Just got back from the Mustang experience at Lake Kissimmee, Fl.
Fly the dual control P51 Mustang, Stallion 51 offers orientation flights, checkout training, flight training, pilot training, air shows, aircraft management
What a helluva experience. I have even more respect for those guys in WWII. All that talk about light responsive controls is pure BS by modern day standards. For those of us brought up on hydraulically powered controls, these manual/trim tab airplanes are HEAVY to maneuver at anything like max performance/full throw. It took 2 hands and both feet to get full throw, especially in roll, and even then it's not what you'd call a fast roll rate. I tried to do a break turn, and in my mind I would have been gunned...of course, I guess the other airplanes weren't any better, so...
It is fast, though, and very easy to fly (and quite responsive) when you're just tooling around doing easy turns and climbs. It's when you start to think "fight" that it gets unwieldy...torque, and gyroscopic coupling for God's sake, most noticeable when you get nose high and slow...wow. How anybody managed to get the guns pointed in the right direction is a real tribute to their skills...probably why 10% of the pilots got 90% of the kills…all this based on one whole hour of experience
)...which, on the other hand, is only 9 hours less than some of those poor guys who were sent up to do battle...and they didn't have 4500 hours of fighter experience to back them up )
Mark me as "impressed".
The V/G diagram shows the 51 has a +8/-4 g envelope, and corner velocity (minimum airspeed required to generate 8 g’s) is about 260 kts. That makes for a really tight circle, where things can get dark real quick when you fly up your own a’hole)
Insight into that Mustang racer accident: pitch trim is super sensitive. Rolling the pitch trim wheel a tiny bit (one degree?) can make a noticeable 'bump' in the seat of the pants unless you do it very gently...that's at some 230-40 knots. At near 430 kts, it would be magnified. Losing the entire tab in an instant (which was holding the nose way down), and unexpectedly, strikes me as being totally uncontrollable, even if he were conscious, which he couldn’t have been for very long.
The pictures show take off and approach. The racer is parked at the nearby museum, and was going up to take part in a missing man formation for someone up at Osh Kosh who was killed. Note the counter rotating props.
Fly the dual control P51 Mustang, Stallion 51 offers orientation flights, checkout training, flight training, pilot training, air shows, aircraft management
What a helluva experience. I have even more respect for those guys in WWII. All that talk about light responsive controls is pure BS by modern day standards. For those of us brought up on hydraulically powered controls, these manual/trim tab airplanes are HEAVY to maneuver at anything like max performance/full throw. It took 2 hands and both feet to get full throw, especially in roll, and even then it's not what you'd call a fast roll rate. I tried to do a break turn, and in my mind I would have been gunned...of course, I guess the other airplanes weren't any better, so...
It is fast, though, and very easy to fly (and quite responsive) when you're just tooling around doing easy turns and climbs. It's when you start to think "fight" that it gets unwieldy...torque, and gyroscopic coupling for God's sake, most noticeable when you get nose high and slow...wow. How anybody managed to get the guns pointed in the right direction is a real tribute to their skills...probably why 10% of the pilots got 90% of the kills…all this based on one whole hour of experience
)...which, on the other hand, is only 9 hours less than some of those poor guys who were sent up to do battle...and they didn't have 4500 hours of fighter experience to back them up )Mark me as "impressed".
The V/G diagram shows the 51 has a +8/-4 g envelope, and corner velocity (minimum airspeed required to generate 8 g’s) is about 260 kts. That makes for a really tight circle, where things can get dark real quick when you fly up your own a’hole
) Insight into that Mustang racer accident: pitch trim is super sensitive. Rolling the pitch trim wheel a tiny bit (one degree?) can make a noticeable 'bump' in the seat of the pants unless you do it very gently...that's at some 230-40 knots. At near 430 kts, it would be magnified. Losing the entire tab in an instant (which was holding the nose way down), and unexpectedly, strikes me as being totally uncontrollable, even if he were conscious, which he couldn’t have been for very long.
The pictures show take off and approach. The racer is parked at the nearby museum, and was going up to take part in a missing man formation for someone up at Osh Kosh who was killed. Note the counter rotating props.
