It was the plane that we all wanted the moment we first saw it. We
were young and probably a bit foolish. Utility wasn't of interest,
speed and flying were the defining elements. The BD5 was the answer
and the price promised to be right. Times have changed and most of us
have matured and moved on to bigger and better goals. The market has
also matured and people expect more from their aircraft.

Richard Riley wrote:
On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:37:27 -0500, "J.Kahn"
wrote:


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.

It started off with a big disadvantage - single place, no room for
luggage. Any safety or reliability, or business issues aside, the
configuration is simply not *practical.*

Sure, it's fun, it's sexy, it's a wannabe fighter pilot's daydream.
But exactly HOW are you going to have fun with it?

Since it's one seat, you can't take your friends up and impress them.
You can't take your Significant Other out for a $100 hamburger. No
luggage, so you can't use it for a business trip.

Mostly, you go up, fly around, and land back at your home airport.

If that's your mission, the high speed is not a good thing. It just
increases the pilot work load. It's not aerobatic, it's not a good
instrument platform, so you're not going to use it to practice your
pilot skilz. It's utility is very limited, it's practical mission
(go up and have some fun and come back down) is better served by just
about anything else that flies.

The only real things it had going for it (from a sales point of view)
were great looks and responsive controls.

So your market is someone with high risk tolerance, willing to tinker
a lot, doesn't want to take a passenger or baggage, who wants to fly
fast but not actually go anyplace. That's a VERY limited market.

I lost a LOT of customers just because I was selling a plane with 2
seats in tandem. Their wives/girlfriends didn't want to sit in back.
It was side by side or nothing.

From a configuration/mission/market standpoint, the BD-12 made a lot
more sense. Too bad it didn't fly.