| Foamie Slopers |
Dave's Aircraft Works Foamie P-51 Mustang |
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The Fomie-51 is an EPP semi-scale slope combat plane with a 48" span. If you don't already know, EPP (expanded polypropylene) is the thing for slope combat planes. It looks like white styrofoam, though its a a bit heavier. It's much easier to sand then stryrofoam, as it doesn't chunk up as badly, and best of all, it is resilient! You can squeeze it with your fingers and it will compress and then bounce back to shape, rather then then cracking or breaking like styrofoam.. The applications for combat are obvious. Unlike styrofoam/tape planes, which turn into a bag of foam crumbs after a certain number of combat sessions, EPP/tape planes just tend to get a bit wrinkled. The resliency is especially nice in the wings, since they retain their original airfoil shape much better then a styrofoam plane would. They are very close to being indestructable.
Okay, now the specifics. The DAW P-51's looks are typical of a semi-scale PSS Mustang, with elonogated fuse and wings. The wings are EPP with a single wood spar and full span wood ailerons. Airfoil is the SD3016 (thank God, a PSS that doesn't use the E374!). The fuse is all EPP as well, with corogated plastic (Coroplast) horizontal and vertical stabs. The fuse comes with a squared off crossection, so you'll have to do some sanding to get it nice and rounded. Nearly the entire plane is covered with tough, fiberglass reinforced packing tape, which makes it really strong. Most parts are glued in with very strong Household GOOP (the GOOP will not attack EPP foam, btw). It is then covered with Ultracote, which adds a bit of additional rigidity. The nice thing is that your can take some time to decorate the plane nicely, since it's tough enough to survive for quite a while (no point in putting a lot of effort into a plane that isn't going to last very long, right?).
So, how does it fly? Well, here I must say that I somewhat screwed up in the construction. The wing didn't sit perfectly in the fuse, so I sort of squished it in with a lot of weight. In the process, I believe I introduced some wash-in into the wing, which is not good. It occasionally exhibits some weird snappy handling characteristics in low lift conditions and when turned hard at high speeds. However, my friends have built the P-51's stablemates, the DAW Foamie-190 Folke-Wulfe and the DAW FoMie-109 Messerschmitt. These have the exact same wing as the Mustang and are exactly the same size. At any rate, their planes fly very nicely. They fly well in suprisingly light lift, though not quite as good as something like the Whirlwind, since the DAW planes are heavier. They all have excellent aerobatic capabilities, and their energy retention is good (you can set them up with flaperons, though it isn't necessary). The penetration and high speed handling is fairly good. They can go faster then a Whirlwind, for example. Overall, they are very nice flying airplanes.
What about combat capabilities? As I said they are good flying airplanes, though they don't have the manuverability or light lift capabilities of the Zagi. or Razor flying wings that seem so popular in combat these days. Also, because of their weight and wing design, the DAW foamies don't recover from hits as quickly as the lightwieght Whirlwind or the fully symetrical airfoiled Anabat. If you get hit hard at low alititude, you're probably not going to be able to pull out of it. OTOH, that extra mass means that they are harder for other planes to knock them down. I once had a Zagi get a clean, hard hit on me, but he just bounced off!
Survivablity: I've seen both mine and my friends' planes take pretty horrendous hits, but we have yet to actually break structural parts of our planes. Most damage has been confined to broken servo arms and control horns. The Coroplast tail surfaces are very tough. I've been in collisions where I was sure the tail was going to be completely ripped off or broken, yet nothing happens to it (to be fair, I did once have the tail come loose, and had to squirt a little glue in to fix it).
In conclusion, the DAW P-51, along with the other DAW combat foamies, are fun, good flying, nice-looing, and very survivable slope combat planes. A plane like the Zagi may fly somewhat better, but then it just looks like a wing...no character. OTOH, get a bunch of PSS combat planes flying, and you get a mini-WW2 dogfight on your slope. It looks awesome!
   
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| Updates:
After about 2 years of hard combat, this plane was retired. Well, actually, it was in pretty bad shape, so I stripped the radio gear out and threw it away. I had a huge amount of fun with this plane, though. It was well worth it. |
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