Scratch-Built Turbo Commander

The (Gulfstream? Rockwell?) Turbo Commander airplane has always had a special place in my heart; it was the plane my dad and his pilot friends used to fly. Its a twin-engine, pressurized, jet-prop 10-passenger airplane, better known as Bob Hoover’s acrobatic plane (his was a Shrike, a piston-powered Aero Commander variant).

TC690BII-11544

Over the holiday season, my friend Mateo and I decided to build a scale version of this plane, using a blown-up 3-view picture I found online.

turbo-commander-690-dims

It was built using a combination of Adam’s Readi-board and pink 1″ insulation foam. The whole process took about 4 nights.

Additional specs:

  • 60″ Wingspan
  • 55″ Fuselage length
  • 2 x Turnigy D3536/8 1000KV
  • 2 x 9 x 6 APC props (CW & CCW)
  • 6 9G servos (1 for stearing, 1 for rudder, 2 for ailerons and 2 for elevators).
  • 2 x 50A Hking ESCs
  • 3,000mah 4S Turnigy Lipo
  • FrSky X8R receiver.

Check out the gallery below which shows the build process. Stay tuned for the maiden flight video.


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One response to “Scratch-Built Turbo Commander”

  1. […] This is the maiden flight of the Turbo Commander, a collaboration between Mateo Aguilar and Julian Melo. It was shot in early January 2014 at the Apollo Field in Southern California. The airplane and no bad tendencies, required just a couple click of elevator trim and it flew amazing. More information about the build process here. […]