BD5B

NTBS posted today fatal BD5B crash in Traverse City, MI on 1 November.

Looked close as thought it might have been Juan trying to fly his bird
but was a 'B' not a 'J'.

No info on engine, first flight or ?????

Big John

In my opinion that is in bad form John.
all the best
Sean

Big John wrote:
NTBS posted today fatal BD5B crash in Traverse City, MI on 1 November.

Looked close as thought it might have been Juan trying to fly his bird
but was a 'B' not a 'J'.

No info on engine, first flight or ?????

Big John

sean trost wrote:
In my opinion that is in bad form John.
all the best
Sean


Sean,
Maybe I missed something, but that didn't particularly seem in bad form
to me. When a Fly Baby went down a couple of years ago, I wondered if
it was Ron. If I had heard of a BD5_J_ going down, I would wonder if it
were Juan. There might have been ill intent in Big John's heart, (to
poorly paraphrase a former peanut farmer) but I don't think I see it in
the posting.

B.S.

Let me start over.

My condolences to the family of the pilot. It is difficult to properly
express ones feelings to the family of pilots who lose their lives in
aircraft accidents (especially homebuilts).

I'm glad it was not Juan as I hold no personal animosities against him
even though I many times don't agree with what he says and his
actions. His loss would leave a big hole in the r.a.h. comunity and I
have heard him say a few things on the + side when he is not fighting
with Chuck.

I did look close to make sure it wss not his plane which I consider to
only be a normal thing after he has posted so much about this BD5 and
that he is going to fly it.

No one has posted a follow up with the name of the BD5 pilot, and
details of the accident (1000 ft short on final). You don't see many
BD5 accidents but there are not a lot flying so statically the
accident rate is probably pretty high vs other homebuilts with a lot
completed and flying?

Since Juan is active in the BD5 comunity, he may come on and give us
the details of this accident if no one else does?.

All fly safe.

Big John

Now, does that make everyone happy?


On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:57:19 -0600, Big John
wrote:

NTBS posted today fatal BD5B crash in Traverse City, MI on 1 November.

Looked close as thought it might have been Juan trying to fly his bird
but was a 'B' not a 'J'.

No info on engine, first flight or ?????

Big John

Big John,
Seems I was shootin off at the mouth...er keyboard.
Sorry bout that.
Sean


Big John wrote:

Let me start over.

My condolences to the family of the pilot. It is difficult to properly
express ones feelings to the family of pilots who lose their lives in
aircraft accidents (especially homebuilts).

I'm glad it was not Juan as I hold no personal animosities against him
even though I many times don't agree with what he says and his
actions. His loss would leave a big hole in the r.a.h. comunity and I
have heard him say a few things on the + side when he is not fighting
with Chuck.

I did look close to make sure it wss not his plane which I consider to
only be a normal thing after he has posted so much about this BD5 and
that he is going to fly it.

No one has posted a follow up with the name of the BD5 pilot, and
details of the accident (1000 ft short on final). You don't see many
BD5 accidents but there are not a lot flying so statically the
accident rate is probably pretty high vs other homebuilts with a lot
completed and flying?

Since Juan is active in the BD5 comunity, he may come on and give us
the details of this accident if no one else does?.

All fly safe.

Big John

Now, does that make everyone happy?


On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:57:19 -0600, Big John
wrote:


NTBS posted today fatal BD5B crash in Traverse City, MI on 1 November.

Looked close as thought it might have been Juan trying to fly his bird
but was a 'B' not a 'J'.

No info on engine, first flight or ?????

Big John

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:23:22 -0600, Big John
wrote:



No one has posted a follow up with the name of the BD5 pilot, and
details of the accident (1000 ft short on final). You don't see many
BD5 accidents but there are not a lot flying so statically the
accident rate is probably pretty high vs other homebuilts with a lot
completed and flying?

Man those BD5's just don't seem like a good idea. Tiny, high stall
speed, tight engine compartment, and the pilot sits right on the
bottom of the fuselage.

The airplane has been discussed in this group previously and my
recollection is that it has a very high fatal accident rate. It's
first flight accident rate is also very high. Perhaps Ron Wanttaja
can step in with his always meticulous statistical analysis.

Corky Scott

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:57:03 GMT,
(Corky Scott) wrote:

Man those BD5's just don't seem like a good idea. Tiny, high stall
speed, tight engine compartment, and the pilot sits right on the
bottom of the fuselage.

The airplane has been discussed in this group previously and my
recollection is that it has a very high fatal accident rate. It's
first flight accident rate is also very high. Perhaps Ron Wanttaja
can step in with his always meticulous statistical analysis.

Damn, Corky, were you lurking in the back of the EAA Chapter 26 meeting
last night? I'm in the process of doing a detailed homebuilt accident
analysis, and presented my initial results.

