Troy Built Models Official Blog Be in the know with TBM.

23Sep/111

Success Story: Gerald D Robison’s Scratch built AirTractor

Another TBM Customer Success Story!

"On the internet I go by Cropduster48. I am 63 years old. Have been a real pilot, but no longer fly the real planes. As long as I can remember, I have been in love with thangs that fly. There are no proper plans for the AirTractor I built. Most of the design work was done on the kitchen table. So any one wanting plans for this plane are just out of luck. You can pull up the offical AirTractor web site and get excellent three view drawings. There is nothing fancy about my airframe. 3 mm birch plywood, white foam insulating, and fiberglass. I have about $250.00 in the basic airframe. Many many hours of work though. All fiberglass parts were built in house. TNT built the custom aluminum landing gear. Just a interesting note. The width of the tail was dictated by the width of my pickup truck bed. I built this 132" Fantasy AirTractor 201 using hardware from TBM. It has been a most successival Airplane. Flying weight turned out at 55 LBS. Curent power is a DLE 170. This is a scratch built plane, and is just standoff scale. AirTractor never produced a model 201, or a plane with a flat engine in it. Hense,the fantasy. Every AirTractor pilot I have shown this to realy liked the idea. The plane would have been built in 1956, rated at 235 HP. with a 180 GAL hopper. About the same size plane as a Piper Pawnee, without the wing bracing.


This video was made when the plane was powered by a DLA 112. When I installed the DLE 170, the original round fake engine would no longer work. The easy fix was to make a flat engine cowling, so that is what I did. This plane only tuck 5 months to design and build."

-Mr Gerald D. Robison

Share it!
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Mixx
  • Blogplay
  • MySpace
  • PDF
  • Print

Posted by Tone

 
  • Maddog11171

    Great Job on the build and the maiden flight looks like it handled great!

Copyright © 2012 Troy Built Models Official Blog · Powered by WordPress
Go to top ↑