ORIGINAL: rryman

Well, I spent the evening going over everything. Checked the entire fuselage over and found everything to be where it should be. The only damage was the one slit which, due to the "clean" cut it made, I'm convinced was made by the prop tip. I guess it flexed some way to do it. The only other thing I found, which probably had nothing to do with this, was the props being out of balance. Could have sworn I checked them all before I put them on, but the one in question was really heavy on one side, and the other 3 were out somewhat less than that one. In any event, they're all balanced now. The nacelle screws were somewhat loose on that engine that did the damage, probably to the vibration caused by that prop. other than that, I found nothing.
One reason I believe that it somehow flexed to get the prop into the fuse is because of two things I observed years ago. I had a Jemco AT-6, foam wing, fixed gear, that I sat down rather hard one day, went out and got it and when I turned it over, I had tire marks on the bottom of the wing on the monokote. I could not imagine that the gear wire flexed that much without taking the mounting block out of the wing, but it didn't.
Another time I was video taping a friends flight of his Cap 232, and he landed in tall grass and flipped it over on its top. We got the plane and saw no apparent damage to it. It was all foam, stabs and all, covered with low heat covering. When we got home and watched the video frame by frame, you could clearly see one of the horizontal stabs deflect almost 90˚. We were both so amazed at the video that we checked the plane again and saw no damage. Amazing!
Randy