Litalina - Lidl Catalina

As my last Lidl Plane was flying fine, i had an Idea what to do with the new gliders i got last week. The Stonepit we are flying in each weekend has a nice small lake. After watching my colleagues water-planes last time i wanted something for the water as well.

Why not converting a Lidl Glider to a flying boat like the Catalina.

I rememberd that depron guru Hilmar Lange did some depron floats for different parkflyers in the past. After checking his website, i found the Chaton floats to be a good starting point. I modified his plans by cutting down the formers to match the width of the Lidl fuselage. The top was left open and everything else was cut out of 6mm Depron and glued together with UHU Por. I added some Belicel on the inside to get it completely waterproof. After everything was dryed, i trimmed down the top of the float to perfectly fit the plane-bottom. Some UHU Por fixed it to the fuselage.

Electrics were straight forward, 3 HXT500 Servos and an old FrSky D4R-II Receiver+BEC. The Motors and ESCs were harvested from an old quad i did not fly anymore since years. FUN FACT: When setting up the plane i mentioned that the ESCs were used in 3D mode before - meaning the can spin the motors for and backwards. That way the plane should be able to turn in the table and even go backwards in the water by just flipping flightmode. I waterproofed the RX, BEC and ESCs with Plastik 70 spray which worked fine on my quadcopter electronics before.

First Flight

Onboard

• 3D printed parts for motors e.g.
• Hilmar Lange's website with tone of very nice Depron Builds
• Lidl Glider