I just wanted to see where this goes.I bought a new never flown duraplane and put my motor and rx in it..Man this thing flies good....

Congratulations, glad you're enjoying your new duraplane.

I mean this thing looks like a turd in the sky but it flies.lol

If you say so...

Dr.1

I once built a S.P.A.D. (Simple Plastic Airplane Design) out of coroplast and plastic downspout. It flew pretty good too. Ugly thing, but it flew... crooked wing and all.

Someone once told me that if you took a door and put a large enough motor on it, he could get it to fly.. ha.. well, at times, I believe that.

I'm not trying to detract from your plane, just trying to be a tad bit funny here.. Enjoy your Duraplane. As you can see by my first line, there is something to say about getting some things to fly and enjoying it!!

DS.

i have a duraplane 20 with a GMS .40.......what a "brick!" but i'll tell you what....when the wind is blowing at the field and everyone else is sitting on the bench watching....my diraplane 20 is up and flying. it weighs a ton and lands terrible but while it's up, it's actually a joy to fly. this would not be my first choice for a plane (this set up was a freebie) 40 size balsa trainers with large wings are great trainers. that duraplane is supposed to take a beating and it probably will...but you should get a plane that takes off and lands well. how does yours land?

haha that reminds me of a story... my buddy got one and flew the heck out of it for awhile. well he ended up smashing into a tree at full throttle LOL man, from a few hundred yards away, it sounded like a 747 crashing. I dont like to laugh at people but man i was rolling.

no offence, but i heard that those things fly like crap.

There is a reason why they are called "Dura-Bricks". But hey, as long as you are having fun and I don't have to stand under it. Enjoy!

Hehe, Dura-Bricks.

me personally I think of it as a flying missile. Until I started flying really good aircraft though I did not know how bad it flew but after mastering that aircraft I had skills that could easily be translated to other aircraft such as high wing loading skills and Shooting fast landings

Not a Duraplane, but I have a Spad Debonair (I think it was the inspiration for the Duraplane) that I've been flying for four years. Its flown off grass, water, and snow. Its run into trees, had hard landings, and even suffered a broken spar about 150 feet up over water. With an RNAF wing and dual aileron servos, and a a TT Pro 46 on the nose, it flies like a dream. Just cuz its ugly on the ground, doesn't mean its ugly in the air. And when the wind kicks up, I can fly it without worries. I was flying it in March off 6 inches of snow and ice in a 20-25mph wind (from the National Weather Service data). And I have enough plastic in my workshop to rebuild it many times over should the need arise.

And don't forget, the F-14 is living proof that if you give it a big enough engine, you can make a brick fly.

Brad

WOW..So the PRETTY planes at your club never crash?

Say what you want about the Duraplane and the SPAD trainers. You can buy 2 Duraplanes for the price of an Avistar, SuperStar, Cadet or Rascal. If you're learning on your own, start cheap. Unless they have added something in the last year, I have built every plane on Spadtothebone.com and then some. I've had some pretty horrific "mishaps" and still haven't torn one up bad enough that it couldn't be fixed with 20 minutes and a hot glue gun. Duraplanes aren't meant to be precision aircraft. They were meant to crash ... epoxy the wing back together and back up in the air. They're a bit on the sluggish side ... but then again, they were menat to be a trainer.

Oh yeah, they crash but they look good all the way to the ground.

Hey, i said that's what ive heard, i didnt say it was true.

Someone want to post a picture of your S.P.A.D. and Duraplane so the rest of us can see what you are talking about? My Debonaire S.P.A.D. broke up pretty good (well, depends on your perspective in life... maybe it broke up pretty badly ) when the wing broke..and it took me all of 10 minutes to gather up all components, remove RX, Servo's, tank, and engine before I put it in the trash can. It flew, but would I say it flew good? Nah, not good at all, but it did fly.

And, as I said, someone once told me that they could make an oak door fly with a big enough engine..

DS.

PS. Is this the beasty? http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXE587&P=ML
If it is, Tower lists it as 5.5 pounds and costs $ 55.00. Cheap enough, I guess.. That's for a kit. I wonder if it comes in an ARF?

Here's my Deb. Modified from original plans with a RNAF Wing, and a tail dragger.

I've also had it on floats (see video at http://www.archive.org/download/Debo...loats_2006.WMV

You can also see video of it in action without the floats at:
http://www.archive.org/download/RNAF...ebinAction.WMV

Brad

It looks likes the kit almost is an ARF. Its probably very very easy to build cuz i saw a picture of the kit in a Tower Hobbies catalog and there are very few parts to put together.

Does anybody have the measurments for the fuselage and alluminum tail boom for the duraplane 40 trainer?

http://manuals.hobbico.com/dur/dura1111-manual.pdf

Allready have those instructions,crashed but dont have the actuall dimensions to rebuild from scratch. The fuselage and tail boom were damagec beyond usefullness, threw tham away, changed my mind now and want to rebuild it.

I love the dura-planes I can make them from right out of a hardware store and they fly so good
I was flying about 30 days ago and was trying to do a 100 foot loop and hit the top of a pine
tree went out and got the plane and all it needed was new rubber bands
I was on e-bay today and there was a new dura stik for $300 + $52 shiping

I made a Debonair with a flat wing/tail dragger, I liked it very much. Was it a dog, yeah it was, but it flew fairly well. Wasn't particularly pretty (kind of looked like a drone), not extremely agile, but you could fly it and have all sorts of fun with it. Loops, slow rols, inverted flight, cuban eights, stall turns, it was plenty fun. Mine had a Thunder Tiger Pro .46 on, so adequately powered. Currently I have a Spad Gnat ready to throw into the air. Corplast airplanes are way different from balsa types, but they do fly and are pretty much fun.

I got a DuraBat from a friend a while back. He had a .60 on it, and said it was pretty fast. I removed the .60 and replaced it with a Tower .46 I had and turned it into a tail dragger due to the sloppy nose gear set-up. Couldn't get enough speed to lift off. This thing is HEAVY. Must be the reason the .60 was on it when I got it. I just might give it a try.