The purpose of the tape is not to prevent collapsing of the wing. It is to keep the wing halves from sliding off of the joiner bars. There are many planes out there where the wings are held onto the joiner tubes with rubber bands and the like and most find nothing wrong with that. I have seen several "taped" Alpha's fly with no problems with the wing joining tape. I can not tell you if lee40 installed his tape correctly or not, or if he performed the balance of the assembly properly. Sure, I would prefer a better method but this one has been shown to work on this plane. If it wasn't reasonably reliable I think it is fairly obvious that a change in assembly method would have been made by the mfg. The rubber bands that hold the wing onto the fuselage should have been enough to keep the wing together, even if the tape was missing. Something more was going on here than what we have been told. IMHO The wing collapsed and all it did was "Mashed the firewall". That doesn't sound right either, did this happen on takeoff