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Article from Aero News 22nd May 2007
A Perth, Australia pilot was injured this weekend, when his homebuilt Bede Aircraft BD-5 went down seconds after takeoff Sunday.
Witnesses said the tiny plane (file photo of type, right) impacted the runway seconds after it became airborne, due to apparent engine failure. The aircraft came down on its belly, skidded off the end of the runway and caught fire.
Pilot Peter Gilbertson was extricated from the aircraft by spectators and airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital with spinal injuries and burns, according to The West Australian.
The accident occurred during the annual Sport Aircraft Association WA Chapter fly-in in Northam, Australia. Northam Aero Club president Tony Rees said more than 100 people were in attendance and about 40 aircraft were participating.
“The plane landed very heavily,” Rees said. “A couple of members raced over with fire extinguishers and dragged the pilot out.”
The fire was doused within minutes, but at least two rescuers suffered minor burns.
Another witness said it appeared the plane had run into problems prior to take-off.
“There seemed to be a bit of trouble when they were starting it but eventually it got going,” the witness said. “Three planes took off together but that plane just basically lost power and dropped out of the sky. It skidded about 80m to 100m off the runway and caught fire. There were guys running across to get the pilot out and we thought it would explode any minute.”
He said Gilbertson appeared to be conscious and talking when he was extricated from the aircraft.
Jeff, I will reach out to the owner. I got to meet him in Western Australia during a visit a couple of years back. To be honest, I never noticed the doors until you pointed them out!
Another day in the workshop. I was not completely happy with the right hand side CC4 forward windscreen attachment flange, which was not sitting up fully flush with the fuselage side skin due to rivets not being fully flush between the two. After some filing and finishing the CC4 flange now sits beautifully flush with no gaps anywhere. I guess I could have looked past it, but figured I should get it perfect. I also remade the CC12 corner doublers and gave them just a little more length on the horizontal section.
Some good old ‘Visual Progress’ never hurt any builder! Was great to get the forward canopy bow sat in place with the instrument cluster cover, giving a real feel as to how the finished aircraft will look!
More work on trimming and fitting the forward windscreen mounting flanges. This part of the job has taken far longer than I thought it would, with plenty of back-and forth fitting and filing going on. Must have spent a good three hours sorting out the alignment of the CC11 mounting flange, then another two hours marrying up the CC4 parts. As stated in the beginning of this thread, the plans template for the CC4 just did not fit right, so both left and right hand sides had to be made fresh to fit!
I paid particular attention to get the diagonal interface between the CC11 and CC4 as clean and sharp as possible. Am happy with the result I achieved.
Before I finished up, I made a quick flange depth gauge and ran it around the various flange faces to ensure that I have a consistent and equal flange on all sides. Some additional filing was required, with everything now ready for the next steps!
Another progress day today. Managed to get the CC4, CC11 and CC13 forward windscreen mounting flanges cut out and trial fit – albeit with some fiddling about. Having carefully copied across the templates from the full-sized BD5 plans to the 2024 T3 0.032″ sheet, and spending time carefully cutting out the components with the band-saw and file finishing all edges, I quickly discovered they did not fit the airplane!
So, it was back to making the part from scratch to achieve the desired outcome!
The CC4 part according to the plan is a 1.50″ wide curved section of metal, however, I took a straight-edge and laid it in along the longitudinal hat sections that run along each side of the aircraft and that sat there flush. So, instead of cutting out a curved section, I simply created the CC4 part as a perfectly straight 1.50″ wide section and it fits in as the plan calls for it.
The plans template for the CC11 was close to fitting to my aircraft, but required both ends to be shortened down. Now that I have this component fitting nicely, I will go ahead and trim down and polish up the sides.
I have rough cut both CC13 reinforcing angles and tomorrow I will set about getting those tidy.
