Claire Sieverling P 51 Mustang

Anyone ever built and flown(or thought about building and flying) the Claire Sieverling P51 from 2/65 MAN? 56" span, .35 to .40 suggested. Classic legal of course.

Airfoil looks OK, straightforward construction, most definitely not as scale appearing as the Rabe Mustang but should still look pretty decent. Moments look OK from the mini plans I am looking at. Full sized plans are available from our host and Tom Dixon.

If you want a full fuse Mustang stunter(as I do) but don't want to go to the complexity of the Rabe version and don't care for the Sig kit, this looks like a good way to go.

Any comments appreciated. If I go forward with this I will have the ribs, formers, and doublers lazer cut so any others who might want to build this model over the coming winter might e mail me to inquire about sharing in costs of lazer set up. Set up, materials and work costs on similar models has been very reasonable in the past.

There have been plenty of Classic era P-51's with better (make that "more modern") numbers to them, and not all sacrificed so much of the "semi-scaleness" as did this one. Not that I doubt you could get decent performance from a Sieverling design, just that Mustangs have been popular model subjects all along, ever since North American designed the full-size one. I'm headed out, but later today, maybe this afternoon, I'll look up some other listings to suggest, and get back to this thread.

K.

I built one of these and liked it due to the easy construction. I built mine from the Model Airplane Plans and in them it did not call for ply doublers. I did it per the plans and wished I had used the ply. I got a pretty severe crack around the front of the wing leading edge to the cowl line. I suppoose if I thought about it more at the time I would and should have done it differently. My plane flew well with an O.S. 35. I beleive Jeff Anderson built one as well and had it a VSC several years ago. I personally like the plane and would consider building another one some day.

Having watched Claire, both build and fly the plane, I think
it's a rather nice one. He used a Johnson .35, and was one of the few to get a "stunt run " from them. I have the wing and stab done, the wing turned out at a nice 7.5oz. I would be interested in the lazer stuff. I have used Claire's method of fuse doublers and didn't have a problem.

> He
>used a Johnson .35,
>and was one of the
>few to get a "stunt
>run " from them.

No problem getting a (4-2-4) stunt run out of a (Small Case Johnson S .33).

Or a .36 Sport Special (Large Case), for that matter.

Curell, He was using the .35

K: I looked at a few in the Classic models plans and the Sieverling model looks the best, all things considered but am always open to suggestions. I am planning on an FP 35 or 40 and would definitely use 1/16 ply doublers, slip in tank, etc. A Brodak 40 might be nice on this one also.

Walter: I am awaiting plans which I hope Leonard has in the mail to me before sending to the lazer guy. I would anticipate $25-$30 each for ribs, formers, doublers with the lazer guy furnishing typical medium balsa. A little less if we can get more guys interested. We could or would skeleton the ribs which would save some weight and the more rigid wood is not all bad or you can furnish your own 4-6 lb if you like. The wait on lazer work has been in the 6 week range-pay on delivery.

This is the first stunt building job that has gotten me excited in a while-love that semi scale stuff.

I saw Jeff Anderson's Sieverling P51 fly at the Clovis CA, "Golden State Stunt Championships" a couple of years back and it flew great. I have a number of pictures of it which I took. I believe he may have used a modified rc helicopter engine in it. Not sure.

I also built a Sieverling P-51 from the magazine plans.

This was the first model I built with full-depth 1/8" sheet main spar. I didn't realize that the spar and rib notches should be a LOOSE fit. My wing warped badly because I tried to get a CLASS 1 fit between the parts.

I have since built NOBLERS with the same wing construction, but I allow plenty of slop when gluing up the wing.

Hey Floyd, I learned the hard way that on a full depth spar, the
last thing you do is apply glue to the spar, the LE sheeting, the TE sheeting, everything except for the last bit of center
sheeting is inplace and glued, before you glue the spar. This
lets you line everything up. But I'm sure you already know this.

I will confess that I was thinking about reconfiguring the wing to a C tube with 1/4 spars and 1/4 or 3/8 LE, maybe some 1/16 webs half way out the wing-same basic airfoil but would suffer authenticity points I suppose.
No real good reason for this other than the fact that this is what I am most comfortable building. Hopefully, the full size plans will be along any day now and better decisons can be made.

Authenticity points?Are you speaking of some sort of intangible or are there now literal points given for construction in classic?
Chris...

>Curell, He was using the .35
>
>
>Walter

Walter: The .29 and .35 have more compression than they need. An extra head gasket will help. Currell