Aircraft kit BD17 Nugget offers home built airplane kit at low cost with quick build time.

Innovative Design

The BD-17 Nugget is a single place, single engine, low wing, high performance sport aircraft. It sports an all metal construction, and can be built as a tricycle gear or tail dragger. The fuselage is made entirely of 1/2 inch thick flat all metal honeycomb sandwich material. These panels have skins on both sides of 2024 T3 of .020 inch thickness.

All panels are cut to size and are bonded with an extreme epoxy which cures in 15 minutes. Eight of these honeycomb panels make up the entire fuselage. It is not only simple and quick to assemble, but is exceptionally strong. The power plant can be a variety of engines from 40 to 70 HP. The initial kits will use a 60 HP, 2 cylinder, 4 cycle engine.		Two of the major design goals after safety were: 1.) To develop a low cost airplane AND 2.) To develop one that is fast to build The Nugget has accomplished these goals.
The horizontal tail is all metal and is of the "all flying tail" type, featuring an anti-servo trim tab. The vertical fin is all metal featuring a large surface area for good directional stability. The rudder and ailerons are of an innovative design, operating on a torque tube for which the entire surface is mold formed of rigid self skinning urethane foam. The wings incorporate an extruded tubular spar. This thoroughly tested concept was first featured by Jim Bede on the BD-1 Yankee. It is an extremely strong and safe spar design. This feature also allows relatively simple removable wings or even a folding wings design. The BD-17 Nugget is a relatively small aircraft with a roomy cockpit. It has a 21 1/2 foot wingspan with an overall length of 17.6 feet. The empty weight is approximately 460 lbs, but with a gross weight over 750 lbs. It can hold 16 gallons of fuel and use about 2.5 to 3.0 gallons an hour.