Once in a while the opportunity comes along to throw caution to the wind and have some fun with a completely off-the-wall project. Such was the case when I happened to have a Tundra and a Navy Cub in the office and decided to see if it was possible to combine them into one plane. Being that they're of a very similar size and shape it seemed possible and as it turned out, it was indeed. Thus the 'TunCub' was born.
The first step was to split each plane in half. I did this very slowly and carefully and used the left side of the Cub and the right side of the Tundra. The hardest part of all that was cutting through the Cub's windshield and 'glass' parts. I used a hacksaw for that with tape layed down as a guide. The foam parts were much easier and I used a good, sharp hobby knife. This procedure is relatively straightforward since the fuselage halves are simply glued together, cut through the glue and they come right apart.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the two different halves mated up very well and it was far less difficult to assemble them into one then I thought it'd be. Of course there were some tough spots but I was able to make it work with a good bit of glue and patience. Heating the foam in some places allowed me to bend and cajole them together. I chose to use the vertical stabilizer and rudder from the Tundra as it just seemed like it would work better than using the components from the Cub. I also retained the motor and ESC from the Tundra. While the Cub's powertrain would have worked the Tundra's motor had a bit more power... which is always a good thing... right?
Once the fuselage halves were glued together it was then a relatively simple matter to attach the wings. In a huge stroke of luck I found that one of the Navy Cub's wing spars actually was able to go into the Tundra's which obviously made the wing as stable as if it were stock. This detail is shown in the video at around 10:00 and more so at about 16:10.
A not-so-simple matter was deciding how to arrange the landing gear and make them the same height - or at least close. I ended up using the LG wire from the Tundra and simply used the Tundra wheel on that for the Tundra side and the Cub wheel on the Cub side.
So once the TunCub was assembled we headed up to the famous NEAT Fair in upstate NY and actually flew it. As you can see in the video at about 20:30 you can see it actually flew quite well... far better than I had hoped! I won't say it handled as well as either plane in stock form but it stayed in the air and landed quite well!
At the end of the NEAT Fair event we auctioned the plane off and so there's a lucky pilot out there who I hope continues to fly this truly unique aircraft.
The full build video is shown here:
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