BAD NEWS:

I lost my Dragon Lady this past Friday because I was in a hurry and didn't do my regular preflight check. After putting a new servo and a new receiver in I put the plane together and moved all the surfaces. Fuel up and went to the flight line. Took off and it felt kinda funny. Amazingly I figured out pretty quick that the ailerons were reversed and taught myself to fly backwards real quick. can't believe I didn't crash it immediately. I flew around one circle the whole time knowing that I'd crash for sure. I started to get into my radio's menu to reverse the ailerons back to normal. I got into the correct menu as the plane began to drift into a bigger circle. It got far enough away that I had trouble flying backwards and keeping orientation and finally it went down deep in the woods... maybe 1500 feet or so. I put everything in the truck immediately and headed towards where I thought it went down. I ran into the brush and trees in the general direction, but never found anything. I did swear to myself that I heard the engine still running at one point, but I know how deceiving things can be in that situation. It began to get dark and I didn't want to get lost in the woods alone so I headed home.

I'm planning to go again Monday and spend more time walking through the woods to look for parts. There's a good engine out there and I bet there isn't much damage to the airframe. I've printed arial views from google earth with the search area so that I can do a systematic combing. WISH ME LUCK!

In retrospect, yes I should have done the total pre-flight check, but I think there were a couple things I could have done to lessen the damage:
1) Put the plane down sooner intentionally so that the parts would be salvageable.
2) Forget the ailerons. Fly with rudder only. Everything seemed trimmed well I think that might have worked.
3) Don't fly alone at the field. I could have talked someone else through reversing the servo in my radio while I focussed on flying that dang thing backwards.