Well, there goes my nice paint job on my Radian. I crashed it. It went full speed straight down (I cut the throttle just before the impacts) into the top of a 60 foot Maple tree. The tree had like a 4ft trunk, so it had many large limbs. I stood there frozen as I watched it fall from the top of the tree to the bottom. I heard 7 loud, distinct impacts of my Radian hit each branch. Those seven impacts put 7 dents/holes/scrapes in my plane. I made four mistakes.
I attempted a series of rolls/flips/loops including upside down flying:
1. without a reasonable amount of altitude.
2. a long distance away.
3. near large Maple trees.
4. without my glasses.
I lost orientation of it and it appeared to be going away from me upside down. It was really near the top of the tree, so I pushed some down elevator hard. It was actually upright, so the strong down elevator took it straight down with full throttle into the tree/limbs. As soon as I saw that it was too late to save, I cut the throttle and let her fall. She already had TONS of airspeed...
Now, you can imagine that something like that might total a plane. I though so too until I got over to it. I was lucky it actually made it to the bottom and not stuck in the tree. After doing a full evaluation of the damage, I found that the crash had torn a crack through the fuselage part that goes over the wings, broke the left wing in half at the end of the ballast rod, shattered a LOT of paint from the flexing, took some foam out of the side of the fuselage near the firewall, dented the horizontal tail wing, lifted a couple decals, and pulled a pushrod/sheathing from it's channel in the fuselage. I am working on repairing it now. I picked up a new set of wings and have already got part of the painted design painted on the bottom of them. I also glued all the broken seams and decals down on the fuselage. I want to make all these repairs in less than a week and having her flying by Thursday. Unfortunately it won't be the same, but at least I won't be too crushed next time it crashes as it's not perfect anymore, nor will that fuselage ever be.