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MDA was originally started and operated by Tom Chipley after his original Mud Duck design became so popular. The original design was published as a construction article in Model Aviation magazine in the mid-80's. The design was similar to the present day Mud Duck but was of built up balsa construction and flew on .40 glow power. Tom had been the artist who drew the cutaway views for Model Aviation construction articles and introduced Ace and Spinner, his animated characters with a sense of humor. Tom began to experiment with the Mud Duck design and it mutated into the 108" wing span Mud Duck (MK I). The construction materials were changed to FomeCor® board. Tom offered the new design in plans after repeated requests from modelers. A new revision was made to the design which increased strength in the wings and some other key points. The new release was designated the Mud Duck MK II. Since there was never a version released, designated as the "MkI", some modelers out there erroneously refer to the original balsa version as the "Mark I". Any references to the first version of the larger (FomeCor) duck is referred to as the MK I on this website and where ever I may respond to questions.. To avoid further confusion, it is common for most modelers to refer to the Mud Duck Mk II as the "Giant Mud Duck" also. The "Giant" was entered into modelers vocabulary by a review article published in a modeling magazine that was titled "The Giant Mud Duck" although that was not the name or designation of the kit. Kitting Begins Tom began to offer the (Giant) Mud Duck as a kit. All kits were cut by hand. He designed the Agri-Duck and added it to the MDA product line shortly thereafter. The Agri-Duck is the low wing variant of the Mud Duck and roughly resembles a crop duster. The Agri-Duck also became available as a kit as well as plans Intro: The Agri-Duck MDA began to become a pretty busy operation in the following years and all along Tom, along with a friend, were producing all these kits cutting them by hand. Due to the large size of the parts involved with the Mud Duck and Agri-Duck, the costs involved to produce die cutting equipment to automate this job would have made the cost of the kits excessively expensive. CricKit Tom designed a more nimble and smaller airplane that resemble the Mud Duck named the CricKit. The CricKit seemed to have mixed reviews with modelers. The main reason being, many purchased the CricKit thinking it was a small version of the big, gentle Mud Duck. The CricKit is a fun-flying, super-nimble airplane, despite it's appearance, but requires the pilot to be the kind that likes to explore the world of the unruly. Intro: The Mud Duck Sport Tom decided to produce a smaller version of the Giant Mud Duck which could be manufactured in greater numbers and still keep costs low. The smaller version became a 3/4 scale version of the Giant Mud Duck at an 80" wingspan. MDA Goes Into Hibernation Unfortunately, not long after releasing the Mud Duck Sport, Tom decided to pursue different goals. Tom loves the Mud Duck and the process of designing, but decided he had enough of the business end of this operation. As anyone who has owned a small business can tell you, it's not easy and eats up all of your time. Tom stopped operating MDA and offered it for sale. After some time of exploring different offers for it he decide to let a friend take a go at it, but after some time that effort did not go far and he once again offered MDA for sale. Under New Ownership I fell in love with
the Mud Duck a few years before Tom closed the doors. A fellow club member
had built the Mud Duck and it was all the rage at the field. I wanted one
the first time I saw it I purchased the company from Tom at a time while I was between jobs. The plan was that I use the opportunity to get Mud Duck up and running while I was going back to school. At that point the company hadn't been operating in a few years. Too many business efforts fail due to poor planning and a lack of capital. To ensure a quality product and timely service to Mud Duck customers, I had decided to hold off re-starting MDA until I could give it, my best shot. That plan was to include kitting and everything that Tom had offered previously. I created this website in 2004 to make the modeling community aware that MDA was back and not defunct. I wanted to convey that MDA was in the process of gradually starting back up and only offering plans and some limited kits that remained in inventory. I operated MDA on a very part time basis and the operation was very small, essentially just a plans service and support. I wanted to accommodate the vast majority of modelers who requested kits again, but with the economy and my personal responsibilities, I was unable to bring kits back into production for the following years. The Ducks go CAD One goal that was set was to eventually purchase a large laser cutter (Mud Ducks require a very large cutting area) to simply R&D and to produce kits on demand. Tom had hand-cut all the foamboard parts for the larger ducks which took too long and too much space for me to do efficiently. In order to produce a laser cut kit with perfectly fitting parts, the kit must be designed in CAD (Computer-Aided Design). Since the plans had been hand drawn, we redrew the plans in CAD and made them even more exact. The Mud Duck Sport had not been drawn up as plans, it was in fact designed as a kit and had some variations from the larger MkII. With the increase in more efficient and economical electrical systems becoming more popular, we redesigned the Mud Duck Sport for building from plans and added the Agri-Duck Sport which were great fits for many affordable electric motors becoming more available. Inc. I in 2008 I incorporated MDA into Mud Duck Aviation, Inc. This created a separate legal entity which helped establish its own financial credit independent of my own, which would be more favorable for securing business credit. By this point, 4 years later, I had secured new full-time employment and created more space to create a production area for ramping up the business. My also gave birth to our first child in 2005 and I was a new dad learning to balance an already tight schedule, but by this time I felt I had the time to devote more energy to MDA. In 2008 we purchased our own wide format printing equipment to begin producing plans in-house. This allowed us to pass the savings on to our customers and drop our price on plans and reduced delays in waiting for prints. This also allowed us to easily produce scaled versions of our designs for modelers who were looking to build a Duck at a scale that would accommodate a particular power set-up they had sitting on a shelf; no need for a modeler to buy new gear just to build a Duck. Kitting Returns Today: Several years after kits went off-line they return. In April 2009, despite an economic downturn, we took a leap of faith and invested in production runs to reintroduce the Mud Duck Sport kit and Semi-kit's for both the Mud Duck MkII and the Agri-Duck. Based on the market demand for these kits, we will decide whether to invest further into tooling to produce full kits for the Mk-II and Agri-Duck. FUTURE We will continue to offer modelers more choices. We have ideas for new subjects an will be adding products as time goes on. We hope to be able to offer full kits again for the largest models, but in the meantime we will continue to provide PLANS and SUPPORT, as well as a resource and community for Mud Duck enthusiasts with the addition of forums and a FAQ (frequently asked questions) database.
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,
but my must-have list was way long and space was at a premium then. I
finally purchased an Agri-Duck kit from a different fellow club member when he
left the hobby and I immediately started building it. By this time Tom had
shut down MDA and I was really wanting a Mud Duck MkII. I had looked for
resources on the internet regarding anything Mud Duck related but found only
broken links to Toms old MDA website that was no longer available. This
was early in the days when RCOnline was the only game in town and even then it
barely had any content. So I created a free (ad sponsored) website called
"The Duck Page" that was very limited but provided some kind of place for "Mud
Duck" info.