RE: crashed on the maiden
A buddy asked me to maiden his RV-4 last weekend. He's been flying for almost as long as I have, but gets pretty nervous with a new plane. I asked if everything had been checked, and he assured me it had. I asked him to double check while I was watching, just to make sure, and sure enough, the ailerons were reversed. He fixed that, and when we flew th plane, it performed flawlessly. Its now his favorite plane to fly!
It never hurts to double check and have someone else look at it.
Brad