Building and Flying a Free Flight P51 Mustang for Indoor Flying

This video shows the building and flying of my P51B Mustang built to be flown indoors. It's a free flight model built from a Golden Age Reproductions kit plan. Indoor flight footage was taken at the Glastonbury High School gym, Glastonbury, Connecticut.
Watch the model flying along with other indoor models without music playing here: • FLY INDOORS! With the ...
The printed tissue used on the model was purchased from Hummingbird Model Products. hummingbirdmod...
The kit is no longer available but shows up on Ebay once in a while.

[@pipcop]

Very Very nice John, great build to watch. Hope your vids inspire others to build that "one plane" that they might be a little shy to try.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thanks. One of the reasons I enjoy doing the videos is the hope it inspires someone to try out the hobby.

[@CliffHarveyRCPlanes]

Simply superb John 👍

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you Cliff.

[@nhschreiner]

Nicely done

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you.

[@rubberfly]

Very well done! The translucent model looks very light and flies great. The printed tissues are a great resource that I didn't know about. Thanks for sharing.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

You're welcome. There are several good tutorials on printing tissue available. I print tissue for many of my projects now. Pretty easy and looks great. Thank you for your comment.

[@robertrominger6652]

Do you have this video without the music? I want to hear its flight as well.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Robert, well yes, I do have that footage. But you won't hear a thing. It's pretty much silent until the prop clicks on the floor when it lands. You'd hear more people talking in the gym and the reverb of the room but the model is silent in flight.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Robert, I realized you can find footage of the P51 flying in this video reviewing one of our flying sessions. kzbin.info/www/bejne/apnXqKxnbM9mldE

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Pretty sure it flies in this video too. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n3SrealpfNSamMU

[@sblack48]

How do you print the design on the tissue?

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Hi. I have a video here that reviews that process. Thanks for watching. kzbin.info/www/bejne/sKWZaYWXo5d3o5Y

[@richardbrowne3641]

How did you get printed tissue paper from Hummingbird Products? It was a Golden Age Production model. I haven't seen one made by them. It looks great and flew great in the gym. "MERRY CHRISTMAS, JOHN!"

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Richard the tissue is listing on the Hummingbird website. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a great Holiday Season!

[@lrg3834]

That's beautiful, well-assembled model. Graceful flyer too. Take a bow.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you and thanks for watching.

[@mosesacerdoti]

Great job! Can I ask you how do you achieve the circular flight of the plane? Thank you.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

The turn is a combination of rudder offset and thrust line offset. It's a matter of trial and error to get the right combination. Some wing twist is also sometimes required but was not the case with this model.

[@harrykeel8557]

So beautiful, to watch you build and then fly your models. I guess you get your miniature pilots from the land of Shangri la. But then it would be a different pilot. Either absolutely beautiful flying models.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Harry, thank you so much for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed my video and thanks for watching.

[@eyesquish485]

Awesome flights, thank you

[@funscalemodels9782]

Really nice model John! That flight sped looks perfect! FSM

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you!

[@dwightbrown2808]

Excellent work! Getting a low wing monoplane to fly that well is really impressive.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you Dwight.

[@crashrr2993]

You deserve an award for bravery: test-flying on that short grass. I could never bring myself to try that. I would rather wait a year till the grass had grown!😂 Beautiful model, and a lovely flyer. Reminds me that the Mustang is glaringly missing from my hangar.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

😂😂😂 Thank you for your comment. Everyone needs a Mustang in the hangar. This one turned out to be a great flyer.

[@crashrr2993]

@@Watchingthevideos99 I’m currently building an ultra lightweight seven-foot span Spitfire… hoping to nail a slow, scale flying speed… A Spitfire flew over my farm a few months ago, and performed some aerobatics - a fairly regular occurrence here because there’s a Fleet Air Arm airbase nearby. I was amazed at how slowly it flew, even whilst performing the loops. So I decided to have a go at replicating it. Promises to be an interesting build…🤞

[@Watchingthevideos99]

@@crashrr2993 man, that sounds like a really cool project! Love the Spitfire. So many I see seem to fly a bit faster than scale speed so I respect what you're trying to accomplish. Best of luck and would look forward to seeing some video!

[@daviddavids2884]

noice :55 manufacturer used an excellent profile (clark-y or clone). mounted at zero-degrees aoa; relative to the lower surface. 2:05??? that prop makes no sense. 3:38 you may know that a cg change results in porpoising. you may know that a main wing leading edge should Not be too thin.! compare the le shown at :55. googletranslate

[@dukecraig2402]

Virginius E Clark, the inventor of the Clark Y wing, was born and raised in the same small town as myself, Uniontown Pennsylvania. It's also the hometown of Gen George C Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army during WW2, later Secretary of State and architect of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe's economy after the war.

