Former champion sells plane models

Tecuci is a small Romanian town known especially for the canned vegetable maker based there, the jokes about the two main streets and the aeromodelism champions. One of them turned his lifetime interest into a profitable business.

Although plane models have brought many medals in Romania, this sport is not currently subsidised by the state.

The clubs that acquire materials for their small unmanned aircraft have to resort to all kinds of financial expedients.

People who are interested in model planes, former or actual champions or simple fellows that “came down” with flying, are completely dedicated to this passion and, according to a “connoisseur” of this community, they even sell their houses or leave their families for aircraft.

Their purses get thinner and thinner as the clubs they are enrolled with can hardly support them due to the lack of funds.

The former national and Balkans champion, athlete Tudorel Lungu, is 54 years old now and coaches a junior team in Tecuci. He launched an offer to sell unmanned plane models through the Internet last December. According to him, the offer includes plane models awarded in competitions.

The ” stuff,” entirely built and piloted by Lungu, is either inspired by original plans or designed by himself. The prices are between 800 dollars for a Cherokee 25 RC and 3,000 dollars for a Bucker Jungmeister 133 RC. Other plane models cost between 1,000 and 2,500 dollars.

The price includes the training supplied by the former champion. Otherwise, he says, the potential customers, eager to play with the new toy, would fly it straight into the ground.

Tudorel Lungu thought to set up this business a few months ago, when he needed money to acquire a new remote control station. He decided that the only possibility to do that was to sell plane models having raced into competitions.

The price of such a remote control station, which he needed for his activity, amounts to 300 dollars. Lungu said no buyer for his plane models has appeared so far. He once got a phone call from a Romanian amateur interested in a small model, Cherokee 25 RC worth 800 dollars, but no deal has been struck yet.

Lungu hopes that his Internet announcement in English will bring foreign customers interested in such an acquisition.