Unfortunately, the year I chose for my in-depth analysis didn't include any
BD-5 crashes, so it's of no use for us in this case. Let's do a simpler
comparison. I ran the NTSB database for the accidents since January 1,
1990:

Total Amateur-Built Accidents: 2881
Total BD-5 Accidents: 22

BD-5s were involved in 0.8% of all homebuilt accidents, and in 1.1% of all
fatal homebuilt accidents. Due to the small size of the sample, this may
not be a significant difference (it's only three accidents extra over 13
years).

Looking at the FATALITY rate:

Total Amateur-Built Fatal Accidents: 837 (# of accidents, not fatalities)
Total BD-5 Fatal Accidents: 9

Homebuilt fatal accident rate: 837/2881, or 29.1%
BD-5 fatal accident rate: 9/22, or 40.1%

But what of the accident ratio in comparison to the size of the homebuilt
fleet? Let me "Back Out" some data that might let us make a comparative
analysis.

The January 2003 FAA database listed 25,886 aircraft as being in the
Experimental Amateur-Built category. The same database has listings for
237 BD-5s, of which 81 are listed as having Experimental Amateur-Built
certification.

Before I go on, allow me to explain the difference. Database listings
include a field for the category the aircraft is certified in. If the
field is blank, the usual process is to assume the airplane has received an
N-number but has not yet been approved for flight. My past analysis
indicates this is not necessarily the case; for instance, John Ammeter's
RV-6 (which flew something like ten years ago) STILL doesn't have an entry
in the Certification block, and, with Juan's help, I uncovered one BD-5
(not one of his, BTW) that made its first flight about five years after
being listed as certified.

Back when I did my first registration analysis, I found about 36,000
aircraft listings with "homebuilt-like" names, but only about 22,000 of
them (this was in 1997) were actually listed as certified. The FAA and EAA
only count those listed as certified, so the published figure is in the
20,000 range instead of in the 30,000s.

So...officially, we should only use the 81 BD-5s for analysis. Due to the
uncertainty, I'll list the figures for the full fleet as well. BTW, I used
"BD-5", "BD 5", "BD5", and "BEDE 5" (with appropriate wild cards) as my
search terms.

Anyway, to the stats:

Total homebuilts in 2003: 25886
Total certified BD-5s: 81
Total listed BD-5s: 237

Lets compare the number of accidents over the past 13 years with the
current number of homebuilts. We'll add the accident airplanes back into
the current fleet for a baseline.

This doesn't, in itself, produce a viable statistic. But it is useful in
comparing between aircraft types.

Total homebuilts plus accidents: 28767
Total certified BD-5s plus accidents: 103
Total listed BD-5s plus accidents: 259

(Note that the NTSB accident listings make no differentiation whether the
accident aircraft had a blank in the certification status field)

Percentages:

Total homebuilt accident rate: 10%
Total certified BD-5 rate: 21%
Total all-listing BD-5 rate: 8.5%

So whether the BD-5 is twice as bad as the main fleet or a little bit
better really depends on your interpretation of the certification data. By
the FAA and EAA's interpretation, the BD-5's accident rate is twice that of
the main homebuilt fleet.

Ron Wanttaja

In article , Ron Wanttaja
writes:


Total homebuilt accident rate: 10%
Total certified BD-5 rate: 21%
Total all-listing BD-5 rate: 8.5%

So whether the BD-5 is twice as bad as the main fleet or a little bit
better really depends on your interpretation of the certification data. By
the FAA and EAA's interpretation, the BD-5's accident rate is twice that of
the main homebuilt fleet.

Ron Wanttaja



What would be more telling would be the accident rate per hours flown. Even if
the 236 BD-5s were accurate, I suspect the accident per hour would be
significantly higher for the BD5 than your figures indicate. Unfortunately,
there is no available database that would give that information.


Bob Reed
www.kisbuild.r-a-reed-assoc.com (KIS Builders Site)
KIS Cruiser in progress...Slow but steady progress....

"Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice,
pull down your pants and Slide on the Ice!"
(M.A.S.H. Sidney Freedman)

"RobertR237" wrote in message
...
In article , Ron Wanttaja
writes:


Total homebuilt accident rate: 10%
Total certified BD-5 rate: 21%
Total all-listing BD-5 rate: 8.5%

So whether the BD-5 is twice as bad as the main fleet or a little bit
better really depends on your interpretation of the certification data.
By
the FAA and EAA's interpretation, the BD-5's accident rate is twice that
of
the main homebuilt fleet.

Ron Wanttaja



What would be more telling would be the accident rate per hours flown.
Even if
the 236 BD-5s were accurate, I suspect the accident per hour would be
significantly higher for the BD5 than your figures indicate.
Unfortunately,
there is no available database that would give that information.


