My latest crash, my beautiful seaplane. One ca hinge ripped out of the rudder (top), one ca hinge cracked in half (bottom), from the crash. I don't think it was the hinges fault though. This baby took a nose dive from way up there, smashed into a rock hard frozen lake [:@]
Its a long story but I'll explain for those interested. There was still a few feet of snow on the banks of the lake. So I tried taking off from there. But the snow was too soft, from warmer weather & rain the night b4. I couldn't get up enough speed. So I taxied it over onto the ice. In retrospect bad idea. I also had the water rudder down (should have had it up). So as I'm gaing speed to take off, the back rudder is bouncing along the ice, which I think either cracked one hinge, loosened the other or both. I did have a "fail safe" on the rudder by using covering as "hinge tape". Anyway it was flying ok for about a minute, was trying to trim it. Then it just started acting funny, no turning control. Then like I said took a nosedive right into the ice. A guy must have been watching from accross the lake. After the HUGE bang (its was a nasty sound), I heard someone from across the lake yell OH Sh*t. By the sound of it I thought for sure it would be totaled, but its a lot better than I thought. The ice also tore up the fiberglass hull. Never do that again

In any case I will use CA hinges again. They won't be bouncing off ice any more