He started selling BD-4 construction drawings in 1968, and in 1970 introduced prefabricated kits-a new idea at the time. His next project was the BD-4, a boxy, easy-to-build four-place homebuilt. Outside investors took over, kicked Bede out and redesigned the BD-1 as an FAA-certified production aircraft, the American AA-1 Yankee. In a harbinger of things to come, he ran out of money before he could finish the project. In the early 1960s, Bede designed and promoted the BD-1, a conventional-looking two-seater intended to be fabricated by amateur homebuilders. An aeronautical engineer with an upbeat, fast-talking personality (“100 words a minute, with occasional gusts to 150,” as he put it), Bede was part of a grassroots clan of sport pilots frustrated and bored by expensive, stodgy Cessnas and Pipers. Jim Bede’s place in aviation history is that of both visionary and charlatan. In the process, they crashed and killed themselves in horrifying numbers.īut when I recall watching an airshow trio of jet-powered BD-5Js swoosh by at 300 mph, or think back on my brief 1974 flight in a factory prototype, there’s no doubt in my mind: Almost 50 years later, the BD-5 is still the coolest lightplane ever, still the ultimate private pilot’s fantasy. A number of diehard builders managed to complete and fly jury-rigged BD-5s powered by improvised engines. Yet the plane’s allure remained undimmed. The company eventually went bankrupt, and thousands of Bede customers ended up losing some $10 million. But plagued by the lack of a reliable engine and reckless financial mismanagement, Bede never delivered a single complete BD-5 kit. A handful of factory prototype BD-5s made test flights, triggering paroxysms of excitement among us kit-buyers. More than 3,000 people-many of them, like me, with imaginations fired but zero experience building airplanes-eventually purchased BD-5 kits. The tiny plane was called the BD-5 Micro. The kit, he promised, would take only about 600 man-hours to assemble-just four months of full-time work-and cost no more than a new Volkswagen Beetle.
His name was Jim Bede and he was promising to deliver, at some unspecified future date, the parts and materials for me to build a tiny single-seat airplane that looked like a rocketship and was powered by a snowmobile engine. On August 2, 1972, standing near a taxiway at Wittman Field in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I pressed a check for $200 into the hand of a short, fat guy in a red shirt. Jim Bede aimed high with his little homebuilt BD-5 bullet, but engine woes and questionable financial moves caused him to overshoot the target.