Transavia Airtruk

[Richard scarborough]

60" Airtruk, flies better than it looks! electric powered.

[Tony Bennett]

wow

unusual sir.

like it

[Peter Miller]

NIce to see that.

I dd a control line one back in the late 70s or early 80s. Took it to Old Warden Scale Day. No one knew what it was.

IT was not nice to fly as a cont rol line model, possibly mine was too heavy.

[Richard scarborough]

I took my model to scale day at my club here in Australia, where the full size Airtruks were manufactured, no one knew what it was either!

[Peter Miller]

They should ahve seen the film Mad Max beyond the Thunderdome. Some good flying inan Airtruck at the end of that film

[John F]

unusual indeed but I do like the look of it.

[kc]

You need to be really confident before you build such a model otherwise your fellow club members are likely to say " did you really understand the plans?" or " what did it look like BEFORE you crashed it?" ( if they don't make such caustic comments it's not much of a club! )

Nice model Richard. If you had doubts before the first flight just imagine the bravery of the full size test pilot.

[Caveman]

Whilst on holiday in Denmark, 2012, we dropped in at the Danish Air Museum at Stauning. They have an airworthy Airtruk, which was undergoing maintenance during our visit.

Certainly a most unusual aircraft - love the model!

The Danish museum is well worth a visit and has a large collection of interesting aircraft, many of which are in airworth condition. They have flying dsiplays throughout the year, but, unfortunately, not when we were there.

Perhaps the best bit is the lack of 'fencing off' - you can walk right up to most exhibits, touch them and have a close look into undercarriage bays, jet tubes and the like.

Link to the museum here **LINK**

Cheers GDB

[John F]

Was that built from a plan or kit Richard?

[Martian]

very nice model Richard is it STOL by any chance ?

[Tim Hooper]

That's lovely1

I did have a think about building one, but was unsure about those skinny booms. How did you make yours?

tim

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

I think it's brilliant Richard, made me chortle

John

[Peter Miller]

Hi Tim. I don't know how Richard did his tail booms but I used aluminium tubes and wrapped them with balsa which could then be tapered down by sanding. The push rods went through the tubes to the elevators.

Mine was about the same size with a .36 glow. Came out quite heavy but did fly.

There was a similar aircraft but with out the bottom wing. Can't remember where I saw it r what it was called.

[John Olsen 1]

I remember seeing one of these here in NZ when I was a lad. They were apparently quite practical for the purpose. We call it top dressing in New Zealand rather than crop dusting, possibly because the "crop" being dusted is grass. If you look at the pictures, you will see the hopper opening at the top of the fuselage. Behind the hopper, you may be able to see some small windows. There was a passenger compartment behind the hopper. On the first day, the loader driver would drive the loader truck out to the farm airstrip, then when they finished for the day he would take a ride home to the base airstrip with the pilot. In the morning he would ride back out and they would go on with the job. The loader truck has a long version of the business end of a digger or front end loader, with a scoop on the end so that it can reach over the aircraft to fill the hopper. They reload the aircraft fast, no need to stop the engine. With the Airtruk the loader can come up between the booms. Topdressing is normally carried out over hill country, often quite rugged, so there is some spectacular flying close to the ground. (on flat land it is cheaper to spread the fertiliser using trucks)

The fertiliser is in pellet form, but is quite dusty so that a quite solid trail of whitish looking smoke is left behind the aircraft. While on a school trip into the country once during the sixties, the English born teacher got quite panicky when a plane started dropping on a nearby hill. It took quite a bit to reassure her that nothing was amiss. Thinking about it afterwards, she was probably of an age to have seen aircraft shot down during the war.

The original aircraft used in NZ for topdressing was of course the Tiger Moth. Lots of other types were used, including the obvious ones like Piper Pawnees and Cessna Agwagons, but also including some maybe less expected types like Lockheed Electras and Douglas DC3s. There was also the Fletcher FU24, which was locally made for a while. Most of these were to be seen at Hood aerodrome in Masterton, where we were also allowed to fly our model planes.

Actually, looking things up, the one I saw was probably a Bennett Airtruck, which was the earlier version and didn't have the lower wing.

John

Edited By John Olsen 1 on 16/12/2014 08:48:39

[Max Z]

Very interesting plane! I'd love to build one of those. I already have a reputation for bringing strange contraptions to our club field, so nothing lost there

I lived in NZ for a while back in the '80s, did not see one of those though. I saw a Fletcher doing its stuff once, making hair raising low level turns!

Max.

[John Lee]

Saw the full size at the Paris Airshow in the 70's where a wag commented that it didn't need to use pesticide, it just made a low pass & the bugs died laughing at it.......

Edited By John Lee on 16/12/2014 16:23:52

[Richard scarborough]

The model is built from a short kit by Laser Design Services in the USA. The tail booms are a built up construction of all balsa except for two carbon fibre tubes in each for the pushrods to run in, that also gives some additional strength. The outer skin is 2mm balsa, wetted and wrapped round a broomstick then left to dry. All up weight is 2.5 Kg.

It's quite an easy model to fly, just a bit lively! Flying it in a scale manner just requires a series of very low passes although it is quite happy with loops, rolls etc.

This one has been used for removing Gorse Bush. Herbicide would have been cheaper!

[Peter Miller]

I thought that the idea was to spray weeds to kill them, not rip them out by the roots

[John Olsen 1]

For crop dusting or spraying, the scale manner of flying would just be a series of low passes over a flat field, covering a different stripe on each pass. If you want a bit more excitement, fly it in the topdressing manner, which is much the same except for being performed over fairly rugged hill country. Google has plenty of images...

**LINK**

As you might expect, flying of this sort does result in a few mishaps. As well as topdressing, there is also a certain amount of work sometimes spraying the pine forests for insect or fungal infections. Since these are also often on rugged country, with the added attraction of few empty spaces for emergency landings, things can get exciting. The topdressing airstrips are often on slopes, so that takeoff must be downslope and landing upslope, regardless of the wind.

I don't know where the photo with the gorse was taken, but gorse is a big nuisance in NZ. It grows much faster than in the UK, and there is nothing much that will browse it. (I have seen Llamas eat it at the zoo.) When it gets dry it burns wonderfully, and the first thing to grow back is more gorse. I think the fire sets the seed. It was originally imported for hedges but is no good for that here, unless you want your whole farm to be impenetrable hedge with no grazing.

John

[Richard scarborough]

John, the photo was taken in Tasmania, Australia. Engine failure and subsequent forced landing account for the gorse wrapped around the aircraft. Apart from crop dusting - top dressing these aircraft were also used by the forestry dept for aerial seeding.