Fly RC

October 7, 2016October 12, 2016

Float Fly videos… October 2, 2016 at Wilson’s pond. Just good fun.

Sunday, October 2nd, the Indianapolis RC Modelers had our only float fly of the season on property owned by the family of one of our members… Mr. Roy Wilson. It is a beautiful setting and we had awesome weather for the event. Member, Corey Lucas called and we arranged to cook a few hot dogs as well… Great flying conditions, a beautiful setting, awesome weather and the company of many of my fellow club members and even lunch on the grill. In my experience you don’t get many days much more perfect than this!

First, I’ll show you the “Drone’s Eye” view of part of the event. The video shows Roy with his Son in law and grandson (Roy’s unchallenged assertion is that he is the cutest grandson anywhere… who am I to argue!). Roy is sharing the view from the on board camera as the video begins while George (our VP) looks on from behind. Down by the pond we see Steve Russell piloting his Apprentice while fellow member Gary Bow looks on and waves to the camera. Around 1:45 into the video I give you a 360 degree view of the area… the incoming truck and trailer is Corey arriving. Around 3:45 you get a view of Steve making a nice landing followed by a pass along the flight line at waters edge. Gene Crider and George are watching the flying action with Gene’s Tidewater sitting at his feet. Meanwhile John Pangburn is now chatting with Gary in the pit area. Around 4:45 we get back to Roy and the whole family including Nancy (Roy’s wife) and daughter Megan holding the new granddaughter in the Gator. From there we head back to the grass runway area and shut down. This was shot from my 350 QX with the CG01 camera.

Next is some video of taken from my Go Pro Session attached to the bottom of my Carbon Cub. This video starts with a bit of taxiing around the pond. If you watch around the 54 second mark you can see Steve out in his kayak retrieving an airplane that had flipped over on him. Around 1:30 we get to the first takeoff. I’m amazed how quickly the lens clears after a good dousing! There are a couple of good passes across the pond and around the surrounding areas of field and pasture. For a couple of the early passes you can see Steve still paddling around. I’m also amazed how water that has collected on the bottom of the wire spreader just hangs on throughout the flight! About the 6:30 time stamp I try to make a quick takeoff but when one float pops lose before the other (still water actually makes it tougher to maintain good control during landings and takeoffs as the floats seem to “stick”) the plane hops to one side and a nearby bush grabs the plane!! There was some broken foam on the horizontal stab as a result but nothing that can’t be fixed easily. After viewing this a couple times I realized that I picked up a rider when I hit the (I believe willow?) bush. If you look carefully around the 6:45 mark, you can see a praying mantis has been collected with the small branches. He only gets to stay aboard for about 40 seconds before I power up to taxi back and he gets drug overboard with most of the branches… or perhaps he meets the prop… it’s difficult to say.

In any case, I think he was the only one of the 20 or so folks that either flew or observed that didn’t enjoy themselves!

I didn’t get a chance to do much editing on these clips… moving and then your wife having heart surgery does tend to limit your time severely from doing the important stuff like enjoying your hobbies! (Joking cause she is doing well and resting here on the couch next to me). Hopefully, things get back to normal soon and I can get some more updates posted!!

August 30, 2016September 1, 2016

Using my Hero 4 GoPro Session and the Carbon Cub… Oops, we did it again! And Again!

So of course, after the successful recovery of George’s glider, there was soon the need to find another members aircraft that made an “off airport” landing. I assumed it was unlikely that I could get lucky a second time but a couple weeks after the first recovery, I was again flying laps out over the corn and then crossing back over the field to get that all important reference point. After a few passes and reviewing the video we once again spotted the telltale sign of something “not corn”. Just like last time, we lined up the sighting with the entry point on the field and in a very short time we had the airplane… or at least an airplane!

Gene, the owner of the aircraft we were searching for made a slightly disconcerting observation. Upon my presentation of the retrieved aircraft, he exclaimed “That’s not my plane!” I considered returning the aircraft in question to the field where I found it… maybe they are just sprouting out there.?.?. but then realized it would continue to cause a false positive result so instead I put it in the club shelter and started out again. Again, the telltale shape of wings showed up in the video and we got a passable line on the downed aircraft and once again we found an airplane! The one Gene found looked more like this one (though I don’t recall the exact model):

But wait… just as Gene hollered out he had his airplane in hand I was looking further down the row of corn I was walking and looking at a wing sticking out ahead of me!!?!?

