Ugly Mustang strip and rebuild, can it be rescued?

[Jon H]

As its been rather hot lately work on the P51 stopped for a bit as my shed turns into an oven. Its cooled down a bit now and work is proceeding quite quickly. 

 

Jobs completed since last update:

 

Paint fuselage

Cover wings/tail

Fit/hinge control surfaces

Print decals 

cut out scale radiator outlet for cooling air

Cut servo slots for flaps

fit aileron servos and linkages

fit fuselage servos and linkages

 

Generally i am happy with progress. The model is looking nice actually considering its start in life. Just dont look too closely as there are problems a variety of imperfections i cannot be bothered to address given the nature of the beast. Being cheap, and wanting to try it out, i ordered some waterslide decal paper so i could print my own decals instead of buying them. So far it seems to work ok. My only issue is keeping the edges down as they like to curl up just enough to be a problem. 

 

I also took the existing 3d printed exhausts the model came with and recessed them into the cowl. Having drilled them middles out these will now be nice cooling air exits. 

 

The cooling outlet flap is just the bottom skin of the fuselage with some sides made from cereal box. I was going to use ply but once again got carried away by my new wonder material. 

 

My sqn codes are made up and come from my gamer screen name of Carosel43 so 43 C seemed appropriate. The numbers on the fin are the numbers from my CAA thing as i couldnt think of anything else that would be better so no rivet counter complaints about scale accuracy. I am annoyed i stuck the wing decal in the wrong place though. oops 😞  

 

Other than that not much to report. I might need a new canopy though as the old one looks really yellow now the model looks half decent. An original spare is very unlikely but i wonder if the brian taylor one might be made to fit. 

 

I am really on a push to get this out of the way as i would like to paint the yellow aircraft spitfire before the cold weather comes and clear the shed so i can get other models in for winter maintenance. Once that is done i can then try and finish the spitfire for the spring. So many projects, so little space. Sigh. 

 

 

 

[Nigel R]

Looks a million dollars compared to the starting point 👍

[Jon H]

6 hours ago, Nigel R said:

Looks a million dollars compared to the starting point 👍

 

Ill take £500,000 for cash 😉 

[Dave Bran]

Reminds of a "Mustang" I built in less than a week of limited spare time in 1973/4, to fill a need for a warbird for a demo the following weekend. I took a "Mustunt" control line plan for the fuselage, some FAI Pylon Race foam wings and set to. Power was a "Profi40" two stroke. No time for ANY nicities, but luckily the local model shop had brown, green and sky blue Solarfilm in stock, so a RAF one it became. Decal roundels and white car numberplate lettering!

 

Looked terrible on the ground, but in the air looked far better than the other far more accurate but to public deadly dull weathered ones that day. It actually got lots of favourable comments, much to my surprise (if not horror).

 

I bet that "heap" in original form looked quite reasonable up there at flying height.................... 😊😆

[Jon H]

Yea i never go for a prize winning finish as i dont really see the point. At the scale i work a rivet head would be about 1mm diameter and more or less invisible so i dont bother. 

 

While this is a little lower than my normal standard due to a few cut corners i still want it to look decent. 

[Jon H]

Been a while, again..

 

But, progress has been made and we are now on the final stretch. The first thing i did was apply all of my home made decals. This was a bit of a learning experience but it went pretty well and i am very happy with the final result. Once on though it was very clear they needed some lacquer over them so i took the plunge and sprayed the whole fuselage with the 2k clear i got to test and while not perfect this went on ok and seems to be protecting the decals nicely so far. This model is going to be a bit of test mule to see how fuel proof it is long term. 

 

Other boring jobs like fitting the exhausts, fuel filler, switches, and the intricate parts of the cooling baffle are done and i also made some panels to cover the retracts and tidy up the wheel wells. 

 

With tanks fitted it was time to make some noise, and that all went well with 8000rpm recorded on a 17x8 apc. This should be ok as a date with the scale showed its likely to be 16.5lbs ready to fly which a bit porky but there is nothing much i can do so its not worth worrying about. 

 

Remaining jobs are final rx and battery fit along with tidying up the radio install, making a small spacer for the spinner so it clears the cowl, screwing down the gear cover panels (i need to buy more screws!), fitting the canopy, adding crankcase and tank vent pipes to the cowl, adding the remote glow and sorting out the needle extensions. 

 

I do need a new canopy at some point, but the yellow nasty one will have to do for now. 

 

 

Sorry theres no engine run video. I was going to do a 2nd run with the cowl on to test the cooling but forgot i needed to sort out the remote glow...

 

nearly there

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Nice job. 👍

[Jon H]

 

Well, this took longer than expected. 

 

For a variety of reasons the ugly mustang project fell to the back burner but a few weeks back i decided to finish it off and see how it performs. Unfortunately the winter dampness in he shed had ruined two of the decals on the wing. I will replace them in time but for now they stay. The usual fiddly last jobs were performed, the c/g, rates and other boring things were um...guessed at, and off we went. 

 

Range check completed and engine tuned (top end only, slow run is a little rich as i changed fuels since i ground ran it and didnt want to take the cowl off) it was time to go. 

