Posted by ALL American |
Apr 12, 2012 @ 10:18 AM | 29,670 Views
This is my new P51D for flying at the local park when I don't have time to go to my flying club. Its an FMS 1450 mm (57 Inch) P51D Version 6
FMS makes great airplanes but they almost all have some minor issues. So aside from rehinging all of the control surfaces with DuBro pinned hinges which was optional, I found a number of small issues (mostly aesthetic) that I felt needed correction:
The blue on the plane was three different shades so I repainted the blue on the cowl, spinner and on the plane. The camera's flash washes out the color which is actually a much richer blue than it appears in the photos.
The stripe decals on the top of each wing were crooked so I removed them and painted the stripes.
The Invasion Stripes were very sloppy with quite a bit of overspray so I repainted the Invasion Stripes.
The entire airframe was dulled a bit with Krylon Matte finish spray.
The motor alignment was off to the right and too low and the spinner gap against the cowl was fairly wide. This was unacceptable so I corrected the alignment and gap.
A number of minor issues were discovered during a thorough inspection such as, one of the retract's set screws was too small and was not actually securing the strut. Had I not caught this I'm sure the strut would have fallen out during a takeoff or landing. So inspect every screw on your plane!.
I use Gens Ace 4S 4000 Mah 25C packs which weigh 15+ Oz. I had to add 1.6 ounces of weight to the tail in order to obtain a
