Good bye fair Tucano

Planes are really only with us for a short time. And my beautiful little Phoenix Tucano actually ended up being with me much longer than I ever could have expected.

She was a handful when I first bought her, but eventually I learned how to make her do the things I wanted her too. Swift and clean, but a plane that always demanded my respect.

Well - her end came this last weekend. And in the end it was only my ambition for her that brought her unstuck. As an end goes for model planes it was a pretty noble one.

You see I had decided that although the Tucano was a fantastic plane on only 160 watts, I really wanted to see her motor, and so decided to upgrade the power to somewhere around 350 watts.

Her first flight with the new power setup had been the weekend before and she was greased lightning. There's a funjet that get's around at my field - I reckon she had similar pace. Anyway, during the test flight the motor mount separated from the plane. A successful emergency landing saw her returned to earth.

It was only when I went to repair her mid week that I realised that there had been an issue with her left wing. The top wing spar had failed, but fortunately the main spar and the lower spar had held. Sensing the problem I opened her up top and bottom reinforcing the top and bottom wing spars with carbon fibre tape which was CAed in place.

Confident I had done enough I took her back to Kambah on Sunday morning. She was screaming along giving a damn good show of herself when it happened. About two thirds of the way across our bitumen apron, at an altitude of around 10 metres, at flat stick (I'd guess maybe 120km/hr) there was a sickening crack, and the plane spun in. I had time to close the throttle, but she didn't answer elevator and I didn't even have time to think about counter rudder. She spun into the concrete foot path at effectively the same speed she was flying with.

In reality, I'm pretty sure she was fatally injured. As the second photo shows, her left wing folded up at the same spot it broke on the first flight.

I usually make a really good attempt at repairing aircraft, but the Tucano was FUBAR. There was barely a piece bigger than a 5c piece from forward of the leading edge, with the airframe basically destroyed until the trailing edge of the wing.



Goodbye Tucano... if there's a model airplane heaven hopefully they are playing OPM.

I invite those that knew her to post comments below...