 

Sadly the weather was not pleasant. I was expecting a nice breeze down the runway but in reality it was swinging to the north a bit, which was most irritating, but more on that later. 

 

Ground handling with the free castoring tail wheel was good, everything was set so off we went. To my surprise, the model lifted off easily and despite its rather high weight was climbing well. Some trimming later had the model on an even keel, i kicked my rates to low started to just see what we had to work with. In general the model flew very well but it needs a bunch of rudder work to keep it pointing exactly where you want. The stall is quite benign, but it is currently a little nose heavy for me taste. 

 

With my 5 minutes up i swung round to land and it sailed in very nicely indeed. 

 

Post flight inspection revealed over half a tank of fuel used, which was not a surprise, so i added only 2 minutes to it and we went again. The attached are some videos of my 2nd flight. By this time the wind had swung more to the north and on my field this puts some areas of sharp turbulence over the runway. Sadly one of these caught me out on landing and i bent my undercarriage 2nd time around. I went through the leading edge of it and wanted to push through it before touching down but the trailing edge of the swirling air face planted the model into the runway. No damage done other than the undercarriage pins, but it was annoying...Although fortunate as i turned out i had insufficient fuel for a go around anyway! I knew the tanks were a little small, i will just get a bigger one and slap that in there. 

 

All in all, a great result considering the state of it at the beginning. 

 

 

 

 

[Ron Gray]

Nice one Jon, a companion for my YT ‘stang!

[Jon H]

38 minutes ago, Ron Gray said:

Nice one Jon, a companion for my YT ‘stang!

 

Yea absolutely. Assuming we have weather on our side and avoid things like bent undercarriage and scalding injury ill take it to the next old warden session. I think yours is quicker than mine as i did notice mine is slow, i think the wing is really draggy as it felt like i was towing a parachute the whole time. 

[Adrian Smith 1]

Great job, Jon. Loved the videos too 👍

[Zflyer]

Fantastic. However knowing your loathing of castor how come yiu had a castor fuelled tail wheel😉

[J D 8]

    Just an observation but I recon not so much turbulence but wind gradient causing landing issues. [ or some of each] You are landing in a fair crosswind by your wind sock but in the video I see very little movement in the tall grass/crops around your strip. As well as the trees all that plant life is doing a good job of slowing the air near to the ground. Cheers, John.

 

 

[Martin McIntosh]

For my 2p worth of wind gradient problems, a very good pilot was landing an ARTF Mustang, so obviously quite light, when it suddenly flipped inverted. I later flew my 62" Hurricane and despite a fast approach did the same. The wind was from the SW corner, over trees, and always causes problems from that direction.

At Greenacres one year I took up my 1/4 scale Stampe. The wind was from the campsite direction, very strong and over trees. I thought that a short take off would be easy then a tight 180 but when the model was on its side it just kept going away from me despite full up.

Again at my field with the wind from the above corner I took up my now 23 year old 2m Dalotel with a powerful YS up front. Despite high rate elevator it refused to turn at all and I thought that there had been an airframe failure. It gained some height but got so far away that I could scarcely see it. I pulled full up and it did a normal loop so I obviously had control and the model calmed down, taking ages to return to the field. I could find nothing wrong so took it up again for an uneventful flight.

[Jon H]

The wind sock on our field is a bit useless when the wind has any north in it as there are trees behind the patch that completely shelter one end of the runway. It can be very misleading and the shape of the trees causes a situation where it leaves an area of disturbed wake about 20 feet wide and 5 foot deep that sits 3 foot off the ground. Its really narrow and i have run into it before. The exact location varies with the angle of the wind but no matter what it always sits exactly on the final approach path. 

 

As soon as i turned to final and noted the cross wind attitude of the model while feeling none on my back i knew it was going to be dicey. I should have powered on and punched through to land further down the runway but being only the 2nd flight i was more hesitant than usual. I was also aware i was potentially low on fuel and wanted to check the fuel level with the new 7 minute timer. So a combination of wind, distraction and inexperience with the model.

 

It way my mistake in either case and the damage is already repaired so we move on and try again next time. 

 

I just have to find/fit a bigger fuel tank and stuff a little lead in the tail. Trim down the low aileron rate a bit, bring the high rate down to 10% above the existing low rate, knock 10% off the low elevator rate, bring the high rate down 20%... oh and retune the slow run needles. 

 

One thing i did forget to mention (due to me forgetting all about it) was the engine. The 160 inline was pretty much faultless and there were no cooling problems of any kind with my cereal box cooling shroud. I could feel warm areas on the fuselage round the ducting and the air exit at the back, and my dummy exhausts were warm too so they are working nicely as well. The only complaint i have about the engine is its a bit quiet, i might drill the baffles out of the exhaust to make a bit more noise! 

[Ron Gray]

24 minutes ago, Jon - Laser Engines said:

the engine is its a bit quiet

All 3 of my in-line twins, when correctly tuned are very quiet and I think I drilled out the baffles on the 160 too! I’ve been thinking of just using flexi pipe when I do the DVII.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Ron Gray