First Crash and Rebuild! Pics to go along

Waiwai

Junior Member
So I'm a beginner pilot and I did the worst taboo I bought a War Bird. It is a P-51 Mustang with a 800mm wingspan so not beginner material and I knew this. I knew eventually I was going to put this thing into the ground but it didn't stop me from trying to fly it. I went out the first time on a decently windy day and tried a runway take off after about 2 hour of flight sims. Long story short right after take off the left wing dropped caught the ground and the prop ate it. I didn't order any replacement props so I had to order them and wait. They took awhile to come in because the were out of stock and I ended up waiting till after the cold weather to even try again which brings us to today.

We, my friend James and I, took the Mustang out today with a new prop and did a throwing start and everything went perfect! For the first 3 minutes. I flew it around for a little did a nice soft landing and then got greedy and wanted to go back up again. The toss was perfect and the plane took off with out a hitch. I flew it around for about another minute, did a couple loops, then decided to bring it back down. Well as it was on its decent I decided to bank and bring it closer to me and land. Sadly I over banked and nosed it right into the ground which annihilated the nose. Now this led me to my first ever repair job!

Now we used bamboo skewers for support by stabbing them into the foam around the break and used hot glue to seal the Mustang together. The motor mount had also loosened up so we used a little glue to get it in place and stay. Sadly the prop shaft is a little bent but is replaceable so the mustang will not be back up until next week after I get a new shaft from the hobby shop.

Here are the picks of the Stang Before and After!

1.) The Mustang after the crash and back at my place
http://i.imgur.com/9fz15F7.jpg
2.) The motor out and a good look at the nose that broke off
http://i.imgur.com/Ay12G6g.jpg
3.) The nose back together with the body after glue and bamboo skewers ( Sadly no pics of the skewers in place but they went horizontally from the nose to the body, 8 1inch skewers total )
http://i.imgur.com/rgujwiM.jpg
4.) A close up after we patched it up and ran hot glue down the crack to seal it up
http://i.imgur.com/cQLvzhp.jpg
5.) The Finished "Franken-stang" as we called it
http://i.imgur.com/YmSj9fw.jpg

Hope anyone who read enjoyed but also doesn't hate us to much for breaking just about every noobie rule out there!
 

makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
Mentor
Welcome, new pilot! Some lessons are hard, but it's great that you've learned from this and that looks like a good repair!

You now have the skills to build your own plane with the flite test plans and have something that can really be great for becoming a better pilot!
 

Waiwai

Junior Member
Welcome, new pilot! Some lessons are hard, but it's great that you've learned from this and that looks like a good repair!

You now have the skills to build your own plane with the flite test plans and have something that can really be great for becoming a better pilot!

That is actually what we had planned to do next. I was wanting to build the FT Spitfire and James is wanting to do thrust vectoring on the F-22. I will surely post build videos and flight videos of when we tackle those builds!