THE REST OF THE STORY

Four days after nearly cutting my thumb off again I flew one of my pattern planes and discovered that if you have no feeling in your thumb you don't know what's happening with the rudder and as I moved the throttle I was moving the rudder quite a lot without knowing it. Even increasing the stick tension didn't help.
Started learning to fly with index finger and thumb. Spent a lot of time flying my Balsa Nova and Pizazz. After a couple of months some feeling came back into my thumb and I felt comfortable flying anything again.

So two Saturdays ago I took the Great Lakes out again. Every thing went fine. Stalls looked like the thing might be nose heavy but inverted flight said it wasn't. I let the rate of descent get to high on landing and broke the gear.
The following Tuesday I tried again. I set up a good approach with a little power on and a nice AOA. Everything looked good till the mains touched the ground. The nose popped up as usual. The plane rolled and caught a wing tip then went on its nose. The engine and firewall popped out without breaking any wood, just glue joints.
I pulled my engine and radio out and gave the plane to a fellow club member.
I think this plane can be landed but probably has a very tight envelop of airspeed, AOA and rate of descent for success.
If I were still in Georgia flying off the old sod farm I would have stuck with it maybe. But here I'm flying off black top and I figure it would never survive the 10 to 20 flights it might take to figure out how to land this thing.
Like a boat I was glad when I got it and glad when I got rid of it.
Sure was a cute little thing though.