Bearhawk in the backcountry

[mswain]

I wanted to drop this video in this thread too:

You need to watch it on YouTube, I don't think it will work if you watch it here (embedded on this webpage)

- IMPORTANT - remember to use the control button in the top left corner of the video, to access the 360 degree views, otherwise watching the video will suck! The quality isn't "amazing".

Yes, it is French. Magnifique!

Wow, that is neat. On the IPad you just tilt to pan around

[Battson]

Great weather for flying this weekend, stopped at the riverbed, the beach, and did an hour of STOL circuits.



I have found I've become proficient enough to retract the flaps on landing for STOL stuff. The main advantage isn't reduced lift, in the Bearhawk the big advantage is the tail gets a lot heavier with the flaps up, so you can brake a lot harder and stop shorter.

[Battson]

And yes - some of you might have noticed I've previously been an outspoken proponent of not doing that flap retraction thing on landing.
I still reckon that the lift reduction benefits are negligible, I don't think it's worth dumping the flaps to stop the plane flying to get weight onto the main wheels.
The only reason I like to do it in the Bear, is because it makes the tail much heavier, and enables more braking that way. This is about prop wash, and works at most any airspeed. Its not about putting more weight on the mains.

[Battson]

The adventures continue, summer holidays in New Zealand.

This was an especially tricky spot, by my personal standards. This was a 300ft one-way landing on a rocky bar, you can see basically the whole thing in the picture, including the dead-end in the trees. The aircraft is sitting where we stopped, under quite a lot of braking, just to give you an idea how tight that is. To be honest, I missed my mark and landed about 40 feet deeper than I needed to. Also, the rocks on the touchdown end of the bar were quite large and unevenly patterned, and I was not thrilled about using them.
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I've been pushing my limits recently, and grown a little more comfortable doing it, sometimes. Unfortunately, this means throwing more rocks into the tail feathers when I get the touchdown wrong. This was one of those days, we punctured the fabric in two places with one rock. Field repair...

This is another tight spot which required absolutely full braking - but we had room to spare in the end. Again you can see almost the whole landing run in picture.
This one was quite smooth, fortunately. It's hard to assess all the spots perfectly from the air, some spots you can see the grade of the rocks isn't that large, but upon landing you learn they are patterned in such a way that some stick out and others lay low, making for a rough landing.
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This spot was also really tight (see a pattern developing) and I needed to use the water to get out again(!!) to avoid dragging the tail in really rough rocky terrain on take-off (a one-way of sorts). I was loaded with three people and full tanks this time, a heavy load for a 290ft river bar.
Using the water was huge moment for me, personally. I have never had to use water before, and I've never practised it - because it seems risky to practice that without an instructor. I have read enough about hydroplaning to know what would happen. I do believe that there is a place to be able to use water in STOL ops, but I wanted to take my time.
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​I was surprised how much give the water had, I could feel the wheels go a fraction deeper as I checked the stick forward (to check I really was on the water), then push me back into the air like a coiled spring. I probably only used two plane lengths of water, but still... a first.... baby steps don't bite hard.

Have fun out there, and happy New Year.

[Phil]

But more importantly, how was the fishing?

[Battson]

Excellent.
Day one we got 6 rainbow trout in about an hour.
Day two we got 2 in a morning.
Day three we got 10 in an hour and a half, then decided to leave them alone!
All catch and release, fly fishing. Most fish were between 4 and 7 pounds.

[Phil]

Awesome! I started fly fishing again last year, and getting to the really hot fishing spots around Alaska is one of the things motivating me to make progress on my Patrol.

[patrickh99]

Love the videos! Especially the 360 one. Keep the videos and pictures coming as motivation for those of us still pecking away at our builds.

Patrick

[Peter Bishton]

Jono you have been fishing and practicing landing in less than the length of a footy field.!! On a gravel bar. You are clever. We have been cruising your wonderful country South Island in a toyota aurion. This morning my 14 yr old daughter bungy jumped above the Kawarau river near Queenstown. I am trying to book a scenic flight for Wanaka in the yellow C 185 that is there. Regards Peter

[Battson]

Still time to get to the forum! Nice.
We've got a family history with that yellow 185 (ZK-FMA), you'll usually find it at Makarora, call Southern Alps Air.

[Battson]

I've been deperately slack with the camera lately.... we are still doing a lot of flying!

Here's a few more shots from a recent diving trip:

En-route south to the Marlborough Sounds


Arrived at the airstrip, one way into the cliffs. Plenty of room.


Our generous host Cliff, with my father-in-law and my lovely wife! Thanks Cliff for the use of your boat, and the family to crew it! What a great place and a truly great group of people.


Here's the bay / port which we were diving in. A keen eye will see the airstrip in the bottom left corner of the photo:


Father in law with a feed of fish and crayfish (attacking his leg also). Our host's early model C172's in the background, plus a can be seen lurking A185F in the hanger. The backcountry connoisseur will notice the WingX installed.


Flying home with a plane full of wet dive gear, empty tanks, and the bounty of the sea ("Kai Moana"). I have to cruise-climb quite slowly to climb along side the C172 XP... 19" and 2300 in the climb... haha.

[lsa140]

Beautiful.

[Battson]

Here's a couple of photos from a recent hunting trip - it's the rut season down here in the southern hemisphere (just finished), so hunting is big on the backcountry agenda right now.

