Category: Gas

My Red tail P-51 Mustang started out life in late 2004 as a standard Top Flite Giant Scale P51 D purchased by Mr. Tim Mills.  Tim bought pretty much everything needed to get this bird flying during a 1 week period.  Everything from engine to scale exhaust, servos and retracts, as well as the ARF itself and more.  When it arrived he started to convert it to a B model by stripping the body and adding the turtle deck aft of the cockpit using a Top Flite conversion kit.  The structure got finished and the body glassed and prepped for painting.  Tim wanted his P51 to “represent” the Tuskegee airman as he was one of the few black men involved in the RC flying hobby… at least in the greater Indianapolis area.  Tim had done some reading on the subject and found that the Tuskegee had first been issued B model mustangs so he had to convert his.

For some reason, at that point the project stalled.  I don’t know exactly why it stalled.  Likely Tim got involved helping out friends who needed some assistance with anything from Airplane setup to health issues.  Tim was the guy everyone called when they needed a ride somewhere, a helping hand with a home project, advice on flying and setting up RC planes and just about anything and everything else.  Tim had built and driven drag bikes as well as running a race circuit earlier in life, been an owner/driver of a semi-truck and maintained and rented out properties.  He was a Jack-of-all-trades and always generous with his time.  He was also a big talker and loved just hanging out with the guys at the flying field.  He helped me learn the basics of IMAC style flying and we traveled to a few events together in the last 4 or 5 years of his life.  With Tim in attendance, it was always a good time for me.  He also spent a good amount of time working on RC projects with me, both his and mine, out in my work shop.  I learned a lot during those sessions and like to think I taught him one or two things as well.

In any case, somehow the Mustang languished for almost 7 years and everyone had a good time asking Tim when the Red tail was going to be ready to fly.  This continued until Tim passed away in February, 2011.  I had personally benefited from flying and traveling and just becoming friends with Tim and I wanted to finish the Mustang in a way that Tim would have enjoyed so I contacted his nephew and bought as many of the parts Tim had acquired for the Red tail as I could.  I hadn’t planned on this project but I scraped up as much as I could and bought the Airplane, motor and Keleo scale exhaust at a very reasonable price.

By spring of 2012 I had the plane ready to fly and besides adding the distinctive red tail and other markings unique to the Tuskegee airmen, I added a few special touches toward making it a bit more of a memorial to Tim.  These include a pilot figure (black of course) who is clothed in appropriate attire and can salute on command from the transmitter; graphics on the cowl proclaiming the airplane name to be “Drag Racer II”; and adding the pilot name to the side of the cockpit area.  The call sign “Smooth” was chosen because not only did Tim enjoy Jazz music but many folks described his flying style with that word.  Here’s a picture of the cockpit area.

There are a few other nice touches I’ve added to the bird to make it unique but I’ll save those for some future posts.  I’m still working on learning to fly this plane sufficiently well to be comfortable and trying to keep it looking good in the process.  I’d hate to lose it in an accident and that is the reason it hasn’t flown much yet.  Recently though I’ve decided I just can’t let it become a hangar queen as I can easily imagine Tim’s reaction to that.  I can hear his voice in my head right now saying “Just fly it, man!”.

As I do just that, I’ll post some more information and pictures on the Red tail.  I hope Tim would approve.

Though I’ve flown the Top Flite giant scale Mustang a half dozen or so flights in the past, yesterday was the first time since I swapped in the Power safe receiver and moved it over to the DX-18 that I’ve had it in the air.  It was a sort of second maiden flight.

All in all, the weather was just about perfect once a rain storm cleared.  The wind was almost zero and the temps were in the high 70s.  The plane seemed to fly well with only the landing being a bit tricky because my flap mix resulted in a marked nose down pitch.  This meant that I could land without flaps… something I don’t recommend as the plane requires a fair amount of airspeed to fly… or with flaps while constantly holding in some up elevator to compensate.  I chose the “with flaps” option and managed to get it down with only a minor bounce or two.

I decreased the flap mix a bit after the first flight and tried again, this time getting in some knife edge flight and some high speed, relatively low passes with good results.  It appears I could use some more rudder throw and it was programmed for triple rates but I was unsure of my switchology and this was not the time to start flipping to find it so I will try some higher rates on the next flight once I am confident of which switch does the trick.  When it came time to land I found the same issue as before, though not as bad.  I will reset the mix to put in some up elevator for the next flight and see how that works out.  I guess this plane requires up elevator mixing with the application of the flaps instead of the expected down trim to prevent ballooning.  Looks like the drag wins out over the increased lift in this case.  Again the landing was at least “not damaging” but the rain was threatening so we packed it in for the day.