It didn’t seem likely but I had to go on out and look and sure enough there was a wing… but that was all! As it turns out this was the missing wing for the glider that had started this search a couple weeks before. I’m not sure it had a lot of value… but it was certainly the topper to an interesting day. How many others can say they started out to search for 1 plane and found 2 and a half?

July 4, 2016December 16, 2016

Using my Hero 4 GoPro Session and the Carbon Cub to search for a downed RC Glider

Recently one of my flying buddies (George) lost one wing panel on his glider while sailing along over the cornfield adjacent to our field. A couple of us who own multi-rotors with decent cameras were called upon to go on a little airplane hunting expedition. Unfortunately, my only available batteries for the quad (a 350 QX) are a bit weak and I was concerned that with the expected distance to cover, I would have a hard time getting enough time over the search area to be effective. Also, at that distance, the QX was going to look very small and I just don’t have enough time flying it to be comfortable at that distance. On the appointed day of the big search I arrived at the field and started planning some way to get out there and do a decent search. Starting out at the very edge of the field or perhaps even staging in a bare spot somewhere further out were considered but in the end I decided to hold out a bit until my friend Martin arrived with his much more capable Yuneec Typhoon H.

In the meantime, I decided it might be fun to do a survey of the field with the Carbon Cub and GoPro Session. I had a vague idea that if the aircraft was sitting high atop the corn stalks I might have a chance of getting a glimpse! Even if we did see it in the video it seemed unlikely to do more than confirm a rudimentary vector to look on and perhaps a little more refined idea of how far off the field, but since it involved flying my cub… So shortly after I had the Session mounted and a fresh battery installed in the cub and away we go!

I angled the camera down 60 degrees or so and then started the video and took off over the corn. I made three passes out and back along the line that the pilot reported his lost plane. 5 minutes later we fired up my laptop and started playing the video and carefully advancing a second or two at a time and looking on the video for anything that didn’t look like corn and especially anything white (which is the predominate color of the down airplane).

So here is a short clip of that flight… I highly recommend full screen for this one.

Did you spot it? Here’s a single frame with a bit of help on what to look for.

If you want to go back to the video around the 39 second mark you can probably pick it up for yourself now that you know what to look for. Also notice that later in the video as I pass over the edge of the field you can get a line on where you would have to exit the field to find the downed craft!

In fact, after viewing the video a few times and following the row where we saw the plane out to the edge of the field and marking that spot as best we could… I walked out into the corn with one other person and we found it as soon as we got out far enough into the field. In fact I walked to within 2 rows of corn on my first attempt and had no trouble finding it!

At this point I have no idea if we were just lucky or what. It helps that the plane is mostly white… a military camo pattern would have been tough!! I do know the video created by this camera is pretty amazingly detailed. What your seeing here is very compressed version but even in this clip it is possible to spot that nice white spot in the corn!

For those who are interested, we were able to recover all but the one wing panel which we didn’t spend much time looking for after we realized the aircraft was pretty much destroyed in the wreck. With what we had it what fairly obvious what happened that caused the wing to collapse. After a stern talk with the ground crew (George mumbled to himself for a while) we were assured this particular error would not happen again! 🙂

The GoPro Hero 4 is an awesome little camera with all of the quality you expect from the folks at GoPro packed in a small little cube that can mount on a variety of RC planes in many ways. It’s significantly lighter and smaller than the full size bodies with very similar quality video output. It is NOT an FPV camera… it is a great way to record the action and then view/edit and enjoy the awesome airborn views. Here’s a link:

And if you need a great platform to carry it the carbon cub is hard to beat. It can fly slow (almost walking speed with the flaps dropped) or move along briskly and carrying the camera has little to no affect on it’s flying characteristics. Here’s a link for that as well.

