Fast, High-End Composite Kit Business On Market

Over the past couple of months we've talked to Jim Barr several times as he's hashed out what to do with this project, and Jim informs us that he's retiring from the kit business to return to retirement, and perhaps a little bit of his first love -- buying and selling fine machinery, perhaps Beechcraft Barons.

If you've ever wanted to get into the kit business, this is an interesting opportunity. Jim is looking to sell the entire project, data, rights, and hardware, complete composite-curing heat and vacuum room -- at least five trailers of stuff. Including the trailers!

The Barr 6 is a high-performance composite kit airplane designed to be easy to fly but capable of prodigious load-carrying feats and excellent speeds. It does this through the old-fashioned guarantor of power, cubic inches (the prototype was IO-720 powered).

Despite the thirst of the IO-720 at full power, throttled back to 75% power -- 300 HP -- it burns less fuel than most 300 HP engines do while making rated power. The aircraft is designed to take 400 to 500 HP, and some studies (but nothing firm or final) have been done towards turbine power and pressurization.

While the airplane resembles a Cessna 206 or 207 at a glance, it has a most un-206-like speed. 75% cruise was 206 mph; Vne, 248, and Va, 171. Yet the plane comes over the fence at 70 and touches down at 45.

These numbers were developed by engineers, but most of them were attained during the 210 hours of flight of the prototype, N83W, which was subsequently destroyed in a ground fire. (The cruise at gross weight had only been documented to 190 mph, but Barr believes that there are some aerodynamic improvements possible, for example with the wheel fairings, as all the other engineering specs were proven in flight testing).

The Barr 6 has a roomy, walk-around cabin with a prodigious 2303-lb useful load. It's the light weight of the composite structure that makes it possible, and the composites are made so lightweight, but strong, by internal reinforcements made of bundles of carbon rods -- an innovation designed into the Barr 6 by Charley Rodgers, a former Bell composites engineer.

"Since 1989 I have worked towards developing and marketing the Barr 6," Jim said in a statement. "I will be 62 in June, 2996 and do not have the energy... to set up manufacturing of kits for customers. It is time for new people to take the proven Barr 6 into manufacturing and delivery of kits to waiting customers."

The Barr 6 was covered previously in Aero-News. It has some interesting detail design features, some lifted from Cessna aircraft, some from the Bonanza, and some entirely novel.

Barr (above) has put fifteen years of his life and two million dollars of his own money in this project. He's now looking for a good home for it --looking for someone that can take a good utility plane with a remarkable load-bearing capacity, and manufacture and market it successfully.

This might be a good project for a completion shop looking to move up to be a full service kit vendor, or a composite ace with a little access to capital, looking to set up his own shop and strike out on his own.

The project includes all the rights and technical data, all the molds and plugs, and advice and consulting support as needed from Jim Barr. He's also making his expert engineer, Charley Rodgers, available to do FEA (Finite Element Analysis) work for the new buyer, should such work be required (of course, Rodgers's fees are not included in the purchase).

A massive quantity of development documentation, including over forty red binders (below), and engineering documentation, from Martin Hollmann, Charley Rodgers and other professional engineers, is also part of the sale. So are plans sets for several other homebuilt aircraft, a partial Cessna 206, and such necessities as the Autocad license for reading and revising the Barr 6 drawings. Finally, a complete technical library and a comprehensive set of magazines -- so it's also a rare chance to complete your US Aviator collection!

For complete information about the sale and the company, click on the link below.

 FMI: www.barraircraft.com