CRASHED IT
 

well after building my p-51 pts and being so thrilled about how great it looked i went out a ran my first tank of gas thru it in my driveway started right up and ran great i went out to my field for its maiden flight upon take off it hooked to the right and when i went to recover it rolled over and crashed on its top hard tearing up the canopy, rudder , cowl ,tearing all fins off the engine head and breaking off the idle mixture screw! man its a awful feeling when that happens makes you want to quit! ive gotten confident with my nexstar and really enjoy flying it thought i was ready to move on to a low wing trainer but i was dead wrong!!!

RE: CRASHED IT
 

sounds bad, feel sorry for you
one big thing is if you wan't to quit DON'T just keep on keeping on as I say

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Bummer.........sorry to hear about the crash [&o]. Unfortunately you fell into the trap of over confidence on your trainer and have seen first hand what many of us say about flying the wheels of your primary trainer before moving up.

This is one of the reasons why it's recommended to have an experienced pilot take your intermediate trainer up for the maiden. Even though you have flown a basic trainer, most flyers are not ready for the surprises that can come up on a maiden flight. You had the added complexity of adding in a tail dragger.

Best advise here is get back on the NextStar and keep flying it, and work on rebuilding the P-51 - you'll get a good education from it. Learn to fly the NextStar to it fullest capability. Work on precision in all your maneuvers, including inverted flight. Flat bottom trainers are not the easiest to fly upside down and by the time your proficient of that without gaining or loosing altitude, then move up to the P-51, but have an instructor maiden it and fly a few flights on a buddy box until you are ready to solo it.

Hogflyer

RE: CRASHED IT
 

yep your right i fell into the "im sure i can fly it hole" so what is the biggest difference in flying a tail dragger it sure did hook to the right on me and then bam it was on its top but still running mind you! the engine just looked awful and of course all the parts i need are out of stock so i decided to go ahead and spend 80 bucks and ordered a new one when the parts i need come in i might go ahead and order them and have a engine on stand by would this be a good engine to put in something else in the future its the evolution .40 tps

RE: CRASHED IT
 

joco, try a 4*40 or4*60 for your next plane. The P51 may have been to much of a jump. Any of the war birds are a long way from a trainer. I would hazard a guess, and it's only a guess as I didn't see the flight, that you didn't have enough air speed when you lifted off and correcting the right hook caused a tip stall resulting in the inverted landing.

Don't be to hard on yourself. Crashes are part of the dues you pay to gain experience. Right now, I think I've paid for more experience than I've acculminated though.:)

I usually have one of the more experienced guys take a new plane up for it's shake down. Even that doesn't assure that it won't crash, but the odds are better.

Get out the Ca and covering and get you bird back in flying shape for when you are ready. There are a couple other great second planes besides the 4*. I just don't remember the names now.

Don

RE: CRASHED IT
 

[:@]OOOO thats a bad one! But it sounds fixable, and those kind of repairs fix quicker than you would think. The p 51 PTS will still be an ok next plane just get some help with setting it up and have some one trim it out for you. Then I think you will have fun with it for quie a while. they seem fast but handle ok when set up corectly.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

I felt really good about flying my trainer until I crashed and lost it. I'm putting together another trainer and I still plan on having one of the other guys take it up for its first flight. One of the guys feel that I'm ready to move on to my second plane but I think I'll just keep flying the trainer for some time yet.
chopper man

RE: CRASHED IT
 

You are lucky you have people to help you out, and I think thats awesome. Sad to hear about what happened, that plane is a beauty.

I'm definitely a rookie... graduated from flyin 3 channel park flyers to electric trainer.

Is repairing these birds somewhat hard when they are damaged? I dont really have a clue how to pull CA'd glued parts apart.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

sounds to me asif the ailerons were reversed if it continued to roll when you attempted a recovery

take the advice mentioned above and fly your Trainer until you can do almost every trick in the book, then try something such as the 4* or other low-wing trainer before you try a warbird

RE: CRASHED IT
 

out of curiosity did you do a full power takeoff? Or was there some throttle left at lift off?

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Don't give up!!!! keep flying your Nexstar and learn from your experiences. I've destroyed 2 of these P-51 pts and just finished putting the third together. As my instructor keeps telling me, these planes (warbirds) are a lot harder than a typical trainer but these are the type of planes I want to fly (and rebuild).

