It was just one of those bad days at the field that make you want to just pack it in and take up stamp collecting. After a "walked away from it" crash on the maiden flight of my Seagull Spacewalker about a month ago, I finally had a chance to get back out to the field for a second attempt (this time with the CG a bit further forward, smaller throws, and larger wheels). But it wasn't until I got out to the field and tried to fuel up that another bit of crash damage made itself know: investigation of a fuel leak revealed a crack in the tank. No problem. I got in the car and drove home to pick up an extra fuel tank. An hour later I'm back at the field and me and a couple of the guys are working on getting the new tank (which is a bit different than the old one) set up. OK, so we get it in and find that I can't fuel up. One of the lines was being pinched off by the firewall. OK. A little quick thinking and some foam and 30 minutes more of work in the hot Japanese sun that problem is finally behind us. It's been almost 4 hours since I first arrived at the field and I'm finally ready for a first flight of the day. After taxiing up and down the field a bit I finally figured it was time to take to the air so I goosed the throttle and gave it just a bit of elevator -- as t turned out just a bit too little elevator as the left wingtip hit some tall grass and the plane proceeded to cartwheel into the ground.

Once again the sturdy yet clever construction of this ARF was demonstrated as the wing was immediately ripped off the fuselage taking with it the seating bolts and crossbar from the fuse. The rear stab also got pranged. No damage at all to the wing. It only took 5 minutes to get the wing crossbar back in place with some CA (I'm a bit hesitant to epoxy it since its tearing out has saved my bacon on each of my crashes) and a couple of bits of bracing hardwood on the stab fized that but left me with a hole in the covering that I couldn't patch at the field.

So it was home after almost 5 hours with a total flying time of about 3 seconds. Some days are just like that. I suppose by mid-week I'll be ready to go again.