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"Ignore that man behind the curtain!!!" Hi, my name is Greg Drusjack and I am the owner of Mud Duck Aviation since 2002. If you want to know more about the history of MDA or about Tom Chipley check out check out the "History" page. I purchased MDA from Tom for a couple of reasons. First, I loved the designs and couldn't pass up the opportunity. Second, at the time, I was between careers and went back to school (as an adult over 30) to get a degree. I felt like I could re-establish MDA in the marketplace slowly while I had some free time. Free time? Ha! ~life Yes, life caught up with me before I even got started. For any of a hundred reasons, I needed to operate MDA as a part-time business and do everything very slow with very little to no investment. I returned to the workforce with a degree in hand, student loans, and a ground floor starting salary. The initial plans to bring kits back into production got farther and farther out of reach. Lifetime Commitment By the end of 2004 my wife became pregnant with our first child born in June of 2005. As anyone of you who have had children know, if you thought you had little or no free time before, a child bring a whole new meaning to time management. With the birth of my daughter and a full time job, I quickly came to realize that producing kits was not going to be in the cards for the next few years and decided to put work into MDA as a plans service and support for our designs until kitting can once again become a reality. Prepping for the Future All the designs were hand drawn by Tom Chipley on vellum and the vellum masters were beginning to show their age. I had also evaluated all my options for kitting again and the only feasible plan I thought could be a reality and still produce kits at an economical cost was to purchase a laser cutter and begin laser cutting the kits based on demand as warehousing materials and stock isn't feasible or economical. This remains my goal for the future, but is currently out of my reach. The first thing needed to do was to convert the designs to electronic format by redrawing them in CAD. This would allow me to provide modern, clean plans and provide me with the files I would need to be able to use a laser cutter. I employed the skills of Fred D Johnson Jr. to redraw our designs in CAD and to provide the Mud Duck Sport in plan form, which was previously nonexistent. Fred also correctly reduced the Agri-Duck 25% to create the Agri-Duck Sport, newly released for 2008. What to expect of MDA today I operate MDA more for the passion of the design at the moment and to keep modelers interested in the deigns. As much as I would like to grow MDA as a business and make it a money-making cash cow, the possibility of MDA being able to self-sustain my family is very unlikely so my primary responsibilities are to my full-time job and my family. You can ask MDA customers and I am sure you will hear that I still provide a quality product and support, although I currently try to limit support to email communications and ask customers to recognize that I work a regular job during the day and can address support questions and shipping orders in the evening and weekends. As my daughter gets a little older and I can save up enough to purchase a laser cutter, I will have more time and the means to reintroduce kits to the market. Until then I will continue to build better support for MDA modelers and even offer some new designs. I will also create more tools to help modelers recognize just how easy it is to build these designs from plans. |
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