fresnoflyer

My Feedback: (4)

The stock wire landing gear on my WM P-51 .46 keep bending and getting hung up in the wells. Can anyone suggest a replacment? I was looking at retrofitting them with the Robart 651 Oleo Struts. Would this be a good fix? Any advise would be helpful.

Cyclic Hardover

My Feedback: (3)

What are you landing on? Cobblestones? I guess if you love the plane that much, Robarts may help or you can get a cheap pair of Hobbico and replace the strut with a 3/16 wire by just a little bit of drilling. I've never had much problem with bending the gear on my 3 WM P-51's unless I slammed it to the ground,

PJ_TankPilot

I replace them with Great Planes retracts. They are great units for the money and fitting them is not hard. The struts are available separately and are easily to replace if you ever have to.

[link=http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXUY33&P=7]GP Retracts[/link]

These units are essentially Supra retracts that I used to pay $60 USD for.

Rather than use bolt on axles, I bend the strut. This just gives fewer failure points. I also replace the wheels with 2.25" Sullivan SkyLite.

fresnoflyer

My Feedback: (4)

Cyclic.......replies like yours are the reason people are affraid to ask questions on this site. Mine was a simple question and if you didn't have a polite, helpfull reply, I would have rather you just kept your synical comments to yourself. I guess we all can't make perfect landings like you.

PJ_TankPilot

The WM .46 Mustang is notorious for strut bending. The bad news is that the struts are soft and bend easily. The good news is that they bend instead of break. Some ARFs come with very hard struts that will break, usually in the coil.

I recommend this aircraft to pilots who want to try warbird racing. With an OS .46 *X it is a pu$$ycat to takeoff, fly and land. When you are ready to move up to a faster class, you can go to a bigger engine. When we have our warbird races, about 50 aircraft show up and I have seen races where about 1/2 of them were WM Mustangs (Including the glass fuse ones). It has been a very popular model for many years. During those years, improvements have been made.

Clean

Well MY runway IS like landing on cobblestones, but back when I had the plane I was back east going to school and watched a practice session with Dean Pappas and some local modelers. They started their pattern planes, carried them to the takeoff point, took off, flew, landed and cut the throttle. Went out, picked up the plane, brought it back, flipped it over and checked the gear, bending when necesaary. This was after every flight.

When I got home I put two wing servos in and started mixing flaperons in. Didn't take too much and the plane just floats in. Not that it landed extremely fast before but with just a little flapperon in, less than a quarter inch down and it would comfortably touch down and stop rolling in 10 feet. We had probably 10-15 of these planes at our field and most of them had ripped the landing gear blocks out of the wing. Not mine.

And yes, if it isn't the clumpy grass, the rocks it's the darn gofer trails. But it's home.

E-Mo

My Feedback: (12)

My struts bent on a somewhat hard drop on the runway just a little pressure put them back in place to clear the wheel well.

Here is my new pipe i installed on the plane...mainly to get the spent oils behind the wing saddle
i was having issues with the exhaust oil seeping into & under the wood.
o.s. .61sf

Dugster

The original gear on this plane, which has been around for almost ten years, was undersized and weak. WM upgraded the lading gear about three years ago to larger wire.

My P-51 has the larger, upgraded LG and I've had no problems flying off the dirt runway at my local club. I've also flown off of pavement at several warbird meets without problem. I've got over fifty flights to date and I haven't had to bend the LG yet.

Now, alot will depend on how heavy your plane is. Do you have a large engine with lots of "extras"? Mine is light with an Irvine .53, standard servos, small Rx (FMA M5), voltage regulator and 1200 Mah Lipo battery.