MikeEast

My Feedback: (3)

I got a chance to work with a guy this weekend on the new P51 trainer. My impression was that its not your typical trainer but in the hands of a good instructor it can work. It comes with a set of plastic leading edges that you can tape on during the initial learning phase. That was a pretty neat thing and made it much more stable.

I will go over my impressions item by item

1. Takeoff are a little tricky. It wants to walk around a good bit on takeoff roll out if you are not pretty good with the rudder. Its easy to overcontrol if you are not careful. I did not have any problems with it, but another guy from the club was trying to help this guy before I got there and he said it was almost impossible to takeoff. So that is probably a more realistic impression. It is nowhere near as easy as a trainer to takeoff. You have to slowly get it rolling and once it is rolling straight and the tail comes up its a piece of cake.

2. Flight. Fast. It can be flown slow and it is quite stable and generally forgiving but it flies like a P51 minus the stall tendencies. Its quick and agile and I just flew the crap out of it in scale form. If you are going to teach someone with this dude, you need to stress throttle management. With the stall arrestors it has virtually no tendency to tipstall.

3. Landing.
Here is where it is most like a trainer. You can make very slow approaches and with the humungous main wheels and the forward swept gear it can take a pretty hard landing. That being said, again it appraoches just like an LT40 and will land about a gentle as a feather without much effort. It glides great.

4. Its TOUGH. The guy I was working with is actually a returning modeler so we were just brushing up. I forced him to land the thing because I knew he could and he did. The 1st one was the typical 1st time landing and it bounced a little, and then settled in and tipped forward onto the nose in the rough grass just on the edge of the landing strip. The plane was totally unharmed and could have taken a lot more abuse on landing without a problem. This plane was built for hard landings.

Engine. I want to say he had a Thunder Tiger .50? in it. Again he was an experienced modeler so he wanted no help getting the thing going and rightfully so. Once he had it running he just handed me the transmitter and we started our session there. Point is the 50 was more than enough power and it just plain hauled butt when you wanted it too.

Overall impression. A really nice little P51 that is great for a knockaround plane like a LT40 for an experienced pilot. It will function just fine as a trainer, but the instructor needs to be alert and ready becuase again pnce it is iin the air, it handles like a p51 minus the stall tendencies.

Cool plane[8D]

bruce88123

So apparently this was an ARF version and may have had a 2-blade prop and not the 3-blade like on the RTF. This would account for some of the speed over the RTF version. You should fly an RTF version in stock form also and compare them. You WILL see a difference.

MikeEast

My Feedback: (3)

Yep, it had a 2 blade prop. I did not look at the pitch or diameter, but it was definitely a Master Airscrew prop. I did not realize there were 2 versions. I have not read up on the thing much, just had the spot chance to work with this fella on his plane.

jucava

In my opinion it is the best trainer in the market. Why?

- Teach how to proper use ruder from the beginning.
- Proper landing technique, no more glide and flare, force you to fly in and land.
- Tough thing.
- Take out the speed brakes, wing drops and raise the flaps and what do you have?
A totally different airplane, more sport and responsive.


Again this is my opinion, and I don't spect everybody to agree with me but is what I recommend as an instructor when some one ask me.

jetmech05

I must disagree here a friend of mine has the arf version. I found it too sensitive in the pitch axis to be a good trainer. A little better when the speed brakes were removed. I think the main gear is too weak. With the forward swept landing gear the structure inside the wing just can't stand the stress of a hard landing, breaks and allows the mains to rotate back and forth. Ive seen this happen to 3 different airplanes.
All in all there are just too many good trainers out there, and frankly this aint one of them.
although it isnt bad in the hands of an experienced pilot ,he would soon get bored due to the lack of maneuverbility

bruce88123

Yes, the PTS RTF version with the evolution engine has the Evolution "Trainer System" power system. Flywheel on the crank for low/smooth idle and a relatively small diameter fine pitch 3-blade prop. Gets it up off the ground well but never gets going REAL fast. Fine pitch also slows it quickly when landing and actually lands best carrying a touch of power. I found it sinks pretty fast at idle and all the "gadgets" on the plane. Have not tried one in clean configuration yet.

MikeEast

My Feedback: (3)

Generally, I do not disagree.
I think if a guy is on a really tight budget, can only afford 1 plane and wants a warbird real bad, and he has a really good instructor to teach him to fly,,,, the plane will "do". Thats a lot of if's.

It really flies pretty good, and it surprised me how stable it was at low speeds but if you are not careful it could be a handful ESPECIALLY when a brand new pilot is trying to master orientation because it is pretty quick.

As far as the landing gear, this guy had dubro standard rubber wheels about 3" in diameter on it. They looked huge! Are they stock? With those big old rubber wheels it was pretty forgiving in the "bounce" dept for him.

bruce88123

http://www.hangar-9.com/Products/Def...ProdID=HAN2832
Theses are the standard wheels provided. Do they look like what you saw? I couldn't find out what the diameter was.

MikeEast

My Feedback: (3)

Well, its hard to tell for sure without seeing them relative to the plane, but judging from the landing gear covers I would say that those are a good bit smaller. Also he had removed the false retract covers.

flyinrog

My Feedback: (1)

I saw a friend try to teach another one on this mustang.....If a guy is on a really tight budget, this is the wrong hobby A. and B would you really recommend this to a friend on this tight budget? my friend recommended the other friend to get a trainer...maybe if your retired and have gobs of time for buddy box flying..all the "helpful"things just take a fast plane and make it go slow..would you recommend anyone going from a trainer to a warbird?

bruce88123

Then he probably swapped wheels, maybe to be easier to fly off grass or prop clearance. And removing the gear doors will also reduce the drag. I was surprised how much on the plane I flew. Didn't effect handling much but it did reduce drag.

