Vintage RC B-17 Flying Fortress (Bob Holman Plans) w/ John Mangino at AEF, 2022

Описание: This is an absolutely classic and cool vintage electric powered RC B-17 Bomber that John Mangino flew at the Arizona Electric Festival in February, 2022! John acquired this grand old model from a builder who has sadly passed away, and he is now taking care of it. This massive, 128" Wingspan model is powered by 4x6 cell, 5000 mAh batteries. Stay tuned to the end to see how close this model came to it's final flight! Thank goodness it survived and John will now make improvements to insure it will not suffer from the same problems in the future. All the best to you my friends and thanks for watching!

**UPDATE** A gentleman recently posted in the comments section that HE WAS THE BUILDER of this incredible model! I'm posting this here for all to see, and have pinned his comments as well. THIS is what I love about the hobby: by simply posting this video on my channel, the ORIGINAL builder stumbled across it and has seen his plane flying yet again!

"Wow!! Never thought I would see that plane again!! You never forget something built from a set of plans! It was built in Nebraska in 2014 for Dale McCawley. But it’s not a Don Smith. It’s a Bob Holman. It was the lead plane, of two, that I built in tandem. This one took 18 months to frame and sheet. The landing gear are Holman’s design as well. They were reconditioned from a former Holman 17 that was “rekitted” lol. I made many design changes to the plans. The three piece wing was one. The plans called for a two piece which was impractical for a plane of this size. The use of magnets to hold the top on, was another. If I remember right, your nacelle access hatches are magneted as well. Almost all of the wing ribs, bulkheads fuselage former's, engine nacelle, sheeting and landing gear blocks are much thicker than the plans called for. You probably noticed it will withstand a fair amount of abuse. If you now possess this plane, Dale must have passed away. If so, the world lost a kind and humble man. He had a generous soul and thoughtful spirit.

The sister to this plane took another 2.5 yrs to complete. It was fiberglassed, covered with Flite Metal and thousands of rivets were applied. It is powered by Satio .91s and has Robart retracts and wheels. It won the 34th annual B-17 Gathering trophy at Bomberfield TX last yr. It is quite remarkable that these two war wagons are still raking up mission counts! God Bless!"

AND, after I questioned Ryon in the comments (only because there are so many RC B-17's out there), I got this response:

"Hello Sir. It is absolute the same 17. Dale was transitioning from living in Edgemont SD (that’s where we met) to Arizona. He had to come back and pick the airplane up in Nebraska when I was done with it. Maybe I wasn’t clear on the fixed landing gear. The fixed landing gear that are in Dale’s B-17 were hand built by another gentleman that had built a Holman B-17 years before. Dale specifically asked for fixed landing gear in that airplane. I died a little bit having to install those. Lol. If you Google Arizona electric fest B-17, you will find a video of one of this airplanes first flights. Dale had a different name on the nose of it though. I think he called it Suzie Q. That was the name of his wife. I am very familiar with most of the history of that airplane. And I still have the sister airplane to it."

Chapters:
Intro and Pre-flight: 00:00
Take-off and scale flight: 01:55
Post script and startling discovery! 06:44