RE: What should happen in a case like this And how do you go about forcing the Issue.
Like they say in Russia, It's Tufsky Shietsky. Both arguably have responsibility on this air collision. This is a hobby and these planes all will sooner or later crash, yours unfortunately happened earlier than you wanted. Unless you can settle this man to man, you can just accept your loss or you may file a small claims complaint. Your word and witnesses against his. You will have to show some sort of proof of your damages thru an damage estimate, or receipt or a actual list of replacement parts prices. There is this rule of equitable damages where you may have to bear a portion of the fault, then decision will reflect your percentage of the equitable damages.
I think you will probably have to eat this one, I have many a time in rc car collisions.