NightOne

I think the "Stang as a trainer" is going to be a long standing debate here on RCU.

We thought pretty hard about it when we were getting a trainer plane for multiple people to learn on. The biggest factors that deterred us were the things I read about the landing gear not being tough as needed and the perceived high speed landings. For me, I also preferred a little bigger plane. Therefore, we bought the Alpha 60. That is not to say that our decision was the correct one, but we're happy with it at this point.

Our instructor still stands by his advice that the Mustang would have worked for us too. However, he says the Alpha is a great trainer too.

So I suspect there isn't going to be a "right" answer in this debate. Some people will do fine with the P-51 and others will wish that they bought a high wing trainer instead.

The ultimate advice (if money is no issue) might be to get both!

MikeEast

My Feedback: (3)

Rog again, I agree with everything you said. My point is that I dont think its a good trainer. But it will work if its a must.

bkdavy

My Feedback: (1)

Another point on the RTF version. The firewall mounting IS NOT up to the potential abuse a trainer will recieve. We had one the other night that deadsticked on climbout (about 6-7 feet up). When it landed in the tall grass, the firewall ripped right out of the fuse. Very little wood split when it came out. There were only 2-3 small glued areas around the firewall.

The Evolution engine supplied on this one had the limiters very poorly located, and had to be removed to properly tune the engine. The limiter on the low speed mixture actually hit the cowl, and whenever the throttle was advanced, the limiter would turn the low speed mixture rich.

I agree that with the wing droops on and the speed brakes off, it does approach well, but ground handling is poor, and the stock landing gear are much to easy to break loose and bend. I suppose in the ARF version, it would be easier to correct these problems.

Brad

jetmech05

well i thought id be getting alot of grief here .......
i just couldn't recommend this aircraft as a primary trainer. there are just too many good ones out there
have fun fly well

Missileman

I am in the last stage of getting my P-51 ARF into the air. (CG, currently 1/8" tail heavy)
The stock tires say "Hanger 9" on them and they are large (not at home now but I want to say 3-1/2") they look and feel like Robart wheels and are Identical to a set I bought for my AT-6.
The main gear wire is listed as 3/16" but when I tried fitting a 3/16" collar on that I had it was too small, meaning the main gear wire is larger than 3/16"
The ARF also comes with a 3 blade prop and spinner. the prop is 10-6. I installed my TT Pro .46 and will try the 3 blade too see if I like it. I will also bring my 2 blade, 11-7 prop and spinner with me in case I don't.
I will reserve judgement on weither or not it would be a good first plane until I get a chance to fly it.
Assembly was extremely easy, just kind of fell together. So at least that part is suitable for beginners.

bruce88123

Chances are that the wire is actually metric. What country was the plane mfg in?

Missileman

Don't know. But you are probably right.

MOODOGS

Hey Missleman, Let us know how your maiden flight with the "tange" goes. I am SOOOO close to buying one, Iam ready all of your guy,s comments on it. good luck

Missileman

I will. It is ready to fly but we are in a wet spell right now. The first part of next week looks like drier weather.

NightOne

Our instructor flew his pretty much in the dark last night!! Not kidding. Everyone was packing up a loading the cars when he announced he was taking it up. Everyone thought he was joking until the takeoff. He didn't fly it gingerly either.

With the beginner stuff removed that puppy is FAAAAAAST!!

Maybe we'll get one as a second trainer. Not as the second plane, but more of having two first planes. That way if we crack up the stang we still have the other one to keep learning on.

bruce88123

It never hurts to have 2 planes. or 20 if the wife permits.

NightOne

My wife is the one that keeps telling us that we should have got the Mustang!

aviation metal smith

I have the p51pts and am very happy with it so far no problems with landing gear and 3 other guys in our club have this plane and the only problem with the landing gear has been a broken wheel collar (very hard landing) the speed brakes were the first thing to go, they make it to slow and it wants to stall at slow speeds but it flys great otherwise

bluesdr44

My Feedback: (8)

Here's my P-51 story. I have been flying heli's for about 8 months, and wanted to get into planks, so went with the P-51 PTS with the Evolution 46 engine. I set it up with operational flaps during the build (but left them neutral during "training"), and was told to leave the speed brakes off as it slowed the plane too much. After the first flight on buddy box, my instructor changed out the stock 3 blade prop with a 2 blade 10-8...what a difference! After about 6 flights on buddy box, I was ready to solo, and after one solo flight, took the wing droops off, and after another flight or two started working on landings with the flaps. I was up to doing rolls, loops, half 8's, inverted, etc all using high rate. Sadly, last weekend it went down...HARD!! First lost throttle control (running appro 75% of full), then had complete loss of radio control...nosed over and straight in from about 100 ft...what a mess. Now trying to decide on which plane to get to replace it. Looking at SIG 4 star 40 or SIG Somthin Extra...let me know what you think.

My bottom line on the P-51...if you have some experience, be it heli, electric, lots of sim time, AND an instructor, the PTS is a great plane to start with, and progress on.