Royal B-25

It was the summer of 1993 and I was working part time in a hobby shop, before going to university in the fall.  A guy came into the shop wanting to sell this B-25, with OS 48 FS ( I'm a sucker for scale models and 4-strokes ), so I bought it.  I was flying the Corsair and a Sig Citabria at the time, so this would be a new adventure in multi-engine flying.  The test flight was successful, but could have easily gone bad.  During the flight, one engine stopped.  It was only because of being the only airplane in the air that I noticed a change in the sound.  There was absolutely no change in trim, no tendency to roll at all.  A close visual inspection was required to tell which engine had stopped.  The landing was uneventful, but during the post flight inspection, one of the solder joints had failed and so only one aileron was working.  As well, one flap was close to failure.  Still, that B-25 gave no indication that anything was awry.  The reason being that the engines had significant side thrust.  The left engine was 1 deg of left thrust, while the right engine was about 5 degrees of right thrust.  On top of that, each vertical stabilizer was toed in about 4 degrees.  Still, an engine failure at low speed was dangerous.  It was rebuilt at least once.  I liked the aluminum cowls.  The airplane weighed in about 14 lbs ( the plans say 8-9 ) and with the engines rated for 0.8 hp, it had a realistic power loading.

This was a flight after a rebuild, I believe, probably summer of 1994 at Virgil

Years later, around 2007, I taught a 78 year old to fly.  His favorite airplane was the B-25.  I wish I still had this model as I would have let him fly it on a buddy box.  During that winter, he passed away from complications due to pneumonia, I think it was.  I have the plans, so maybe I'll build another one.  It will be modified to be more true to scale.  From what I understand, the plastic and cowls are still available from Fiberglass Specialties and possibly elsewhere.