There was a very respected seasoned flyer at the field one time that was test flying a new plane. He had done a few laps and got her trimmed out, she was a beautiful airplane. As he was doing a high speed fly over, you could hear the flutter. Everybody jumped out of from under the lean-to just in time to see this wonderful plane go straight down and smack into the top of a tree. The sound of balsa and covering disintegrating was loud and sickening. Most of the wreckage was stuck about 20 feet up in the tree. His major concern was getting it down so he could save his expensive servo's, which we did. The right hand aileron had failed and pulled out of the wing. The plane was a total lose, no question about re-building it. He told everybody that he just lost $3,000 worth of airplane. I came away with a different aspect about losing a plane after that. When I lose a cheap trainer, I think about this seasoned flyer losing his airplane and say to myself, it wasn't that bad! Even for a seasoned flyer such as him, he lost an airplane. Was told several years ago that every plane has a date written in the tail somewhere in invisibal ink when it was going to crash, you just didn't know what that date was. For those of you that's never crashed, it's a matter of time.

Chris.