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Hi :worship:

here is my recently finished kits. They come together nice, and the biggest challenge was painting... Lots of masking :jaw-dropping:

But int the end I think it come out quite nice :cheers:

I hope You'll like it.

MU-2A „Air Rescue Wing“:

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  • 2 weeks later...

Great job on the MU-2's. I was eyeballing one on Ebay yesterday, but the decals were damaged. I spent many years in general aviation and remember when the "rice rockets" first came out and were being purchased by corporate flight departments. Very oddball aircraft. Fast, but a handful for less experienced pilots. The Garrett engines were so loud they would cause your teeth to chatter, and you could get disoriented when working around them on the ramp. With the high wing, it was too easy to walk into the prop ARC. This was a real worry for the pilot when deplaning his passengers. We had a mechanic killed when he walked into a spinning prop while working on an engine while it was running. The Garretts took a long time to spin down and his passengers could open the door and (especially on the short model), step right into the prop.

The ground crews hated them because they always required a ground power unit due to the huge draw on the batteries needed to start the turboshaft engines and they were a real pain to refuel. Before you could remove the tiptank fuel cap, you had to press a red, recessed pressure relief valve located outboard of the tank. Invariably, fuel would come out of the valve and run down your arm into your armpit. If you removed the cap without depressurizing the tank you would get a pretty good pop and explosion of fuel and air which could knock you right off the ladder. Of course, this was a favorite trick to play on new linemen. You also needed two people to refuel it due to the wing and tank design. With two people fueling, (one on each wing) you could keep the fuel load balanced as you topped it off. If you were alone, you had to drag the heavy fuel hose back and forth between the tiptanks adding 30 gallons or so to one side then going to the other side and adding 60, then back to the other side and so forth. If you didn't, the wingtip on one side would drop to within a couple of feet or so of the ground, while the other stuck way up in the air out of reach. I always wanted to see how the wing spar was connected to the fuselage in this aircraft because the wing rocked from side to side like it was hinged in the middle. The aircraft had 6 fuel tanks, which was odd for such a small aircraft. In addition to the tiptanks, the mains were located inboard of the engines, then you had small 15 gallon Aux tanks located midway between the engines and the wingtips. These Aux tanks had caps located beneath covers at skin level which were recessed about 5 inches down inside the wing. Many times I cussed the designers of the aircraft because of busted knuckles attempting to open those caps.

The MU-2 went the way of the dodo when insurance companies jacked up the price and pilot requirements for insuring the rice rocket for corporate use. The Beechcraft King Air become the king of the corporate turboprops. It was slower, but it was powered by the more reliable Pratt & Whitney PT-6 and offered increased passenger comfort. The kicker was the introduction of lower priced jets such as the Cessna Citation. The only area I don't think another aircraft in this class could replace is the STOL performance combined with the speed of the MU-2. A true one-of-a-kind aircraft.

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Wow! Thanks to Unit 19 for sharing with a real experience on these aircrafts. I couldn't even imagine that such a small aircraft could cause so many problems, for pilots and ground crew :)

I really enjoyed reading Your story :worship:

And once again, thanks for commenting on these two ;)

I wish my English would be a bit better, so I could provide You all with details of this build.

By the way in near future I hope to build more Civil, Fire Department or Coast Guard aircrafts.

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Unit19 gives a good overview of 'Hirohito's Revenge', I've spent time as a Ramp Rat so been there done that. Never flew in one but I've heard that with no power it had the glide angle of a brick with a drag chute.

BUT... those are some dang fine models, I'm getting tempted to try one! :thumbsup:

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