Last Friday, I had the privilege of test flying Frank Scott's new Lockheed Constellation. In my opinion (not too biased) this aircraft is magnificent!. This Connie follows Frank's last big project, the B-36 that I talked about in another thread here on RC Universe.

The Connie has a 14 ft wingspan, is powered by four OS 108FSR engines, and has fully operational Fowler flaps in addition to scale retracting gear. It weighs about 70lb. Frank made virtually everything on the airframe himself, incluing the gear and the flap mechanism.
The gear retracts in true Connie fashion, taking about 30 secionds to retract, with the nose gear retracting fully first.

After the hour of unloading it and assembling and checking out everything, we performed a runup of each engine individually, and then all four at once, while also doing a thorough radio range check. As the Connie does not have Brakes, Paul Kirby (flight engineer and backup pilot) walked the Connie down to the departure end of the runway. Phil Karafilis, a retired TWA Captain with lots of Constellation experience provided technical advice as to the takeoff flap settings and in general info about the Connie.

The test flight went well, with the Connie using about 150ft to get off the ground, and this was using about 70% power, as I was still slowly adding power when it lifted off. After takeoff, the gear was retracted, then the flaps, and we did a couple of flybys for the photos and to check out the trim and stability. The flight performance was great, with little trim change with power changes, and no roll or yaw problems. After about 5 minutes, we slowed it down a bit, lowered the gear and then lowered the flaps slowly and set up the approach. I came in a little too far out and low, but added a bit of power to make the runway as I expected it to float a bit more than it did. The landing was fine, and during the rollout, the two inboard engines quit. This looked just like when they used to taxi up to the gate with just the two outboards running. It couldn't have been cooler!!.

There were a few things that needed attention after the first flight, such as the left main gear door linkage coming loose, so we called it a successful day.

Here's some pics of the flight as provided by Phil. The first is right after takeoff, followed by a flyby, then the landing rollout. the last is just before the flight when we were checking out everything.

Stan

P.S. Edited to change the wingspan and engine type after getting the straight info instead of my memory (CRS)