.

[JimParker256]

I've heard of several people registering their "non-glider" experimental amateur-built aircraft as "motor-gliders" in the past. But I understood that the FAA closed that "call it a glider and you won't need a medical" certification loophole a while back by coming up with some "qualifying standards" for determining if the airplane meets the "glider" definition or not.

Either way, I know that our local DAR would not sign off on it -- it was the specific example he used in a presentation he made to our local EAA chapter of what he could and could not sign off. (The other example was an aircraft where the designer set a GW of 1800 lbs, and the builder wanted to set 2100 lbs as his GW - mostly because his airplane weighed about 300 lbs more (empty) than the "factory" spec... The DAR's rationale was that it doesn't pass the "reasonable man" standard... Without engineering data to support the GW increase (or "glider" designation), he would not sign off on that airplane. Maybe it's just his personal bias, or maybe the FAA made this "common sense" a mandatory test for DARs, but if you really want to try to get a Patrol signed off as a "motor-glider" around here, you have to get an FAA person to do the sign-off...

Either way, I don't much see the point in trying to bend the rules like this. If you want an LSA, build the LSA version. Trying to build a Patrol light enough to be a useful "sport-pilot legal" airplane would be extremely difficult. Even if you build as light as Bob did (950 lbs), you've only got a 370-lb useful load when you cap the GW at 1320 lbs. A 950-lb Patrol with full fuel tanks would have a whopping 40 lbs left over for pilot, passengers, and baggage. That's the whole reason Bob developed the LSA - to built an aircraft that was an LSA-legal version that was as close to the Patrol as the LSA rules permitted.

Given the availability of BasicMed, why play games and invite FAA attention? Build the LSA or the Patrol or the 4-place Bearhawk and fly any / all of them under BasicMed.

[Bcone1381]

Jim;

Thanks for chiming in. All I know about this topic is what I stumbled across on the FAA's aircraft registry when I search Bearhawk Patrol. It sounds to me like you are way ahead of me on what the DAR's and FAA now find acceptable these days.

Regarding the idea of building a Patrol as an LSA, in Beartracks Q3 2008, there is an article about using the Patrol as an LSA. The article said the LSA version would have 27 gallons of fuel, no control surface weights, a light interior, with an O-200 and should weigh in at 850 lbs. The article says that they throttled back Bob's O-360 to simulate 80 and 100 hp for takeoff, and flew it at 1320 pounds. At those settings, the take off distance was about 500', had good climb, and produced 120 mph at 80 hp.

Brooks

[JimParker256]

Brooks, I was rushing to get out of the door for my sister's birthday party when I wrote that, and probably didn't get my intent across as well as I had hoped. (Lesson learned? Hope so!) I wasn't really meaning to rain on your parade, but rather to suggest that anyone who had this thought in mind should get with their local DAR to see what THAT person's reaction is before investing the time and effort to build a plane under the assumption they could license it as a motor-glider. Imagine how disappointing it would be to invest several years of your life into building a plane, only to discover that you can't fly it because you don't have a medical. Far better to start off building the LSA in the first place, knowing you can fly it with the driver's license medical. Although nowadays, with the approval of the BasicMed option, a lot more pilots with recently-expired FAA medicals (not revoked, just expired) would have the option of flying a Patrol or 4-place with a BasicMed sign-off...

When you get into it, the Bearhawk LSA is pretty different from the Patrol. To me, it has almost exactly the same "look and feel", with the same large, roomy cockpit, stance on the landing gear, etc... But to reduce the weight while retaining the same "utility" load factors (meets "Utility" category load factors at 1500 lbs gross weight - well above the LSA max), Bob used lighter tubing (though obviously still plenty strong for the weight, airspeed, and load factors), and there is less cross-bracing (one less fuselage cross-bracing station, IIRC), no flaps, and everything is designed around the LSA rule requirements rather than the higher Vne and payload of the Patrol. And, of course, it has smaller tanks (30 gallons) – which still give a pretty amazing range with the O-200 (and would be absolutely amazing with a Rotax!). Yet the performance is amazing. Search for the climb data posted by one of the LSA builders – it puts my O-200 powered Citabria 7ECA to shame with about the same UL, 3-4X the climb rate, and is about 30-35 mph faster in cruise. Honestly, I had to think long and hard before making the Patrol vs. LSA decision, but it finally came down to being able to fly with some of my "bulkier" friends (since I'm already plenty "bulky" myself...).

There is a thread over on "another forum" where a guy started out to build a Bearhawk LSA, but then decided to change pretty much everything, adding weight an complexity all over the place. He's not only adding flaps, but doing so in a way that is much heavier than Bob's design. He's changed so much of the design that he no longer calls it a Bearhawk LSA (which I'm sure makes Bob and Mark G a LOT happier), and I cannot help but think that when it's all done he will be about as heavy as a Patrol, but with the much lighter gross weight and lower UL of the LSA. Because of some of the engineering changes he's made, I personally would never fly in that airplane, nor would I allow anyone I know to fly in it. Assuming he ever gets it finished and convinces some DAR to sign it off, I'm VERY concerned that he will kill himself (or worse yet - someone else) when it comes apart in flight.

The LSA is an amazing plane that can do a LOT of things. Ditto for the Patrol and the 4-place. Just don't try to make the Patrol into a 3-place, or the LSA into a Patrol. Build the plane that suits your needs and your mission, and then fly happily ever after with it...

[Bcone1381]

May the pursuit of truth with a righteous heart be prioritized remaining silent over fear of offending someone. Thanks for your reply. While I approve of the builder getting N123WW certified as a motor glider and flying it with no medical certificate, I agree with you 100% and would not have posted what if I had more experience & knowledge in the realm of certification procedures. What you wrote and how you wrote it was outstanding. I always enjoy learning what your thoughts are and hope to cross paths next week at OSH. Look for my red Chevy van and Coleman Pop up.

[JimParker256]

Wish I could be at OSH this year, but we have a granddaughter due right in the middle of that week, so... But I truly expect to be there next year, and look forward to putting names with faces (and airplanes).

[bergy]

Thanks guys for all the input. If I had a chance to start over from scratch, I would be building a Bearhawk LSA, but I already had all the "heavy-stuff" built before the LSA option came along. So I am going to try to LSA-ify my Patrol. I guess I will wait as long as possible before I commit to a gross-wt. My sons are too busy with their lives to start flying. But I have two daughters that go only about 100# each, so perhaps they could one day fly my Patrol with full-fuel and be legal at 1320#

[tbaylx]

Speaking of gross weight, is the 2700# gross on floats for the 4 place Bravo published anywhere?

[Mark Goldberg]

I do not think it is published anywhere. But Bob Barrows has approved this. The Model B wing is somewhat stronger than the original wing because of the greater distance between the upper and lower cap strips on the main spar. And Bob had approved the 2700 lb gross weight for float planes with the original wing. Mark