It works!
And finally the wind died down, the paint was dry, and finally... Finally I was able to get this thing out. I went through 3 battery packs today and I am very pleased to report that performance is all around superb. With the Little Red T, basically a 400T, brushless motor and 1060 GWS propeller there is a surprising amount of speed. Extremely slow flight is also possible with the flaperons partially down. It can be launched by holding the fuse from the top followed by a gentle toss. The shovel, I mean air scoop, does make landings tricky so I am glad I fiberglassed it. Full flaperons give this Mustang a great amount of lift but make the roll rate difficult to control, so I reserve the full flaps for takeoff and landing. Overall a success, it flies really cool.
It flies really cool
I have been flying this P-51 for some time now and can more accurately report how it flies. It amazes me how stable the P-51 really is. It is a very precise flying aircraft. It does exactly what you tell it to do. Vertical stability is perfect, slightly positive, as the aircraft will tend to settle out after a slight correction up or down making low fast passes top notch. It rolls very clean, full length ailerons are complete overkill, and are not needed. To compensate I must use very exponential settings on my radio. Flaperons however are a nice feature and help taking some of the stress off the air scoop on belly landings. Control however is compromised when the flaps are down. I would recommend building this plane larger, with true separate functioning flaps and scale ailerons.
I have had problems with the motor mount as with a 10x6 prop it wants to draw as much as 17 Amps, which is way too high for the motor I'm using. As a result the hot glue was having difficulties holding and was replaced with gorilla glue. If I rebuild this bird larger, which I'm sure I eventually will, I will be using a mount similar to my FW-190 as it can withstand "nose ins" much better.
This particular P-51 is very fast as well. I would recommend about a 1500 Kv motor to achieve the same performance. On the somewhat down side I have noticed there is not unlimited vertical with the current motor, probably because it is undersized. In addition my battery mounting is somewhat sloppy, and from time to time re-trimming is necessary. This plane is always a blast to fly and with the 3S 2300 mAh A123 pack I get nearly 20 minutes of controlled flight (10 Amp range). It will be a very sad day when I have to retire this warbird.
Duct tape added just for show.
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