RE: CRASHED IT
 

jet - how would throttle effect takeoff? even if it went into a tourque roll it wouldnt happen that fast would it? even if the thrust line was off it would have more of a tendancy to yaw slowly wouldnt it?

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Don't forget to check the Center of Gravity once you finish repairing it. Out of balance can cause major control issues. Take the time to repair this and you will have learned a great deal. Good luck.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Maiden several of these planes , First thing I do is take the airbrakes of the landing gear , they cause more problems than their worth. It is also a very easy plane to take off as long as you don`t slam the throttle open and gain airspeed before lifting off.
Once you get use to the plane and strip off the trainng gear , change the prop to a 2 blade, and set the throws up. It is a lot of fun to fly and very fast .

RE: CRASHED IT
 

yes jet i was at full throttle at lift off then the wings just dipped and there it was laying on its top im wondering now how big of job will it be to install the new engine as far as ligning everything back up straight i noticed the engine set all the way back in the mount when i took it out but other than that what is the process

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Hi joco1
I agree with an earlier post and hope you check this out. Your ailerons may have been reversed. I have seen this many times. Let us know what you find.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

You said the plane dipped to the right, and when you corrected, it flipped, but you didn't say in which direction it flipped. Right or left?

In any case, just be sure that you have a qualified pilot maiden ALL of your planes until you get to the point where you feel you're good enough to maiden someone ELSES plane.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

I see 2 possibilities of what MIGHT have happened.
1. You may have gotten airborne too slow with the wing stalled. Then when you used the ailerons to attempt to correct you actually aggavated the stall of the low wing finishing it off. I believe using the rudder to lift the wing would have increased the chances of flying away from this incident.

2. Aileron controls reversed. If true, you were dead when you pushed the throttle forward at your experience level. It's tough enough for an experienced pilot to fly a plane like that around with reversed controls. Would likely need to ignore the ailerons and try to fly with rudder only. Causes many wrecks.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

i tried to correct to the left but it was like i was too late and i know and will admit it was my lack of expierence im sure i guess you could say it was a crash course!! now im more concerned about getting it back right my main worry is getting the engine back on straight is it going to be easy on this plane or will it be alot of work i took the engine off the mount so i could get to the two bolts holding the carb adjustment screw on the back all the fins were pretty much bent or torn so i figured i will need a new head so every where i looked all the parts are on backorder or out of stock i hate seeing my plane tore up like this and want to get it back together so i decided to just order the engine new again and get the replacement parts when they come in and have a spare engine would you go back with the same engine or i was thinking about the 46 or 52 evolution engine would they bolt up the same and how big of job will this be to remount!

RE: CRASHED IT
 

usually when a wing drops it is a sign that it stalled and at lift off you need to use opposite rudder and get the nose down to build airspeed then slowly start the climp out.if you have to think about what to do it is too late.kind of like skidding in snow you have to turn into the skid instinctively otherwise you end up going sideway,backwards etc.

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Remounting the engine shouldn't be that big of a deal as you already took the old one off. I'm not familiar with the evolution but generaly the 52 should have the same footprint as the 46. Double check the firewall too, it seems it took the brunt of the damage. People tend to look at you differenlty when the engine falls off in flight! take your time and ask questions. Installing the new engine should be straight forward ex. four bolts hold the engine on the muffler comes of and the throttle linkage. Hope this helps, Mike

RE: CRASHED IT
 

One trick that works to make sure the fuselage is straight is to use a laser level that can provide a vertical reference line. This can be projected lined up on the nose and tail, then marks placed on the fuselage where it crosses bulkheads. This will let you see how far something needs to move to make everything straight. You can line it up on the end of the crank and the glow plug to check to see how the engine is set. If you sketch out the engine mounting, you can use them as reference and set the right thrust accurately with the laser line. The one I use is self leveling and projects both horizontal and vertical lines and makes assembling a model much easier.

Hogflyer

RE: CRASHED IT
 

the plane wasnt really together or flown enough to leave much of a print on the mount i just hope its not too big of a deal getting back where it was thank you guys very much for your advice! how long does it take to get over a crash when its dumb that it even happened still kickin myself for wrecking that really nice plane!!!!!!!!

RE: CRASHED IT
 

wild....i'm thinking he may have stalled it..less than full throttle would give you an idea that he didn't have enough airspeed..but he did say he had the throttle wide open.. now this being a maiden flight where were the trims set at?

RE: CRASHED IT
 

Hi joco1
Two people suggested checking to see if your ailerons were reversed. Do you know what this means? What did you find?