The Carbon Z Cub isn’t perfect… it has some paint peeling issues, the main gear mount could be sturdier and the motor has been known to occasionally give up the ghost… I’ve documented all that in other posts here… but I still recommend it because it just flys so darn well and it’s just a blast to fly. Add in top notch support from Horizon and you have pretty good airplane.

Anyway, it was fun and felt good to help a fellow flier get his airplane back. Even staring at video of the corn passing underneath the plane was interesting. Who doesn’t like a good video from an “elevated” perspective. Hope your search patterns yield equally good results. I’ll try to post some more soon on other interesting projects and happenings at the field. Until then, happy 4th of July! Or as we always called it at my house… “Happy dad’s birthday!”

May 23, 2016

Conversion of the Telemaster 40 to Electric Power – Part 3

When is the 300th flight a maiden? Telemaster 40 returns to flight once more!

Since the last update about 6 months ago, I finished up the covering job on the Telemaster and got all the servos and radio gear back in the old Telemaster 40. The usual challenges of hindging, recovering and getting control horns back in place kept me avoiding these somewhat onerous tasks but once I got past some of that and got close enough to see the finish line I quickly finished her up and it was time to put her back in the air.

Here it is after the final decals were applied, screws tightened and radio system installed.

One of the common tasks I ran into when I went to reinstall the servos was to rerun the servo wires out into the wing bays. Of course I should have run those when I had the covering off but of course that thought didn’t occur to me. First, I applied the servo clips (how can you attach extensions to servo wires without those?) to insure the wires stay together.

Then I grabbed my custom servo wire guiding tool (patent pending) and thread the wires back in there… This tool is quite complicated (a string and a nut) and customizable by picking out a longer string or a smaller or larger nut! Here it is in action.

Tie your servo lead to the end of the string, fish the nut down through the wing and pull the wire though… presto!

With the 3700 6S on board the plane now weighs approximately 7lbs. Figuring the original 5.5lb weight (approximately) and adding the on board fuel weight (maybe 3/4 of a lb) means it has gained maybe 3/4 of a lb flying weight. This is a bit more than I wanted but this plane flew so light that I think an extra couple pounds would leave a flyable airplane but I admit I would like to keep it as light as possible. I fully expect the power system to be able to handle up to about a 9lb airplane to at least “hover” if not “pull straight out of hover” levels so it may be that the extra weight won’t cause a problem.

So, with all that in mind, off to the field to meet up with several of my flying buddies and see how it goes. This is the third covering scheme on this aircraft. It started off base white with some red and green highlights and then after I needed to do some maintenance that caused much of the red and green to exit, I decided over a white bread sandwich that red, yellow and blue polka dots were the answer. Now along with the conversion to electric power, I went to a combination of transparent yellow, white and checkerboard black/white. While all had their appeal, the new scheme is my favorite.

The first flight session went remarkably well. The new hatch gives ample access to the battery area and there is plenty of room to shift the battery to achieve any desired balance point. In addition it appears to allow for plenty of air flow and the magnet (which I had been concerned about) is keeping the hatch in place nicely. After the last flight of the first day, I noticed the engine had started to move. Upon further investigation I realized just how loose it was! Here’s a shot showing some of the issue.

Not one of the mounts is still tight! Two of the back screws are completely lo0se inside the body and one of the front mount screws is missing! Yikes! In the back of my head, as I looked it over I remembered thinking I would go back later and apply thread locker and re-tighten these mount screws. Such is the danger of spreading out a job like this over close to a year span. Later never quite arrived… until after these first few flights. I got lucky that no damage resulted.

Once home, I pulled all the bolts and added some thread lock before re-tightening and she was ready to go again. Next trip proved that the airplane still flies as well as ever. The added weight doesn’t seem to hurt, maybe even helping in somewhat breezy conditions. It seems to fly well with anything from my smallest to largest 6S batteries, from 3200 to 4500mah. The 32/3300 packs give me a safe 5 minute or more flight with the 4500 netting an easy 15 minute flight. Short takeoffs with flaps are easily doable with slow lazy flight being the real forte of this old but dependable platform. The plane will pull straight up indefinitely with any of the packs as well so float flying, glider tow and carrying my RC jumper all seem doable. This is a great start.

