This beast may be small, but it is deadly fast in the air. Straight and level it will hit nearly 90 mph. Fitted only with a 30 year old Magnum 25 and a tuned pipe. But despite the engines age, this combo will still turn a 9"X6" prop at 14,700 rpm! This makes for exciting flying. Low passes, big loops and fast rolls. The pipe is not fitted in this photo. It only has a tuned pipe because the rear half of this silencer flew away one day and was never to be seen again. Thanks to Pat Vaudin for giving me the pipe! Aviation enthusiasts will probably recognise the semi-scale colour scheme. it is loosely based on the Reno racing Mustang Dago Red. This thing behaves like a pylon racer, it really does.
Here is the Mustang with that tuned pipe fitted...looks exciting if a trifle ugly (by ugly I mean not very scale-like...I'm sure the fullsize aircraft never had an exhaust like this!).
Above is a quick reminder to those of you who have seen it and a newsflash for those that haven't, the picture above is what it looked like after a visit to Jersey. After being one of the stars of the show when it was voted the fastest plane apart from the Weston Tigersharks and Magnums, it all went wrong come Limbo time. For the full story see the 'GMC invade Jersey' feature. After 4 months of repairing this in between building 2 other planes it is now airworthy again!
As you can see it is a completely different colour for a start. More inportant as far as how it flies is concerned is what is underneath the decoration. In the Mustangs case that consists of a new wing and ailerons, new tailplane and elevators and a new fin...oh, and about half a tub of polyfilla on the fuselage. It also has a new canopy (which arrived in the post the day after it was ordered (first class service from Cambrian Models!)).
Pardon the bad photo of me but I forgot to take my glasses off.
It has the same engine and tuned pipe combination as before, but now it is being run on 15% nitro fuel that little bit of extra zoom. How does it fly? Well, it flies quite well but it has only had one flight in its new configuration and that was in about a force 6 wind, hardly ideal test flight conditions (although the more or less identical red one had had at least 200 flights). Give it a few flights in decent weather then I will report what it is really like to fly.
Well, after a few more flghts I can confirm tah tit flies pretty much the same as before, just a little bit slower. It still looks great flat out just a few feet up.