well the good news is it flew!
after about 5 flights and a few trim adjustments it was flying pretty well.
the wings were still not quite level upright and inverted, the flap tweaking was very touchy i overtweaked them twice both ways.
but it was getting closer.
the last flight started with a little launching mishap. Dad hit the rudder while releasing the model and it unded up tipping up and buzzing the prop slightly.
I didn't notice the rudder getting hit and thought i just screwed up and whacked the prop so once in the air i flew a few level laps
and checked it out ,no vibrations and the engine was running fine and the prop was pulling fine so i thought oh well probably ruined the prop but no big deal.
a few more laps and i started some manuevers, reverse wing over,rounds,inverted,still not quite level wings but getting better, squares, triangles, horizontal eights, overhead eights,exellent line tension,vertical eights, and the only real issue was some slight stalling on the last corner of the squares and triangles, but it was better than the flight before so the trim changes were working.then i decided to do a clover...
first inside fine
first outside fine
at the inverted exit of the second outside the plane suddenly made a sharp left turn.not a rolling turn but a sharp flat rudder type turn. it looked like you just kicked in full left rudder.
there was no way to save it.
the plane hit the ground inside the circle and was a total loss. fortunately it hit pretty flat inverted and the engine appears fine.
after the crash and inspecting the parts it appears the vertical fin was shredded before the impact, and was probably a result of the launch mishap partially cracking it and subsequentely breaking up in flight.
Dad remains undaunted by the crash and is allready pressing for the plans to be redrawn with a few changes that we feel might improve the second version.
and yes the top wing mounts were fine and some even survived the crash.
the nose appears to have been grossly over built.

oh well not exactly the best way to finish a test flying session but not the worst either.
thanks to larry wong for the crash photos
we will forward them to the NTSB for further investigation.
Dave jr.
(former biplane test pilot)