Keester

HI, I finally crashed my F4U enough to decomision it. [last time out I flew out of range, Ugly] I want to move my equipment to a P51. I will be useing a Himax 4100 brushless with 3 cell lipoly, It really cranked my Corsair. Has anyone applied the GWS retracts on this with any success? Also couldnt I purchase a slope glider version since Im using my own power system? I would think so. I have already a big box full of canned motors. Dont need any more pluse the cost is way cheaper. Does this plane behave well? Thanks for your time and input.
Keester

Warbird Brian

My Feedback: (2)

Hello Keester,

I have only flown the GWS P-51, but I love it. I'm not sure about the battery compartment of their Corsair, but you have to make sure your battery will fit into the P-51 before you glue the fuselage halves together. I had to do quite a bit of sanding on mine. I hope this info helps you, if you weren't aware of it already. Here is a video of mine...

http://home.comcast.net/~guncamera/Revised_Filmage.wmv

I am also equipped brushless and 3cell li-po

Hepdog

I'll assume you mean a Himax 2015 - 4100 right? I have flown both the 2015 and 2025 with 3 cell Lipos in my Mustang and it rocks. The 2015 is more than enough power, the 2025 is overkill This combination can easily pull a heavier airplane around so the weight of retracts won't be an issue there. Where it will be an issue is the stall speed. My Mustang when under 16 ozs is pretty easy to fly. Not a trainer, but not the tip stalling demon people allude to. As the weight goes higher above that, it gets progressivley harder to fly due to increased stall sensitivity. I flew it just once at 20 oz and will never do that again.[:'(]
I bought a set of the "heavier" GWS retracts and I am not impressed. They may work for take-offs, but any less than perfect landings will break them instantly. So takeoff, gear up, then belly land would work.

gofaster72

I had the retracts on mine, never lasted more than four taxi tests.

Keester

Beautiful plane! Nice job. Is the failure of the retracts that they are too light? Can they be reinforced [realisticly]? Or is it just another under engineered piece of crap that was meant to work but soundly dosent? Also I put a more scale looking tire on my corsair is there only room to use the ultra lights from GWS that come with the kit? Thanks for your reply
Keester

SBR_RV

the wire that comes with the ss should realy also come with the warbirds as it is much stronger.

Hepdog

Well engineered but poorly executed would be a better description of the GWS retracts. The plastic they use is far too brittle and light. If was built out of nylon or CF, it would fare far better. Actually not very well engineered either. The pivot points and arm lengths result in far too much loading on key areas that would need far stronger materials. Whatever...not really worth trying IMHO.

gofaster72

On the P51 there is only room to sink the light weight wheels into the wing. I added an adjustable servo delay to the gear. Really looked great to see the gear go up and down with a two second delay rather than flicking up and down. I suppose that if you were a professional GWS pilot on a perfectly smooth runway with no wind and no bounce, you could make several landings before the gear would fail. In other words, your right, for all practical purposes, they are just another under engineered piece of crap Good luck with the gear that you have. The standard gear on the 51 didn't work all that well either.

Dareh

this is my setup on my gws mustang: 400 eflight brushless motor with the eflight gear box (same gear ratio as the stock gear box on it) a 10-8 prop size, i have 5 channels on mine, rudder,elev,thro,ail, and gear retract, ive 25 amp castle creation esp with 1570 3 cell apogee and kokam battery, ive used cirrus 6.2 servos (4 of them including gear retract setup) well the result is interesting, ive had more than 20 landings, including some hard landings, i have never had a problem with the retract system but after some hard landings you need to straight up the wires which is natural for all retract systems (i have the same problem with my glow engine mustang with saito 100 engine and over 80 miles speed), its not a big issue and takes seconds to do that, i dont have a speed gun but im sure it goes more than 30 miles, the retract system is the GWS blue color one which is about 10 dollars but to make it usefull you need to make it a little flexible, ive put four rubber servo keeper (the black ones that come with standard servo) between the retracts and the plywood which ive epoxied into the retract slot to assemble the retracts on them, they actually work like shock absorber and plus, i made a small round shape spins on my landing gear wires. well as i said it works wonderfull and the place where i fly and land it is a sandy field, im really glad of mine, and dont forgetr that its a war bird you need to fly it fast enough otherwise enemies will shoot you. any questions are welcomed, [email protected]

Wokka

I know this posting is a bit off subject Keester but if you are still in the process of building your Mustang I would reccomend filling the 'panel lines' on the wings. i have read a number of comments on RCU regarding the GWS P51 as being a bit twitchy at low speed and especially when landing... high angles of attack. This is possibly due to the panel lines making the airflow break away from the wing too early and causing it to stall. There was a two page article in one of the RC mags a few months ago regarding this and the author made a very good arguement about the panel line/airflow problem. I filled my wing with light weight filler and resprayed it. I'm afraid I can't give any feedback on how it works as I am :-

a) waiting for better weather.... summer
b) some more flying experience.

Here's my '51

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/neil.watson97/Neil's%20GWS%20Mustang.htm

Neil