Bob,

It's hard to tell from the photos, but it looks to me like the Wren zoomed into the ground at high speed, and the landing gear caught on the grass, breaking the fuselage at the gear mounts.  It looks like both rear LG wires were bent in the process.  Any possibility that the stab was not set properly for a good climb, or the noseblock had extra downthrust from the higher winds?

Justin

Sorry for the fuzzy photo but here we are ready to rock and roll at 73 gm, an increase of 3 gm, mostly in the front.  This one needed tail weight as built so that's where I have been putting the radio.  Time for complete rebalancing and retrimming.

Warhawk, the most recent collision at Geneseo was with a car which was more or less unscathed but there was in fact an earlier high speed collision with the ground which did some damage.  Early on I was trimming out the unwanted built-in downthrust with temporary shims and it coughed and spit one out toward the end of the power run, whereupon the model went nose down and hit the ground under power. I might have missed a crack while repairing after that incident.

Gossie - I think I'll take your advice and key the nose block so it only goes in one way, because the big orange arrow on top of it apparently wasn't enough foolproofing.

Here is the 1987 Heeb plan courtesy of Pete Money showing various CG locations.   Jim M. says his flies with CG about 1/2" forward of that indicated on the plan.

>Jim M. says his flies with CG about 1/2" forward of that indicated on the plan.

All three have been in that ballpark but those of others may vary due to differences in trimming techniques, with regard to incidences, etc.

A lovely forgiving reliable design.

Yesterday we took the Wren out to the Barron Field for some test/fun flying. The last time out at the end of May it had experienced more fuselage damage which I finally traced to the one-size-fits-all car stooge in the trunk of the Honda Civic. I think that has been the problem since last September.  So I patched it up again and from now on will wind it on the regular stooge shown in the picture. 

Here's another shot of the model showing the corn lurking in the background.

Here's the Wren on 660 turns earlier "today." This is a little more that 50% of breaking turns for the 36 gm 14 strand 1/8" Tan SS motor.  http://vimeo.com/13792078 Wren seems to be fixed and giving repeatable flights.