The 300th flight… or just the latest maiden flight. Anyway you look at it, the Telemaster continues to perform well. When I opened that box of sticks ~15 years ago… who would have guessed!

April 30, 2016May 21, 2016

JL Products RotoFlow – failure and replacement

A few years ago, I picked up a JL Products RotoFlow 24 ounce fuel tank. I installed it first into my WildHare Slick 540 and the tank performed admirably but during an effort to lighten up that bird it was swapped out for one of the “water bottle” type tanks and the RotoFlow was transplanted into my (at that time new) Mustang where it has continued to work great. Based on that success, a second RotoFlow tank was purchased and placed into my buddy Kelly’s 50cc P-40.

The P-40 is a beautiful bird but it has had its share of vibration induced problems (single cylinder gassers just vibrate more than most other engines) and during a recent repair session on that airplane we pulled the tank to get to the motor mounting bolts more easily and noticed something odd. The clunk wasn’t rotating! Holding it up to light showed something that looked a bit alarming….

It may be a bit hard to see here but that shadow should normally be straight if the tank is built according to this view from the JL Products web site…

The good news is that after a quick email to these guys, a new tank was on it’s way. They did not ask for the old tank back so we were able to slice into the tank and get a better look.

There are no loose solder joints… no obvious slippage of parts… and that outer case is thick, fairly rigid and very tough! It was a bit mind bending (no pun intended) to understand how this brass tubing got in this shape. At first we thought “The aircraft has not crashed and that tubing is pretty stiff!” Based on this I had to assume this was a manufacturing defect. Thinking back over the weeks since, we realized this tank was in the P40 that preceded this one and it did crash… hard… mostly on the nose! That impact has to have been transmitted back to the nose of the tank and caused this bending… even though the outer part of the tank looked perfectly normal… I suspect there was a brief collapsing of the tank that caused this and then a spring back to shape that hid it! It has been flown quite a bit since then without issue but probably not inverted for any time and never down past about half a tank so the clunk being stuck but still drawing fuel was good enough.

The folks at JL Products have gone above and beyond and sent an immediate replacement without question. Not only without hassle but even with apologies. Of course, at the time we thought it hadn’t been crashed so felt that this was excellent service and a fair deal. Good customer service is not dead. I’ll keep buying from the good folks at JL and the new tank is in place and the P40 good to go once again.

April 30, 2016April 30, 2016

Carbon Z T-28 Recommended modification

As I may have previously mentioned, my flying buddy Kelly has one of the big E-Flite Carbon-Z T-28s. He has trouble wiping the smile off his face when he’s doing one of his usual low speed, flaps down, no bounce, land like a butterfly with sore feet touchdowns. With the AS3X keeping things even more stable on breezy days, this thing is just smoooooooooooooooth.

We initially had some nose gear issues (replaced) plus we added some Multiconnex and there was an issue with the flap hinge cracking (the flap/wing surface is the hinge) which was rectified with some Blenderm style wound tape/hinge tape. As I recall, when we applied the tape we also replaced the wing control linkages. Everything about them is undersized for this big aircraft and some folks have had small issues… others not so small.

So after an early spring flight recently, I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised when the rudder linkage lost it’s center pin. Funny thing is we bought the additional parts way back then but never installed them. It’s funny because it wasn’t the elevator that quit working!! Kelly was able to get the airplane safely back on the ground and I have just finished manufacturing the replacements for both the rudder and elevator.

As you can see the original is just plain scrawny looking and our replacement is only 2-56 rod. I consider even that small for this size plane but since they are so short (kudos for that E-Flite) 2-56 is sturdy enough I suppose.

The moral of the story however is if you are going to buy the big T-28, I would highly recommend you just go ahead and buy the hardware and replace all the flight linkages (6 short rods and your favorite clevises) before it even leaves the ground. One less thing to worry about!

While you’re at it, order the Multiconnex (see that post here) and really make it easy on yourself!

April 15, 2016

P-51 Redtail… Wing repair.

