Barrows Bearhawk

The Barrows Bearhawk, now also called the Bearhawk 4-Place, is an American amateur-built aircraft, designed by Bob Barrows and produced by R&B Aircraft of Fincastle, Virginia, AviPro Aircraft and now Bearhawk Aircraft of Austin, Texas. The aircraft is supplied as a kit or as plans for amateur construction.

Design and development
The Bearhawk was designed in the early 1990s as a personal project by Barrows to carry aircraft engines for delivery as freight. It features a strut-braced high-wing, a four-seat enclosed cabin that is 42.5 in wide and accessed by doors, fixed conventional landing gear and a single engine in tractor configuration.

The aircraft fuselage is made from welded steel tubing covered in doped aircraft fabric, while the wings are made from aluminum sheet. Its 33 ft span wing employs a NACA 4412 mod airfoil, has an area of 180 sqft and mounts flaps. The aircraft's recommended engine power range is 150 to 260 hp and standard engines used include the 180 hp Lycoming O-360 and 250 hp Lycoming O-540 four-stroke powerplants. Construction time from the supplied kit is 1200 hours.

The prototype was fitted with a 170 hp Lycoming O-360 burning automotive fuel, but in August 2023, the option of fitting the DeltaHawk DHK180 type certified, two-stroke 180 hp diesel engine was added.

Operational history
By October 2016, 77 examples had been registered in the United States with the Federal Aviation Administration and 11 with Transport Canada.

Variants

 * Bearhawk (4-Place Bearhawk)
 * Four seat model with a cabin 42.5 in wide and a gross weight of 2700 lb, with 75 reportedly completed and flown by December 2011. Employs a NACA 4412 airfoil.


 * Bearhawk Bravo
 * Improved model introduced at AirVenture in July 2016. The wing has a 12 in greater span and 5 sqft greater area and employs a Riblett 30-413.5 airfoil, which gives a 5 to 8 mph higher top speed while retaining a low stall speed. The redesigned airframe also uses aluminum fuselage formers, window sills and door sills, replacing the steel formers and sills in the original model, which provides better corrosion resistance and less weight. The landing gear struts are made of heavy-wall round cross section tubing rather than streamlined tubing, which provides more resistance to sideload failure.


 * Patrol
 * Two-seats in tandem model with a cabin 32 in wide and a gross weight of 2000 lb, with three reportedly completed and flown by December 2011.


 * Companion
 * Two-seats in side-by-side configuration model, with a gross weight of 2200 lb. First customer deliveries in October 2019.