Would that be considered a total loss? It looks like the wing and everything back is in one piece. Years ago, I pancaked a Nobler like that and took the nose right off. I was able to build a new nose and Ambroid it back on. No epoxy back then.
Look closely and you'll see that the outer surface of the wing is fractured in several places, and if I'm not mistaken the stab is twisted with respect to the fuse. So I suspect that while the thing looks OK in a picture it's really broken up inside.
In a crash like that the engine is going to stop moving forward very suddenly, and the fuselage is going to be supported by a number of very rigid members, mostly the motor bearers if there are any and the fuselage sides. So the fuselage is going to stop pretty quickly, too, while simultaneously putting great strain on the fuselage structure. The wings are going to want to keep moving forward and will have great leverage -- so they'll tend to want to shear off or at least to rack (i.e. go diamond-shaped). Basically, the plane is this huge rigid assembly, with few "crumple zones" to relieve stress in the direction that it hit, so chances are you'll get broken up wood throughout the plane.
If yours pancaked in -- i.e. if you hit the ground at an angle, rather than head on -- then there's an opportunity for the damage to all be concentrated in a small area, and for the energy of the crash to have been dissipated (relatively) slowly in that one spot, allowing the rest of the plane to hang together.
Without taking off the covering and looking at the underlying structure I couldn't say for sure -- but that looks like a plane that's badly broken up inside.
Topic: Jim Borelli's Vector (Read 4187 times)