Durafly Tundra

With my background in aviation, I was interested in flying airplanes too. While looking around for something Nice and easy to fly, I stumbled upon the Durafly Tundra. I knew I had to have one right away! A STOL plane with large Tundra tires, and flaps would be ideal to fly at the clearing next to the camping. A slow flyer of significant size (1300mm wingspan), so that it would still be well visible at a few hundred meters away.

At a price of less than €200, it would be within my range in a couple of months of saving. But then I saw an add for a second-hand one, with 4 batteries included, for €170. Apparently, I responded just in time, because the next day i could go pick it up! This guy had started building it, but it had sat on his bench for almost half a year without any progress already, so he had decided to sell it. So it was practically new, a touch cheaper, and it came with 4 batteries 😃

I had to learn to fly, of course, so I knew I was going to crash a couple of times. I did not have the illusion that i would keep it in this pristine condition. But with a bit of practice in a simulator, and my experience with flying actual size planes, I thought I'd be allright to give it a try.

So there came one day that I had finished putting the plane together, and found myself at the clearing next to the camping. It was right at the start of my summer holiday too! I had sought out an area where the was some short grass as a landing strip, and this was it: my christianing in model airplane flying!

I tried a simple take-off, and straight ahead landing, just to see how the airplane handled. It did not want to turn left or right, so that was a relief! I did need to adjust the pitch trim quite a bit, and I had read before that when applying flaps, a pitch-down mix was needed to keep it flyable. So that's what I did first. After a few take-offs and taxi-backs, I found it was time to practice circuits. Flying towards me on final, and landing past me, so I would be facing in the flight direction upon touchdown. That worked! Yes, I did crash a couple of times. One time I simply flew too slowly, and stall-spinned on the base-to-final turn. I hit the ground nose first, and the whole nose got to be about 5mm shorter. After expanding the foam with steam, and shortening the cockpit hatch for the remaining 1mm I could not iron out, I was ready to go out there again.

One of my next landings was a good one in itself, but the roll-out went through rough sand, and despite the large Tundra tires, the main landing gear got stuck and the plane nosed over. Nothing fancy, but the propeller broke, and I did not have any spares on hand! I ordered them directly from HobbyKing, but they only had stock in China, and they would of course only send to my home address, so I would not have them before the end of my holiday... I needed to find an RC store in the neighbourhood to get me some new 12x6 props. Preferably Carbon fiber, like the original. I ended up with glass bead reinforced plastic ones from 2 Brothers RC in Bussum, so I could continue my now 7 minutes old flying adventure 😃

-to be continued-