By Ian Ross
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What once was lost, now is Found.
More than 40 years after the first Bush Hawk took to the air, Found Aircraft Canada Inc. has begun production again on the legendary bush plane.
The Parry Sound-based company is in the midst of its first full year of production, having spent the last five years refining its original 1960s design,and receiving air-worthiness certification clearance in both Canada and the United States.
If you haven't heard that Found is the only Canadian manufacturer of bush and
utility aircraft, you can be excused, says the company's director of marketing and sales.
"We've been keeping this under wraps," admits Andrew Hamblin, who only began marketing and advertising in May. "We haven't been very vocal about the fact that we haven't been producing them until this year."
Well-known among bush pilots and aviation history enthusiasts, the Bush Hawk FBA-2C1 had a short-lived early career, but storied reputation across the Canadian North and Alaska.
Only 26 were ever built in the early to mid 1960s. But it quickly gained a reputation for its dependability and ruggedness as a back-country workhorse on wheels, floats or skis. Nine are still flying today.
The Bush Hawk's legacy is in delivering a no-frills ride with a basic avionics package and a chromoly steel tube frame designed to take a beating. It's also $75,000 US, cheaper than its closest competitor.
Some upgrades have been made from the original version to strengthen the wing, redesigning the steel frame to lighten the tail. It has helped increased the cargo capacity by 360 kilograms on floats and 270 kilograms on wheels.
The company offers three models: a 260-horsepower aircraft, a more popular 300-horsepower version and the new high performance Bush Hawk-XP which will be introduced for 2002.
They employ 45 in their 10,000-square-foot hangar on Roberts Lake at the edge of the Parry Sound Municipal Airport. Five more work in their Toronto design and sales office.
To lure Found to the community from Gravenhurst where it was situated before, the business development centre put together an incentive package involving the Town of Parry Sound and Seguin Township, each contribute $150,000 to the
airport commission to build the hangar.
One of the aircraft's original designers, Nathan "Bud" Found came out of retirement in 1996 to put the Bush Hawk back into production.
Decades before, Bud and his brothers, Dwight, Gray and Mickey, formed Found Brothers Aviation in 1946 and developed a light utility aircraft suitable for the needs of the bush flying industry.
During production in the 1960s, sponsorship funding dried up and the investors brought in consultants to see how they could improve profitability. One suggestion acted upon was to push the Found Brothers out of the company they had established.
The investors made their own design reconfigurations and built a six-seat model known as the Centennial 100, which flopped. The company eventually folded in 1968.
Hamblin says what paved the way for the Bush Hawk's revival was bush pilots hounding Bud Found to bring the plane back into the market.
During most of the 1980s and early 1990s, American manufacturers had stopped making aircraft because of liability concerns. With half of their costs going to insurance companies to cover lawsuits, companies like Cessna did not
produce single-engine aircraft for about 15 years until an act of Congress
restructured aircraft liability by imposing a cap.
Some manufacturers have since returned to producing aircraft, says Hamblin, but they prefer to cater to the upscale executive market. The bushplanes still flying in Canada, Alaska or in Third World countries are more than 30 years old and in need of repair.
The return of the Bush Hawk to the aviation scene has been a much-anticipated and celebrated event. Feature articles have appeared in Northern Pilot magazine, as well as a cover story in the July issue of Aviation Canada.
"We're pretty excited," says Hamblin. "This is the first year we're doing the airshow circuit. Judging from the feedback, we think we have a good product."
Already two Bush Hawks have been delivered - to Alaska and the Yukon - with three more expected to be out of the hangar doors in July. With their order book backlogged into next year, expansion is definitely in the works with the recent purchase of a 4,500-square-foot hangar nearby.
FedNor recently contributed almost $146,000 towards training costs for new three to four new employees and to develop prototypes of wheel-skis and a float.
