P51 Dart: Maiden Flight = Crash

Today was a nice calm sunny day today and I finally managed to do the first flight with my P-51 Dart.

Well, at least I tried. As you might have already guessed from the post’s title the maiden flight ended in a huge catastrophe.

I did a few throws first and the plane always had a tendency to nose-up. So I added a bit of weight to the front and though “let’s give it a try”. But directly after hand launching the P51 Dart it nosed up and kind of stayed in a 90 degree hover for a second or two before it fell out of the air.

I changed a few parameters like motor angel, more nose weight and so on but never really got it to fly. It always noses up directly after the start. If it push the nose down I get it to level but then it almost instantly falls into a steep dive and crashes.

I’m not yet sure what else I can try, but it seams the plane has a very narrow window in which is is flyable. Anything out of that window it either noses up or dives down. That’s certainly not what I expected. At least not as so many seam to fly really easily with that kind of planes.

I’ll think a bit and maybe find some other tweaking that I can do. I’m thinking of moving the servos all the way to the front, but then I would need to find a way to keep the push-rods stiff over that long distance.