Whome? wrote:
Thousands of people instantly fell
in love with it immediately when it was introduced in what, the late 1060s.


Yeah I heard that William The Conqueror put down a deposit right after
invading England and was screwed by Bede in 1069...

Just teasing; that sort of typo is just too tempting...

Bottom line is the airplane, while a brilliant design, has always
suffered for lack of a really reliable powerplant that was light enough.
The lack of crashworthiness inherent in the BD 5's configuration makes
engine reliability really critical. In the end the jet version is
probably the safest one due to the better reliability of a turbojet.

Add in the fact of size, the nasty stall behavior with an 80mph stall
speed with the original 64-212 root airfoil (!) (see:
http://www.bd5.com/reprofile.htm ). Even with the reprofiled airfoil the
stall is still 60 which means you touch down at 70 and you really don't
want to do that in a plowed field after the belt on your Honda lets go.

So, you have an airplane with a market limited to those with high risk
tolerance and at the same time willing to do a lot of tinkering, which
is pretty small.

For someone that really wanted that configuration, the Mini Imp was
probably a more practical choice.

John