The last big repair task before the P-51 is ready to soar again is to get the starboard side landing gear mounting area rebuilt and get the fixed gear back in place. The downside of course is “no retracts” but on the upside no “heavy” retracts and no need to spend another 100+ on a replacement/repair! Pulling these is going to drop a full half pound and since I’m giving up the pretty gear, I’m going to replace the Robart spoked aluminum wheels with the Dubro light treaded wheels. This will save another 6 ounces or so. Those Robarts are 8 spoke anyway and everyone knows a Mustang has 10 spoke rims… so these weren’t really correct anyway… right?

Anyway to give you an idea what had to be done… check out these photos

Here, I’m fitting some new wood at the top of the inboard rib to give it some meat to mount the gear into! What was there previously is a shredded mess.

You can see that not only is the rail gone on the outboard side but the underlying wood was split and pulled away as well.

After fitting that, I had to do some similar work on the outboard side. This time just scabbing in some additional wood to provide a good base for the rails there. Needed to use some temporary braces to hold it in place while the glue dries.

A bit later with all the rails in place and with careful alignment and drilling… the gear is in place.

2016-03-20 18.00.59-opt

Next I had to piece in the sheeting around those wheel wells. I actually made markings to cut the curved sections by pressing the balsa sheeting down over the edges and letting the fiberglass cut/mark the wood enough to then use my Xacto to finish cutting the outline.

Then just drop it in place and wick in a little CA and we are back in business… well close anyway!

Here you can see some of the railing that needed to be replaced as well as the scabbing for some of the ribs that were a bit… crushed…

Here’s another piece fitting into place…

Here it is with all the parts in place…

Next, had to re-cover and drill new holes to mount the landing gear cover.

After a little covering, the wing looks… well, good enough! I could have spent more time and made this look better but this part of the airplane is only seen as it is flying by at 50′ and 50 miles per hour.

I am just not willing to invest the time at this point in an airplane that is unlikely to see much flight time. I’m more interested in fun, and this bird looks cool but just isn’t my cup of tea.

I’m looking now at putting some new batteries in (and losing a bit more weight in the process). The present pair of 2300mah A123s are 6 years old I believe and really larger than they need to be. If I get some good high quality A123 1100s I would have plenty of capacity to get in half a dozen flights between charges, and still save another 4-6 ounces. With that I should be getting closer to 1-1.5 lbs lighter. I have great hopes this will positively affect the overall flight characteristics.

I’ll try to post an update or two later in the summer when I get a few flights in.

April 14, 2016

Hangar 9 F4U-1D Corsair ARF build – The Evolution 77cc radial arrives!

Today my flying buddy Gary stopped by to give me a taste of his latest acquisition… the Hangar 9 F4U-1D 60cc ARF. Gary has only been flying a couple years, but one plane has always caught his eye more than any other… the Vought F4U Corsair. The distinctive WWII war bird is instantly recognizable to most and a favorite to many.

Gary stopped by today with just a few of the many parts and pieces required to get this big beautiful bird in the air. First and foremost is the power plant. Gary had the opportunity to see this engine at the Horizon booth when we attended and I think that pretty much sealed the deal.

The Evolution 77cc 7 cylinder glow 4 stroke is a piece of art. It comes complete with a glow wiring harness and integrated mount. But if you thought your wallet was done taking a beating when you bought the engine… probably not so much. Most will want the collector ring (at additional cost of course) and an on board glow system as suggested in the engine manual (now that wallet can take a deserved short break). Here are a couple shots from when we unpacked it today in my shop.

Here’s the money shot… This thing is just B-E-A-Utiful!

Even the mount is beautiful in an elegantly functional way. Having the choke and throttle linkage thought out a bit for you is a nice touch as well.

There are some interesting little notes in the manual about oiling the push rods before each day of flying, adjusting valve lash when needed and inserting after run oil after every flying session by pulling a push rod and cam follower to add after run oil… That all sounds pretty reasonable until you remember this thing will be hiding under a cowl, possibly with air baffling around the cylinders (again, a recommendation from Evolution) so maintenance is going to be a chore that no one with this kind of money invested is likely to be skipping I guess! Ah, large fuel powered war birds… They do enjoy being lovingly maintained! What have you gotten yourself into Gary? Of course it will all be worth it when we here the dulcimer tones that will be issuing from the exhaust!! Oh, and watch out for hydro-locks in those bottom 2 cylinders! I wonder if storage of the airplane “nose up” would minimize that possibility??

