Landing with the setting sun directly in the line of sight of the final, is not a good thing. Thank the lords for Gorilla glue. The Apprentice is a Good plane, but it does not like rough grass strips. The landing was slightly skewed due to crosswinds, and I overcorrected, stalling the wing and cracked the tail section of the fuse. This was my 5th flight of the night, up til then my landings were pretty darn good too, nice 3 point rolling landings, much better than the first one that was basically a touch, bump and dump. The ground is lumpy from the winter, and the nose wheel tends to catch them and cause the plane to nose over. I found a nice section that is still fairly smooth and hit it 3 times in a row. I was aiming for this spot on the last flight, but I was partially blinded and couldnt judge the hieght, came in too low and when I noticed I pulled back a bit, the wind caught it, I tried to correct and dumped it on its tail, catching the left stab tip that came to me as a loud SNAP. A squirt of GG, some tape, and she should be ready to fly again.

A couple of tips:

1. You can hold your transmitter up to block the sun (the way fielders use their gloves to block the sun when catching fly balls).

2. If you can't avoid looking close to the sun, close one eye. That way, when you're out of the direct sunlight again, you'll have one eye that works well.

Good ideas. That's the nice thing about the Apprentice, it is tough and easy to repair.

Bigger wheels will help greatly when on grass. The strip where I fly is a roll of pond liner, if you ever see some as salvage or whatever.

So the sun snuck around and ambushed you when you weren't looking? I hate when that happens!

Which presented a bigger danger - sun blinded up wind (standard) landing or a down wind landing? Sometimes down wind is required - dead stick or other emergency.

I wish there was an upwind, downwind choice. The wind was coming across the runway. I could have brought it from the other direction, but the wind comes over the top of the barn and is turbulent coming in that way.    I was also being rushed by the other guys, they were eager to get dinner, and I was the only one flying. 

Plane is all back together and in good shape ready to fly again.  My T-34 though, I need to form new LG mains, one cracked right off on a not so pretty landing.  The other one I can see cracks in the bends.

An old Controlliners trick (who have to deal with the sun every lap) is to always note where the sun is before takeoff plan every move to always be either below or above the sun each time around.

I realise it was directly in your line of sight on the landing approach but remembering that simple technique above may be useful to you other times.

John

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