We had a lot of wind through this pass, at right angles to the small airstrip. About 22 knots crosswind component. Parked with a tailwind, means flaps down in the Bearhawk.
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We just camp next to the plane. It's pretty cold at night!
From this place, we can hunt Red Deer, Chamois, and Himalayan tahr.
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[Battson]

The plane (and ourselves) have been out enduring more tough conditions. Mid-winter hunting is on, once again.

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[JimParker256]

Cool pictures! (Pun intended!)

[Battson]

Doing a bit of flying in the teeth of the Norwesterly front.....

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[Mark Goldberg]

Jonathan - you do a fair amount of flying with the C180's and C185's. How do you think your BH compares? Mark

[Battson]

It compares very favorably.
My Bearhawk is faster than the red 185 with 31 inch; bushwheels. I am a little slower than the other, a 180, but it has much smaller tires fitted.
The Bearhawk will certainly land and take-off in half the space of the 180/185, with the same load of people and equipment aboard. The internal size is very similar. Really the only advantage of the 185 is the larger total carrying capacity and CG range, but that comes with the limit of only visiting larger airstrips.

[Glenn Patterson]

Hi Jonathan. I enjoy reading your back country adventures. Your country has a lot of out back places to go to. It is funny to see your frost but your seasons are the opposite to Canada. I have friends who go to Australia during our winter and complain how hot it is there & they would rather be there for the Aussie winter. It is hard to think of someone complaining about it being too hot where they are at while avoiding winter and at home we have snow up to our belt. I was wondering if you are using the 26x10.5x 6 Tundra tires?
Glenn

[Battson]

Hi Jonathan. I enjoy reading your back country adventures. Your country has a lot of out back places to go to. It is funny to see your frost but your seasons are the opposite to Canada. I have friends who go to Australia during our winter and complain how hot it is there & they would rather be there for the Aussie winter. It is hard to think of someone complaining about it being too hot where they are at while avoiding winter and at home we have snow up to our belt. I was wondering if you are using the 26x10.5x 6 Tundra tires?
Glenn

Thanks for the kind words Glenn,

Yes, the hemispherical difference is a funny old thing. My sister works in snow-sport and follows winter around the world, it's a hard life.

We are using the the Goodyear 26"x6 tire (which is really only 23.5" tall).
It's the best compromise I can make, as I am based at a controlled home field with a few long taxiways - and they use rough tar-sealed chip rock over here - which would destroy the soft rubber of Alaskan Bushwheels if used everyday. We are considering getting some 31" ABWs to use occasionally. Let me explain... some times of year, we do so much off-airport flying (landing) and we're away from home base for weeks at a time. For those trips, I now think it's worth having a set of ABWs. They will save wear on the landing gear and the rest of the fuselage, increase prop clearance, reduce take-off distance a little, and my insurance cost should keep getting lower - in other words, I hope to avoid crashing into a big rock, which seems a matter of time on smaller, firm tundra tires. I can't see everything flying past at 60kts, and I've already had a few close calls in the last 300-400 landings, where a big rock had to pass under the plane. It's a risk we run.

[Glenn Patterson]

Jonathan,
Thank you. Our BH is sitting on a small borrowed tires and have a pair of 26's to install for a grassfield. What do you normally cruise at with the 26's?

You mentioned that your BH had a couple rock holes to patch. Did you put any protection on the leading edge of the horizontal stab for rocks?
all the best.
Glenn

[Battson]

Jonathan,
Thank you. Our BH is sitting on a small borrowed tires and have a pair of 26's to install for a grassfield. What do you normally cruise at with the 26's?

You mentioned that your BH had a couple rock holes to patch. Did you put any protection on the leading edge of the horizontal stab for rocks?
all the best.
Glenn

I am running a thread about my cruise performance in the adjacent section of this forum, here's a link:

http://bearhawkforums.com/forum/flying-and-flight-testing/11168-cruise-speeds-performance-observations

I don't have any leading edge tape yet, I do need to fit some. The rocks make a mess of it, provided you do a LOT of riverbed landings. But it's mostly cosmetic.
My list of jobs is long, and my time for flying and pottering in the hanger is short!

[Glenn Patterson]

Thank you. I will check out your observations.
Glenn

[Av8rPaul]

Absolutely wonderful thread. So cool to see your part of the world and its similarities to the Alaska back country I grew up in.

The real world performance of your Bearhawk is exactly what I like to see and why I ordered my QB kit.

I don't think anyone would complain if you put a pic of one of those lovely rainbows up, as your Bearhawk helped catch it. :-)

[Battson]

Here are the first of a few snaps from our latest holiday - two weeks of winter aviation in the beautiful south of New Zealand. More content to follow.

Home away from home for NJB this winter.
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Our first venture into the outdoors for the holiday.
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Wifey standing next to the new shoes - which are almost half her height! haha.
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[Battson]

I should probably mention the reasons why we upgraded to 31" ABW tires, given I'm on record saying the 26"s were perfect for our mission.
So what happened? Our mission has changed.
The key change is we're moving to the South Island one day soon, which will bring us A LOT closer to our destinations. Not flying an 825NM round trip once a month means that fuel burn and cruise efficiency is less of a consideration. Truth be told, I also want to start accessing some rougher riverbeds around the South Island.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

You are certainly living the dream! 😁