PKZ P-51: 7channel fun

[19000rpm]

I got the machine gun lights and just about have them installed. They are very cool and very bright. I'll post a picture soon.

[akent]

NICE!
I sure would love to see some more pictures of your P-51. Or a video?!?!?

I mean pics of it sitting on it's super awesome retract gear, etc.
Mine is sitting on the wall asking for attention!
Kent

[Gabe]

Yup - definitely need some pics!

[19000rpm]

I'm gonna' try to take some pics soon. The good news is that it's all together. Everything works. And like the F-16; it's weather bound right at the moment. Oh, well. ;D

[19000rpm]

OK, here we go. No video yet, but I'm so behind I'm just trying to catch up today on current projects and finishing posts.


I added some Krylon silver paint.


Gear covers.


Dubro spinner, "Thor" lightning bolt and 2" wheels



AR7000 and way to much wiring.


Tat, tat, tat. Take that you lousy axis creeps.


Flaps at full deployment.


Wheels up and inverted. I need to do something about the wiring cover. The painted tape looks terrible.

[akent]

Wow! I love it!

[Solitaire]

19k, which Krylon did you use for the paint job? Was it Fusion and how well does that work on foam? How about problems with paint lifting when using painters tape for masking?

I've got an all white EPO (I think) Corsair I need to paint before assembling.

[19000rpm]

Thanks Kent.

sol, I used the regular Krylon with a bit of primer first. The combination, and even without the primer, the Krylon penetrates the water based factory paint and is very durable on the Z foam. I can only assume it would work equally well with regular EPO, but I've only tried the clear Krylon over regular EPO and it's worked well.

I've also used the Fusion with the Z foam and it has worked well. The only problems with Fusion has been the limited color selction.

Painters tape will lift the water based paints, but the Krylon, when used with a primer, resists lifting. It doesn't eliminate it, but it's way better. The nice thing is that you can hand touch up the spots where it's lifted with a brush and it won't show.

If you're painting over fresh EPO I'd suggest wiping it down with alcohol first, priming it lightly, and then add the paint.

Also, placing the tape on a clean surface first and lifing it removes some of the tack and makes it less likely to lift the paint it is applied over.

[Solitaire]

Thanks 19k.
I've got some more questions, so I'll open a new thread.

[fireguzzi]

Looking real good there. The machine gun lights look really clean and professional. I like it.

[19000rpm]

Thanks fire. The guns are really neat. They are very easy to install. Just drill our the barrels, glue in the LED, run the wiring and plug into the Rx.

[19000rpm]

Sooooooooo, the snow stayed and stayed and nobody ever plowed enough of it away to make a landing strip. And then it rained and snowed late into spring and I never got a chance to fly until yesterday: 4 months of waiting from the time the P51 was completed. ;D

The good news is that after bench checking everything I took it out to the HS parking lot and the lot was empty. Yahoo! Winds were about 10-13.

Normally, I don't maiden in much over 5mp, but I've had so much stick time on my last P51 I decided there was little risk in maidening the 7ch version in a bit of a breeze.

I ran it around taxi testing the steerable tail and checking the flaps, machine guns and recycled the retracts a few times. Everything checked out good.

I decided that I wouldn't use the flaps for the first take off since it has plenty of power to get of the ground quickly; which it did.

Nice climb out and a gentle turn. I left the gear down until the first fly by so I could see what effect bringing the gear up might have on the planes attitude: Just a barely noticable pitch up and a bit of increase in speed happened when I flipped the retract switch. A couple more fly bys cycling the retracts. The plane looks great with the gear up.

I also decided to land it with no flaps, as much as anything, to see how the retracts were going to hold up. I had visions for last 4 months of the gears folding up on contact.

She comes in hot with all the weight. I greased the first landing. The retracts were solid when I checked. So I flew and landed it 3 more times letting it bounce pretty hard. The retracts remained solid. Whew! That was a relief.

The flaps work fine. Really nice for more scale like take offs and landings. Full flap isn't really needed and the pitch up is minor as I mixed just a little down elevator in with the flaps. In the 1/2 flaps mode only 1/8 to 1/4 power is need to bring it in nicely.

The machine gun lights look really neat on low fly bys.


"OK, I'm ready. Stop with the happy snaps. I've been waiting over 4 month's to fly. Let's go get some Zeros or 109's. Yeeha!!!"


This is all the flap she really needs for scale like take offs and landings


Full flaps look nice on the Tarmac.

So I lucked out. Everything went perfectly with the 7ch P51. Not so with my next maiden. But that's another story.

[19000rpm]

I've been flying it off the gravel road quite a bit. Surprisingly the gear has held up well. It pulled out on one side when l rolled into a particularly bad spot at the end of a landing, but epoxy fixed it.

I was expecting a lot of nose overs with the small wheels, but I've had only one and that was on a down slope.

A really weird thing happened yesterday. I was taking off at about 1/2 power and the motor pulled the firewall right out of the foam and the collet, spinner and prop pulled off the motor. WTH! I'm sure glad it didn't happen in the air.

This is pretty much like I found it. I was standing behind it so I didn't see exactly what happened. The collet must have come off when the spinning prop hit the ground. YES! The prop still had power. With all that happened the connectors to the motor were still attached!!







Lesson re-learned: I usually Epoxy or Gorilla Glue the firewalls on these types of planes, but I forgot to do it this time.

[Gabe]

Whoah! That's unheard of. Maybe some 30 min z poxy will do the trick? Wow.

[19000rpm]

I put it all back together. Repainted it in a Korean War era paint scheme with graphics from Callie Graphics.

Did you know the P51's actually flew against the Mig 15's in the Korean War? And, at least one P51 driver shot a Mig down? That's like going to a Indy Car race and winning the race with a Stock Car. Awesome.

If I say so myself: It is gorgeous! I'll take some pics tomorrow and post them here.