[@bentonbee1]

Neat flier John! - Mike Townsley

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you Mike.

[@joshuawfinn]

I must have missed it...what was the final weight?

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Sorry I missed your comment Josh. 32 grams w/o motor.

[@joshuawfinn]

@@Watchingthevideos99 cool. Such a beautiful airplane. Flies like it's a feather.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

@@joshuawfinn thank you. Pretty happy with it . But the Miles Sparrowhawk is a whole 'nother item . 😆

[@pcj3405]

Cool!

[@aeromodelisme45]

Une vidéo sympa et le modèle est très ben ! bravo

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you.

[@836dmar]

Loves that ground effect! Very well done.

[@mbasiletti]

Gorgeous. One of my favorite aircraft of all time. Your model flies so well- do you mind sharing the weight? Thanks,

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you. The model weighs 35.2 grams with approximately 85 sq. inches of wing area.

[@qiangqiangpan2362]

@@Watchingthevideos99 What is the wingspan please?

[@Watchingthevideos99]

@@qiangqiangpan2362 24 inches.

[@qiangqiangpan2362]

@@Watchingthevideos99 Wingspan maybe 16 inches? 32g w/o rubber? flying so lightly!

[@Watchingthevideos99]

@@qiangqiangpan2362 24 inches, yes a very good flyer.

[@greghammond2309]

That is one fabulous model ! Printed tissue is the way to go.. brings out all the lovely scale details.. well done!

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you Greg. Printed tissue is a great addition to our hobby! I find myself using it more an more.

[@rostislavpolednik2027]

Nice John - very nice!

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you.

[@thatairplaneguy]

Wow. That’s so awesome

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you and thanks for watching.

[@edwardtaylor4785]

Back in the day, I was buds with Joe Fitzgibbon and Chet Bukowski who started Golden Age Reproductions with an assortment of reproed old plans. I still have a lot of their original plans offering from the mid/late '70's. I used to sell them in my hobby shop.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

I met both Joe and Chet. The GAR plans are still available. And Peck Polymers now has the GAR kit line but are currently trying to set them up for laser cutting. Where was your shop Edward?

[@edwardtaylor4785]

@@Watchingthevideos99 It was in Medfield ,Mass. It was a lot of fun, but not enough to support my family so I had to give it up in '78. That was the beginning of the great extinction of local hobby shops. There aren't many left.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

@@edwardtaylor4785 do you remember Davis Hobbies in Glastonbury? One of the last good ones in CT and long gone. We just need to make the best of what we have now. At least there are some great options for online free flight models and supplies.

[@edwardtaylor4785]

@@Watchingthevideos99 Don't recall ever going there. Was that the home of Davis Diesel conversion kits and, at some later time, some repro Jetex stuff?

[@Watchingthevideos99]

@@edwardtaylor4785 No just an independent hobby shop, maybe like yours. Carried a lot of free flight stuff. I miss that shop.

[@aries_2111]

very nice flight

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you.

[@dukecraig2402]

Nice, I build and flew a bunch of them in the house during the winter months when I was a kid, I always wanted to but never got around to building one to the level of having an engine on it for outdoors free flight, if I remember correctly aside from obtaining an engine that was like the Cox one's you also had to get some kind of thin modeling grade plywood to make the firewall out of, the torque of the engine would tear the balsa wood one apart because it was only rubber band torque level rated.

[@raybridges2738]

Great job!

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you Ray.

[@mohammadaswal4761]

Excellent

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you.

[@Colin399]

Superb

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you Colin.

[@colingodron4725]

I like that very much. Lovely flyer

[@modsurgeon]

Fantastic. So nicely built...I can almost smell the balsa dust, rubber motor lube and dope. When Golden Age re-released all these kits in the early nineties, I happen to have just landed a great job, so I splurged and bought pretty much all of them, along with the Diels and Bell stick & tissue model kits from the same rough time. I still have most of the kits in the boxes in my garage, just waiting for my retirement.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Cool. I retired a few years ago and I'm doing basically what your plan is. 🙂 The GAR kits make great flyers. Peck is working on laser cutting them so they can bring them back even better. Hope retirement comes soon for you. Have fun.

[@FFND16N]

That has gorgeous flight behavior, John...another superb winner!

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you. A consistent flyer!

[@joeschmoe7221]

Thank you for this wonderful video! Such a treat to remember building models like these as a boy!

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@donaldvincent]

Great work! Looks & flies wonderfully.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you.

[@mpgoepen]

Nice job! Looks like fun. 👍

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Thank you!

[@kenkingsflyingmachines2382]

The smile at the end says it all. Well done.

[@Watchingthevideos99]

Yes indeed. 😁 Thank you Ken.