I am the pilot who is involved in the lawsuit of being accused of crashing a Mig jet.

My background for those that do not know me. Been modeling for 30 years and been flying anything from gliders to lots of different types of aircraft of all shapes and sizes. Flight instructor for different clubs and contest cordinator for different clubs. My primary interest in RC is Giant Scale aircraft. Building, flying, training and racing. Flown from 0 mph airspeed to 240mph and 0 to 150 lb birds. I test fly alot of other pilots aircraft. Never asking them, they come to me.
Now, I am no gods gift to RC, but I DO KNOW HOW TO FLY and trouble shoot aircraft and I am good at it.

At this T34 race at Madera in October 2004.
This person comes up to me and asked me if I wanted some stick time on his Mig. I was eating my lunch, and me, I love to fly airplanes, said sure. THIS WAS NOT A TEST FLIGHT. Supposedly, this plane is 6 years old and has been proven.
I do not know this person other than seeing him at other meets (T34 races only).
So we go out to fly his airplane. He starts the jet and taxis out. I am standing next to him and he does a couple of laps around the field. He hands me the TX at full throttle. Well the plane is not that fast. Good cruising speed for it and it looks good. The first thing I do is wave the ailerons and check how the plane responds/handles. The owner did not say anything whether or not the plane had any bad habits. He said nothing the entire flight.
I was flying the plane for about 3 minutes and did some very minor aerobatics. These consisted of a 4 point roll, half a cuban eight, a fly by and a slow roll. After the slow roll I rolled out to a slow right turn, nothing tight just a casual turn, then banked to the left for a 270 turn to put me back over the runway. Well the whole time that I was flying the owner was standing right next to me. STILL SAYING NOTHING !!!!
Well into my left turn at about 150 ft of altitude I started to feed opposite control on the ailerons to straighten her out. At the point I fed in right aileron, the plane did not respond to aileron. It kept on rolling to the left and at that time I fed in full right aileron and full right rudder and when the plane did not respond my instinct was to pull back the throttle. The owner was standing next to me, I showed him the input on the transmitter. Full right aileron, full right rudder and throttle all the way back to idle. The plane went in full throttle,left roll. Well, lots of pieces. The owners comment was lets finish the day of racing and then we can work things out.

I put alot of emphasis on flying anything as smooth as I can. You can ask anybody that knows me. After a plane goes down like this I feel as if it is a death in the family. I felt awful. I still feel bad for the loss of this aircraft.
To make a long story short. This guy has papers served to me to sue for $5000

We go to small claims court. He gets up and pretty much everything this person said was a LIE. One part, he was standing there in front of me demanding me to give him his transmitter back and that I refused. GET REAL.
He gets a person and says that this is my witness. Some person that just started in the RC world. This guy says that while I was flying the jet that it looked like it was totally out of control the whole time. COME ON, YOU KNOW THEY TALKED BEFORE.....DAH
I get up and tell the commissioner my side of the story which was the truth. I had documents showing my capabilities in flying from a friend that has known me for along time. Also docs stating how this person reneged on buying other peoples aircraft.
The owner just had pics of his plane. Nothing but his word that I PURPOSELY CRASHED HIS PLANE.
She took the paper work and said that she will answer by mail. 2 to 4 weeks is when I should get the answer.
About 5 days later I get a letter stating that I owe $5000 and $102 court fees.
I COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS.
This kind of thing makes a person want to get out of the hobby.

Since this inncident I have heard from folks of the owner talking about RX battery problems and elevator servos that could not handle the strain at full throttle. Course, no one wants to come forward to say that to me. So I have no proof.

Let me tell you. If this guy told me about this I would have never touched this aircraft.
AGAIN THE PLANE WAS HANDED TO ME AT FULL THROTTLE AND NOTHING WAS SAID BY THE OWNER.

I feel like I have been set up bigtime as a scapegoat.

In my 30 yrs of doing this, I have never had this happen.

Something is wrong with this situation.