Really sorry to hear about your bad experience. I can say that not all Creek planes suffer from the problems you had. My Staudacher seems to be pretty well built. Haven't had any problems with it yet. I did break the gear last week, but it was from a pretty hard landing - dropped it in from about 10 feet. The only damage was the gear and busted wheel pants. No structural problems at all. The covering job on mine was way better than I could ever do.