Thanks for the reply. The hatch in the bottom does not give access to the wire connectors. I ended up having to peel the ESC retaining clip away from the fuselage to allow me enough play in the wire to feed it through the fire wall to make the disconnect. After the motor swap I fastened the ESC clip back to the fuselage with some epoxy and good as new. In my opinion, this is the second design flaw with the Apprentice. The other being to gain access to the nose wheel assembly you need to take off the prop and the cowling. Not a big deal but just a bit of a hassle.
I was just getting a bit too confident and trying to fly inverted at too low of an altitude. It got squirrely on me and I forgot all about the safe mode...lesson learned.
I was able to do some forward and side slips...what a cool little airplane