Today, upon recharging the flight packs I found they took 183 and 249 to top off the starboard and port packs.  Between the two flights this was about 12 minutes of flight time so it seems to take about 35mah per minute of flight.  With two 2300 LiFes on board and an average 10 minute flight…. well I don’t think I’ll worry much about charging between flights if I come with full packs!  I can monitor the idle and in flight voltages via the Telemetry system but will eventually likely need to rig a way to monitor the flight packs “at rest” at some point in the future.

Telemetry tells me I hit almost 4 Gs positive and 1 negative during these flights with a max airspeed of about 85 mph.  Temperatures on the motor stayed in the range of about 200-230 degrees (F) once it was warmed up, which seems to be a fairly normal range from what I’ve seen so far.  Static RPMs hit almost 6000 with the 22×10 Xoar but showed over 10,000 in the air.  I can’t really believe that is occurring… must be some sort of telemetry glitch.  I’ll eventually have to look into that to see if I can figure out a way to refute that and fix or at least explain that odd readings.  I plan on flying the Mustang again soon in preparation for our club Airshow coming up on July 28th.  I’ll try to post more as I get some more time on the airframe.

My WildHare Slick with DLE-55 power has always been a great airplane to fly.  This is my second one and I have learned a lot since I flew one first about 5 years ago.  As I learn more about mixes, balancing, setup, etc… I continue to make minor changes both for performance and to suit my own preferences.   The most recent changes are a new Falcon 23×9 CF propeller and a new fuel tank.  First I’ll talk about the tank and the reasoning behind it.

I had noticed that with all the other setup at least in the ballpark, I could not set my elevator to have enough throw to get a clean break in my spin entries AND at the same time keep it from snapping out if I pulled a tight loop.  A friend of mine pointed out that this could be because the plane was to nose heavy.  That seemed plausible as I have a tendency to setup my aircraft that way.  I’m leery of getting into a tail heavy setup as that makes the plane to sensitive and jerky on the sticks.  Doing some quick flying checks it did appear I was even more nose heavy than I normally fly so I started looking to remove some nose weight or shift it back.

I’ve never been fond of the standard tank setup in these gas birds as the tubing hardens or softens over time (depending on what type you use) so I had gone to a RotoFlow tank which has internal brass tubing with a heavy clunk that rotates in the back of the tank.  A couple years of use has proven they are really very nice systems.  The problem in this case is the tank is in front of the balance point and therefore contributing to the nose heavy issues.  The one problem with these tanks is that they are heavier than about any other setup.  I have a 24oz tank in my Slick which is really far more than needed if  you have a reliable pickup system… which it does.  That means I could stand to use a smaller tank as well… more weight savings from the tank material as well as carrying less fuel would lighten the plane and shift the balance.  Just what the doctor ordered.

I looked around and saw that many folks (especially the 3D crowd) had gone to what I call the “water bottle” tanks.  They are made of extremely thin (and therefore light) plastic like most water bottles are now.  Though I would be going back to the tubing that will likely harden and necessitate replacement every so often, this is less of an issue since the tank is so easy to get to in this airplane.  I found a nice 20 oz bottle from the good folks at B & E Graphix which is preassembled with a nice felt covered clunk and installed it with a savings of about 4 ounces in weight plus carrying 4 liquid ounces less fuel for a nice overall weight savings.  This is just in front of the wing tube so won’t be a big balance change but every little bit helps and overall weight savings is good as well.  For around $17 it seemed like a pretty good deal.

The second change I made at that same time was to swap my Xoar 23×8 Laminate for a Falcon 23×9 Carbon Fiber.  I broke one of my Xoar props recently when a taxi with tailwind turned into a “nose stand” maneuver :-(.

I had heard good things about running one of these with a DLE-55 (which is what I run) and was assured by the vendor that even with my canister (Proflow… it has been excellent so far) it would not drag my motor down any more than the Xoar does.  I get about 6200 with the 23×8 but the Falcon looks to be a bit thinner blade so the pitch may not cause as much of an issue.  Checking the weight resulted in good news.  The Falcon is 1-1.25 ounces lighter than my laminate Xoar.  This should help the nose heavy issue quite a bit being as it is weight that is about as far forward of balance as is possible.

After both these changes were accomplished I have done half a dozen flights and noticed my balance is much closer to neutral than before.  Still just a touch on the nose heavy side but by only a small margin which makes me very happy.  The Falcon gives me a bit more speed on the up lines and seems to still brake enough to keep the down lines from gaining much speed so all in all, an excellent choice of prop for my needs.  $70 is not what I’d call cheap but CF props never are!  I haven’t tach’d it with the new prop yet but performance seems fine in long pulls so I expect to see about the same RPMs as before.  Nicely in the lower power band of this motor and ideal for what I do with the airplane.

Overall both changes seem to have accomplished what I wanted.  I encourage anyone with similar desires to try these products out.  They seem to be winners.