By Robbie Culver
Experimental amateur-built aircraft come in all shapes and sizes, but once in a while, one really stands out in the crowd that is Homebuilt Camping. Robert Bounds of Seward, Nebraska, flew his one-of-a-kind homebuilt Bearcoupe into EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026. “That’s just the name I came up with. It’s the only one there is.” The Bearcoupe has a history that’s … complicated.
It’s certainly not a kitbuilt aircraft, but Robert didn’t design all of it. “Well, part of it. A guy built an airplane that was grand champion plansbuilt in Oshkosh in ’89, and he built another one for a friend of his … and that airplane crashed in northern Idaho. Got carb ice and went into the trees in the mountains and destroyed it. I went up there and bought the wreckage and brought it back, and took a Sawzall and a bunch of measurements, cut it into small pieces, and reverse-engineered it. The wing is pretty similar to his. I didn’t change much on the wing. The fuselage is different.
“Its tail is a B-17 fin, because my mentor, Ed Martens, was a B-17 driver. He flew 30 missions over Germany and had a couple of awards and stuff. You can make a tail anything you want, so I thought, just make it look like a B-17. I always remember Ed when I walk up to my airplane,” Robert said.
As for how the Bearcoupe came to be, Robert said, “That guy that had the wreckage, he is a salesman. I said there’s no plans or anything. I told him, well, I’ve built a couple of planes.” The seller told Robert, “‘Oh, with your ability, you should be able to reverse-engineer this.’ You know, I’m eating it up with a spoon. He sold me the wreckage, and seven years later, I’ve still got the same wife, so I must have done well.”
Robert finished the airplane in 2013. “I must have started it in 2006. Took seven years to build it.” The Bearcoupe is nicknamed Checkered Past. When asked why, Robert explained, “In 2017, it got wrecked. I was up in Idaho, doing backcountry flying, and I had a backcountry instructor with me. He was a short guy, and for some reason, he wanted to land the last time we were flying together. When we landed, he got his feet up on the brakes, locked it up, and put it on its back. It took me two years to put it back together. So I thought, well, I’ll put a sticker on there. It has a checkered past. There we go.” Yeah, it’s complicated.
“It’s a good airplane for old guys. I touch down at about 40 knots with full flaps. I cruise at 115 knots, and I run it lean of peak. It’s fuel-injected, so I can run it real lean. Normal cruise is about 6 gallons an hour. It’s a cheap airplane to fly.” The aircraft holds 54 gallons of fuel and sports an O-340 Lycoming with a Catto prop. “I love that Catto prop. That airplane went on its back, and this is the same prop. It didn’t break it.”
As for the trip to AirVenture 2026, Robert said, “I come here with my brother-in-law. I helped him build an airplane. I’ve ridden here with him, and he’s ridden here with me, and we travel together well, and we’ve been here before, so it’s a little safer with two pilots. We know what we’re doing. Well, I don’t know if we know what we’re doing, but we’ve been here before.
“I picked him up in Blair, Nebraska, where he lives. He jumps in, and we fly over here, and it was beautiful. It wasn’t too hot. We ran up over at 5,500, I think, and it was 70 degrees and dead smooth. It was just perfect. It was a nice ride, and we got in the line [at FISK]; there was nobody in front of us, hardly. We just drove right in here, no scary stuff. It was an easy, easy ride in. They stuck us on 27, and we got taxied and taxied and taxied. We got rock star parking here.”
Look for Checkered Past in Row 305 of Homebuilt Camping.