Flipped over on my first (and only) landing today. Did some minor damage to the rudder, broke off the Lewis gun (but not the mounting rail), and loosened some of the wires. Nothing major but not something I could fix at the field either. It was a bit frustrating since I had to drive an hour and a half for one ten minute flight.

The landing approach seemed OK, but at the very last minute I realized that the tail was a bit too high and as the wheels touched it went over. Pure pilot error. I'm not yet used to the glide slope of this model and I'm also not used to how to visually line up my approach at this new field. I'm sure I came in a bit high.

Some of the wires were extremely loose and I wondered how that could be but then realized that the cabane struts had been pulled sideways ("apart"). This highlights a possibly significant fault with the way the cabane struts are mounted and how that works with my rigging. As things stand there is no side to side cross bracing on the cabanes as there would have been on the original. I didn't build any in. So side force (in particular down force on the landing wires as in a hard flopping landing or if the high dihedral wings get flipped over) will pull the cabane music wires out of their slots in the center section. That's what happened today.

On the drive home I was considering how to prevent this in the future and considered soldering a non-scale 2mm music from side to side (just under the center section). But then it occurred to me that if the wires had held and the wings had not be allowed to flex, perhaps the wings themselves could have sustained some damage.

It'll be flying again soon enough. But as I said it's a little frustrating to have to work on it again after only four flights. For what it's worth, the flight itself went well, and I extended the flight envelop a bit doing more radical turns and a few easy wing overs. It's still a bit skittish in the air, but that's mostly me not yet being able to exactly predict how it's going to respond to controls.