There are also some interesting recommendations on fuel mixes… I don’t recall seeing 0% nitro with 10% oil on the shelf at the local hobby shop (for break in) nor 5/7 for later use… Hmmm… Better start looking for some pure methanol so we can mix up some custom fuel!! This is where the modeling part comes in I guess. I ‘m actually looking forward to seeing Gary in his “mad chemist” outfit with a bubbling cauldron… 🙂

All that aside, I really think it will be worth it all when that big bird lifts off. This engine is going to demand some respect and loving attention for sure though.

Also in hand when Gary visited were his main retracts. You have to admire the engineering behind these as well. Not only are you raising and lowering the wheels whilst providing some nicely spring loaded struts… but they have to rotate 90 degrees as well!! These are Robart units with the electric actuator so I expect smooth action and simple setup… at least for retracts!

We didn’t get around to plugging together a receiver and the control board so we could cycle these… I’m looking forward to that as well.

Gary promised pictures and some commentary as he gets started building so I’ll try to post occasionally on how it is going. Especially on anything interesting, troublesome or particularly cool. We are already talking about ways to avoid the 2lbs of nose weight they claim we will need! I hate lead in an airplane.

More as Gary progresses.

March 29, 2016

BD-5B first flight… and almost last!

Let me just start out stating… when you get to the part of the manual where Aeroworks tells you to balance the BD-5B… and even tells you definitively “Do not skip this step! ” I highly recommend you just move on and leave that ’till after the first flight. This way you will have a much more exciting first flight and it certainly is more likely that you will be able to more easily transport the aircraft back home… I doubt you’ll need a very big garbage bag to carry what’s left. Unless you really want to fly it twice without repairs? I guess that’s one way to go, but if you are a thrill seeker not-balancing is a great way to go! Ask me how I know.

Ok, so maybe you should balance the plane… I opted out of that part so let me tell you a bit about my maiden flight.

It was a nice Sunday morning with the temperature approaching 60 degrees at noon. The wind was a bit brisk for an airplane this small and light (8-12mph) but it was pretty close to being down the runway so not terrible. After loading up and securing a 3S 2200, I dutifully checked all control surfaces which responded appropriately. Thinking back I recalled that I had checked the throws against the recommended and dialing in my usual (fairly aggressive) exponential settings. I even made sure I was in low rates as I expected that at speed this little ship would probably be a bit more sensitive that most that I fly. All looked good so after a quick taxi out on our Geo-textile runway I lined up into the wind and started rolling.

It took a bit longer to rotate and a bit more elevator too (note to self… maybe check to make sure the nose isn’t pointed down slightly??) but then it jumped into the sky and with a little down elevator it… dove for the ground!! Yikes, pull back up and it’s climbing like crazy again… After letting it gain some altitude it became a constant battle to maintain altitude and herd the plane around while constantly trying to find a mix of throttle, elevator and attitude that would smooth out the roller coaster ride. After trying several combinations, and barely recovering from several stalls and one trip to the far reaches of my visual range, I realized it was time to admit that there was nothing that was going to keep this plane flying level and try to figure out a way to get it back down in one piece… or at least a minimum number! Having used every trick that 20 years of RC flying experience has taught me to get to this point… it was time to just line it up, react and hope for the best.

On approach now and trying to outguess the roller coaster ride. Keep in some throttle to avoid any stalls until about 3 feet off the ground and here comes the seemingly inevitable plunge… A last second drop of throttle and simultaneous full up elevator just as it hits the grass with only a little bit of nose first down angle. Holding my breath but it looks like nothing too serious. The structure is apparently intact with only the nose gear pointing back a bit more than when it left the ground. All in all, I wasn’t unhappy with the end result. Just with the mistake that made this such a fight!

Here, you can tell where the wheel contacted the bottom of the body!

