I had some not-so great results flying today at lunch. I switched the P-51 out to a 8x8 prop last night. I had one good flight- and man, was it awesome. The amount of extra speed generated when I transitioned from a 10x5 to a 8x8 was amazing, and it still pulled just under 60A in static full throttle testing. That airplane was totally ballistic. Very solid, maintained speed extremely well, and the highest top speed I’ve seen yet. Probably even faster than last summer when I flew it a few times with John's 1550 mAh 4s battery. Well, on flight #2 I didn’t get a good enough launch, stalled it, and pile-drived it into the ground under full throttle. I haven’t determined if it’s fixable or not, but the fuse broke in 2 places, munched the prop to stubs, and possibly cracked the wing. One take away is that launching with a smaller diameter higher pitch prop is more challenging, as it doesn’t accelerate out as quickly.
Then, I turned to the babyshark, and did almost exactly the same thing. Poor launch, stall, almost recovered it, regained enough altitude so when I lost control it nose-dived into the ground at high velocity. The damage isn’t too severe- separated the firewall from the nose, and crunched the forward bulkhead. I’m also not sure about fixing this again. I feel like I should continue to fix, fly, and repeat until I get at least one passable flight, but I am getting a little discouraged. Next time I’m going to try flying it with a smaller battery to lower the stall speed.