Miss America Autumn flight 2009
Scale flying is one end of a spectrum, the other end of which is stunt flying. The reason for owning a 'warbird is to try to make it look and fly like the real thing rather than bop about prop hanging and knife edging.( not that she will do these!) Miss America always gets comments about how good she looks in the air. This video and the still shot coming across the evening sun shows the exhaust muffler in all its glory. Time for a rebuild and get rid of that ugly thing!
The trick is to fly as smooth and progressively as possible. The flight pattern must be thought through to avoid angular turns - you never see sudden manoeuvres at an air display. Lacking the momentum of the full size huge scale loops are only possible with raw engine power but the aged SC lacks this so you need to get speed up in a dive first. Barrel rolls similarly need to be slow and this requires use of the rudder if the plane is not to dive on the way out of the roll. Take-offs require holding her level on the stick so that she doesnt fly straight off the ground -a bugbear of every other video on youtube. Similarly landings need to float down and hold the tail up for a while on the ground. This is tricky as with too much throttle she will stub the prop or worse - on this poor surface- catch a rut and smash her nose into the ground. This wears away at the engine rocker cover!These videos show very few of these skills but I am getting there!