And this is back of the nose gear mount… You can see the wood split and allowed the landing gear “bearing” to rotate back

You may also be able to see that there is a groove that looks like there may have been a retainer of some sort but if it was ever there… it’s long gone now. So I created one using a washer and after re-gluing and clamping the wood to restore it to perhaps stronger than original, here is the result.

When I reinstalled it, it seemed as good as new.

Finally, I put the airplane with battery installed up on the stand and not at all surprisingly it took 3 ounces of extra weight were the battery sits… which is far forward… to get it to balance as recommended. No wonder it was such a handful! That equates to about an inch behind the recommended balance point. So the lesson, in case I had any remaining doubts, is “Always double check the balance!“.

To correct this, I can either throw some lead in there or drop in some extra milliamps… Normally, I would go for more battery capacity but I have no use for 2500-3000 3S batteries so I will likely just secure some lead and give it another try. At this point I am lucky to have a plane to fly a second time so I don’t have much to lose. I used all the skill I had and then got just plain lucky to get it down in one piece. Looking forward to a much less frantic flight!

March 23, 2016March 25, 2016

P-51 Redtail… Patching the fuselage… getting closer!

I’ve been rolling right along working on the restoration of the P-51 Redtail to flight status. Today I worked on some minor dings and one big hole that was inflicted during the “off-airport landing” that occurred last year. Yep, I landed a bit short, not crashed!! Never that…

So this method of covering up the boo-boos originated with another war bird that belongs to my flying buddy Kelly. During the construction of his P-40, as I was finishing up one night in the shop, I picked up the wing I had just finished some work on. I believe it was the final item on that wing… probably some servo linkage… that I had just finished and I just needed to sit the perfect wing in the corner so I could clear the bench for another part of the project.

As I swung the wing around the very sharp corner of the bench jumped up in front of the top wingtip surface on one end… maybe 2 or 3 inches in from the tip. It made a really nice divot in the wing and I began to… recite the rosary… that seems right… I know there were some words directed at a deity. That I’m sure of! Anyway, as I unsuccessfully tried to smooth out the damage I thought of the hours of filling/sanding/recovering I’d have to do in order to even come close to restoring this area to it’s original state, I realized that war birds are never this perfect…. Why should this one be? I looked at a few pictures of patched up old birds in real military service and thought I could approximate that look (riveted on bare metal patch). I found a role of aluminum foil/metal duct tape, cut out a square and carefully applied over the ding. Not bad but then I snuck over to my wife’s craft table and found a tool that looked like someone stabbed a BB with an ice pic! Eureka!! A little application of that tool around the edges and my patch job had rivets… or at least close enough for me. After a year or two of flying, that original application is still in place.

So for the Mustang and a few assorted dents and dings…. Here are a couple examples.

This is one to cover the crack that continued from the bottom of the elevator surface back almost to the trailing edge of the fixed portion of the tail. A little glue in the crack and add the “riveted patch”!

This one is right out in the open on the side of the body below the cockpit… Any patch I put here is going to be visible so why not make it look “natural”?

Then comes this monster!

This is just behind the cowl and right where my hand and/or any cradle I might put the plane on tends to rest… plus it is hard to get to the back of this without pulling the fuel tank, which involves pulling the receiver, etc.. I’d normally add at least some sheeting from behind but with that being such a pain… I decided to try a bit of reinforcing before I used the “metallic duct tape” trick. Looking around for some reinforcing I came across some small plastic drinking cups and went to work. The first task was cutting out an appropriate size and shape to cover the damage. The curvature of the cup worked to my advantage on this curved section.

With some more Gorilla glue and a little masking tape, I attached the plastic reinforcement and left it to dry for a few hours. Just in case you don’t find this easily in your local store… here is a link to it on Amazon. Gorilla Glue

Then finally I carefully peeled the masking tape and applied the metal tape.

The tape seems to be the ideal thickness and seems to be quite permanent so I’ll post a link to it here. I’m sure there must be other equivalents out there but this is what I use.

So that’s about it for now. I need to get back to doing a little covering work on the wing and I’ll be getting very close to another “maiden” flight.