Greetings,
I am a newbie pilot. Can take off, fly and land. Working on perfecting take offs and landings.
The other day I was out flying (with others) and felt like I was having an "Off" flying day. Plane
kept climbing and didn't seem to be super responsive. Well, got it back on the ground. Landed
slightly in the tall grass just off the edge of the runway. Decided to clean up and put it away,
before a case of dumb thumbs killed my plane. When I was cleaning the plane, I found that
the center 2 ca hinges on the elevator had failed at the fold, so I only had the outer hinge on
each side of the elevator with the center free.

Is it common for ca hinges to fail like this ? i didn't notice the problem when I preflighted, but
truthfully, I didnt' examine the hinges, just checked the operation.

thanks.

BTW, plane is a sig LT40 ARF.