John Beyl wrote:
mike furline wrote:
How much of the plane was scratch built? Is the whole airframe/wings home made or did he start with pieces from an original airframe and make an "A" model out of it?
Regards,
Mike
Mike,
With the exception of a small handful of parts such as gear legs, trunion casting, other assorted castings and small parts, the entire airframe was built from scratch, including the wing. This example will have fiberglass cowls in the interest of getting it airborne more quickly, however the form blocks are under construction to stretch aluminum parts for the upcoming units (parts for an addition 10 airplanes were made as this airplane was built). The prop is DC3 with some mods. Although it lacks the little detail parts that would make it pass as an original production built airplane, the quality of craftsmanship in this airplane is exceptional and trust me, it’s all A model Mustang, of that there is not mistake! It was built from the original drawing with modernizing as required for safety, serviceability and longer service life.
John
A small correction to the post above. The plan was to fly this airplane with a fiberglass cowl but a friend of Gerrys (who is also in the warbird fab business) offered to make an aluminum set for it. The only part of the cowl that remains fiberglass is the very top section that houses the intake. This will be aluminum in the production models.
Aside from the usual punch list of little things that need done, the only things keeping it on the ground at this point are the butterly fairings, the fairing between the fuselage and horizontal, and final fitting of the slider windows.
I have some pictures of Gerry doing power runs with it this weekend. I will see if I can prevail upon Warbirdnerd to post them for you to see.
John
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