It's taking a while to absorb everything about the Bearhawk. Up until a few months ago, the Sonex was at the forefront, so all of my focus was on learning about a small aluminum plane. Catching up on the Bearhawk has been quite the challenge, with so many sources of information (the fairly simple plans, actual manuals, magazines, forums, and so on...). There's a sort of DIY/Wild West mentality about the Bearhawk vs. the structured factory plans that come with the Sonex. I guess that embraces the experimental nature of this plane. And with the changes made by the original builder of this one, it makes it that much more...interesting.
A few observations from what I've looked at so far:
1) The mods we were planning on making are probably a great idea, because they will get us that much more insight into the current structure.
2) We'll need to do a lot of material inspection and measuring to ensure that this thing ends up solid but not overweight.
3) One mod we discussed (large access panel on the empennage) is in the builder's manual, so I don't feel so guilty about the damage I did to the fabric during the horizontal stabilizer removal. Knowing that, I probably could have removed the four final screws in something less than the four hours it actually took me while lying on the ground in -6 F winter weather.
Next up we'll come up with a good plan of attack, and then systematically improve and complete the plane.
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