I haven't spent that much time looking at the accident reports but it seems
that TTAF and TTE might be listed somewhere on, if not all, a good number of
accident reports. While you wouldn't get a total time for the fleet you
could get a total time for the accident involved fleet. Might be telling.

Ron

Tnx for the stats. Validated my gut feeling from seeing scattered
reports through the years.

Of benefit to those thinking about building , if you massaged your
figures to show which birds had the best safety rate, might help some
rethink their possible choice of home built? Of course your gross
figures would include stupidly on pilots part but total percentage
number would still be a good indicator. As chinese say, "Hot airplane
and stupid Pilot, accident make" G

Robert (Borovec) made Crater Lake, OR last night on their way to boat
in FL. They started east through the mountains and with the bad Wx
(ice and snow and cold temp) that came up think they rethought and
moved west to get in the 'Valley' to go south to LA and east into the
dessert and stay south rest of 'voyage' )

Big John


On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 16:04:17 GMT, Ron Wanttaja
wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:57:03 GMT,
(Corky Scott) wrote:

Man those BD5's just don't seem like a good idea. Tiny, high stall
speed, tight engine compartment, and the pilot sits right on the
bottom of the fuselage.

The airplane has been discussed in this group previously and my
recollection is that it has a very high fatal accident rate. It's
first flight accident rate is also very high. Perhaps Ron Wanttaja
can step in with his always meticulous statistical analysis.

Damn, Corky, were you lurking in the back of the EAA Chapter 26 meeting
last night? I'm in the process of doing a detailed homebuilt accident
analysis, and presented my initial results.

Unfortunately, the year I chose for my in-depth analysis didn't include any
BD-5 crashes, so it's of no use for us in this case. Let's do a simpler
comparison. I ran the NTSB database for the accidents since January 1,
1990:

Total Amateur-Built Accidents: 2881
Total BD-5 Accidents: 22

BD-5s were involved in 0.8% of all homebuilt accidents, and in 1.1% of all
fatal homebuilt accidents. Due to the small size of the sample, this may
not be a significant difference (it's only three accidents extra over 13
years).

Looking at the FATALITY rate:

Total Amateur-Built Fatal Accidents: 837 (# of accidents, not fatalities)
Total BD-5 Fatal Accidents: 9

Homebuilt fatal accident rate: 837/2881, or 29.1%
BD-5 fatal accident rate: 9/22, or 40.1%

But what of the accident ratio in comparison to the size of the homebuilt
fleet? Let me "Back Out" some data that might let us make a comparative
analysis.

The January 2003 FAA database listed 25,886 aircraft as being in the
Experimental Amateur-Built category. The same database has listings for
237 BD-5s, of which 81 are listed as having Experimental Amateur-Built
certification.

Before I go on, allow me to explain the difference. Database listings
include a field for the category the aircraft is certified in. If the
field is blank, the usual process is to assume the airplane has received an
N-number but has not yet been approved for flight. My past analysis
indicates this is not necessarily the case; for instance, John Ammeter's
RV-6 (which flew something like ten years ago) STILL doesn't have an entry
in the Certification block, and, with Juan's help, I uncovered one BD-5
(not one of his, BTW) that made its first flight about five years after
being listed as certified.

Back when I did my first registration analysis, I found about 36,000
aircraft listings with "homebuilt-like" names, but only about 22,000 of
them (this was in 1997) were actually listed as certified. The FAA and EAA
only count those listed as certified, so the published figure is in the
20,000 range instead of in the 30,000s.

So...officially, we should only use the 81 BD-5s for analysis. Due to the
uncertainty, I'll list the figures for the full fleet as well. BTW, I used
"BD-5", "BD 5", "BD5", and "BEDE 5" (with appropriate wild cards) as my
search terms.

Anyway, to the stats:

Total homebuilts in 2003: 25886
Total certified BD-5s: 81
Total listed BD-5s: 237

Lets compare the number of accidents over the past 13 years with the
current number of homebuilts. We'll add the accident airplanes back into
the current fleet for a baseline.

This doesn't, in itself, produce a viable statistic. But it is useful in
comparing between aircraft types.

Total homebuilts plus accidents: 28767
Total certified BD-5s plus accidents: 103
Total listed BD-5s plus accidents: 259

(Note that the NTSB accident listings make no differentiation whether the
accident aircraft had a blank in the certification status field)

Percentages:

Total homebuilt accident rate: 10%
Total certified BD-5 rate: 21%
Total all-listing BD-5 rate: 8.5%

So whether the BD-5 is twice as bad as the main fleet or a little bit
better really depends on your interpretation of the certification data. By
the FAA and EAA's interpretation, the BD-5's accident rate is twice that of
the main homebuilt fleet.

Ron Wanttaja