Country of origin:

United States of America

Description:

Single-seat high performance sport monoplane

Power Plant:

One 477 kw (640 hp) Falconar twelve-cylinder VEE liquid-cooled engine

Specifications:

History:

The Thunder Mustang was produced by Papa 51 Ltd at its facility at Nampa, Idaho and is an all-composite three-quarter scale replica of the North American P-51 Mustang.  Designed by Dan Denney, who also designed the Denney Kitfox, it is a two-seat, dual-control sporting aircraft. The laminar-flow wing has been modified to improve low-speed flight characteristics, thus reducing the wing scale to 62%. The prototype (N151TM) of the series was destroyed in a crash on 30 May 1998, which caused some financial problems for the Company.

However, development continued, and eventually a number of Thunder Mustang kit owners joined together to form the Thunder Mustang Builders Group, thus providing enough money to complete and supply all the outstanding parts for kits. A number of V-8 engine conversions were considered but all were too wide and too heavy to fit within the parameters required to make it look like a scale Mustang  Eventually an engine designed and built by Ryan Falconer was considered, this being produced by Ryan Falconer Racing Engines, the first prototype of the liquid-cooled engine being run in 1989, many such engines being used to power off-shore racing boats.

The standard aircraft engine is the 601 cubic-inch Falconar V-12, which produces 477 kw (640 hp) at 4,500 rpm and drives a four-blade composite MT constant-speed propeller 2.28 m (94 inches) in diameter through a reduction gearbox, the propeller speed being 1,600 rpm at 4,500 rpm of the engine. In the United States it has been proposed in due course to fit a 895 kw (1,200 hp) supercharged variant with a view to making attempts on a number of world piston-engined aircraft records. In December 2000 Papa 51 ceased production, going into liquidation, and the Company and its assets were offered for sale. Design load factor is +9 g at 1,179 kg (2,600 lb) and 4.9 g at 1,452 kg (3,200 lb).

The first example of the design in this region arrived in New Zealand on 27 February 2005 and became ZK-TMG (c/n 018) on 23 February 2005 to Kiwi Thunder Group Ltd of Auckland, being first flown on 14 March 2005 at Ardmore. It was displayed for the first time at the Classic Fighters Airshow at Omaka (Blenheim) at Easter that year. This aircraft was imported from South Africa where it had been registered as a Papa 51 Jordaan F Thunder Mustang (ZU-TMG) on 29 April 2004.

An example of the Thunder Mustang ‘Blue Thunder’ was flown by John Parker at the Reno Air Races in Nevada in 2004 and the team worked towards setting a sanctioned world speed record in the 3 km, 15 km and 25 km distances over a recognized course during 2005 at the Yuba County Airport in Marysville, California. Work was also proceeding on completing a further aircraft. In June 2010 John Parker in his second aircraft Blue Thunder II set a closed-record without payload for sub-class C-1c landplanes – take-off weight 1,000-kg to 1,750 kg (2,204 lb to 3,858 lb) over a course at Marysville, California, the course being a distance of 100 km (62 miles), although the course was laid out at a total distance of 142 km (88 miles), the speed achieved being 586 km/h (364 mph).

Records indicate a total of 37 complete or partial kits were produced, with 27 being delivered for construction. At least seven have been completed and a further two have been completed with Walter turbines which provide 485 kw (650 shp). Registrations of completed aircraft include N51TM (the prototype), N51G, N251GA, N51DY, and N51TG. In 2011 the aircraft kit was placed back in production.  In late 2016 ZK-TMG was noted as based at Ardmore and was offered for sale.  At that stage owned by Kiwi Thunder Group Ltd of Elenbrook Perth, Australia, it was dismantled, shipped to the United States and assembled in Colorado Springs, being removed from the New Zealand Register on 2 May 2019.