Andrewmc

After just getting the kinks out of my kit built Extra 300S and considering the engine fully run in, it decided to take on a mind of it's own and nosed in at full throttle, albeit from low level.

It was the firs t flight of the day and I had the air to myself so was taking the opportunity to practise rudder control by doing cross wind runs up and down the length of the runway. After completing my fith or sixth runway pass I started to pull up to enter the downwind leg for landing approach. I glanced down at the timer on the radio and on resighting the plane it was belly up and going down, i had a split second to try and pull out before seeing the puff of dust followed a second later by the dreaded crunch.

I still do not know what happened, I am tending towards banking the plane for the downwind leg with the aileron and then not releasing when I glanced at the timer causing the plane to roll. If not that then the only other thing is an electronics glitch - not impossible but less likely.

After the "long walk" to collect the pieces, a fellow club member asked if I would rebuild the plane I almost laughed looking at the extent of the damage. Debris was spread over several metres, the fuel tank and battery had been thrown loose and were some distance away from the fuz wreakage. The wing bolts had held and the wing had snapped 1 bay out from the fuselage (just after the wing joiner). There was nothing left of the fuselage forward of the cockpit, and yet the tail looked pristine.

Placed the bits in the garage for a few days to contemplate things. As the fuselage plans are not full size I could not make new fuselage side panels from the plans but all the other formers could be pieced together enough to trace and I decided the wing wasn't that bad after all. So a quick look at the Great Planes website revealed that they sell the diecut fuselage sides for a couple of dollars so I opted to get the complete fuselage die cut parts for around $15 or so (shipping to South Africa was another $20, ouch).

The shipping time allowed me to effect the wing repair while the parts were being shipped, so put my Tiger Moth Build on hold for a while to resurrect the extra - it just flew too well to trash.