I have every expectation that Dan will be able to rehabilitate this airplane to its former glory. Over the weekend, I decided I wanted to get my 100th flight in that day. I was sitting at 90 and just decided to keep on flying it until I hit 100. It has never been severely or even mildly damaged up to this point. Anyway, got FMS P51 Mustang 1450 & 1700 Flight Times? in, but before packing it up, I thought I'd like just "one more" to finish up its career as the previous landing had been less than ideal, not terrible but one I wanted to improve on. I had no plans on flying it after that.
Unfortunately, even though I had 100 successful flights on this airplane, the takeoff roll went normal and then I noticed that I had no control of my elevator as the airplane was screaming down the runway towards the end. I was too slow to try and use the Very impressive reverse thrust on this airplane, and it went rolling at high speed off the end and impacted into some nasty scrub brush which wrecked the nose section. The rest of the plane was undamaged. So, a major chore will be finding out what happened to elevator and rudder control. Nothing obvious at this point.
I offered the plane to Dan, as he is well known for his amazing restorative skills with foam airplanes. There is still a lot of life with it if he can repair the damage to the nose. I also offered that if that doesn't work, he can buy a replacement forward fuselage section for about $117 and essentially have a new airplane.
I did a lot of upgrades with the plane that are still good. The Robart diamond tires, WWII scale wheels for the nose and mains, and other stuff like that. This was based on a real airplane that lfew in the Southeast Asia Theater in WWII, and was lost to antiaircraft fire near Saigon in what was then French Indochina. All five crew were lost, unfortunately.
So, I"ll look forward to see Dan's progress and hope he has a lot of good flights on it like I did for over two years.
Making impressive progress!
Dan's patented airplane pinchers at work, the clothes pin adjusts the amount of pressure applied while the elastic bands hold the thing together.
Wheel retract mount is back in place. Future note, reinstall this piece first as it would have been much easier. It also adds a lot of strength to the forward section.
The forward section is still split. Last step is to glue them together once the other parts are dry.
hen a little sanding and a little painting ad voila! She's new!
A couple of parts to order like the forward cover and gear door, pitot tube and the Radom underneath seems to be missing as well. Then bind it and drop the gear, see what's up with the electronics.
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