After the day at the lake and the first crash I went home and fixed what was broken and needed to be fixed. On my way to and from the lake I realized how unhandy the shape of the fuselage and this huge wing of the Catalina were. They didn’t even properly fit in my plane bag.
Some days later I rented a small car, put the Catalina inside and went to an airfield for rc planes. There, with all the space and the perfect conditions, nothing could go wrong. At least that’s what I thought. Shortly after arriving I had the Catalina ready. I first tried to start it from the grass but hat to learn that she does not take off properly. Might it be because of the floaters or because of the grass but it didn’t work. I therefore decided to start her from my hand as I’ve already done with some planes. It worked similar to the first time. She took off nicely, gained some air, stalled mid air and came straight down. Unfortunately she did not have as much hight as she had at the lake and so she crashed nose first into the ground.
Once more, the propellers were broken. Also the fuselage was deformed and the cap had taken some asymmetrical shape but the worst was the monting of the wing. The styrofoam was broken and the little screws were all lose.
My Idea was to open the styrofoam, remove the plastic threads and put some metal threads in before I glue the styrofoam back in shape.
As I opened the styrofoam I heard a bang and I had two parts, the left half and the right half of the fuselage, in my hands. It was not just badly glued, they barely used glue at all.
I’m a man of great patience but not a man of great craftsmanship skills. Once the fuselage was in half and I saw how much plastic they added to the threads I put this mess aside and reevaluated the situation.
The plane is big, unhandy and poorly constructed. The fuelage is in two, the color split off wherever I used tape and I used a lot, the styrofoam is deformed and the props - wether they are the right ones for this plane or not - are broken again. So instead of rebuilding something that will most likely never properly fly anyways I broke the hole thing into pieces and threw it into the garbage. Stupid plane.
Now I’m sitting here, slightly ashamed of myself for giving up so easily and a bit concerned if I will ever get the skills necessary to build the Kingfisher.
Speaking of which: Water has a higher density than air so if the wings are fixed in a way that they stay out in the air but lay onto the fuselage once the plane dives into water, it would reduce the resistance under water a great deal. Should that not be possible with a spring? We’ll see.
Also I uploaded a new video on youtube. Have a look:
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