So I had a great idea! why dont I go and buy an FMS 800mm electric T-28 Trojan RC plane to learn to fly with? it's fitted with a 3 axis stability control receiver, so I figured it should pretty much fly itself right?

I had never flown before and had spent less than an hour on a pretty average simulator (which I actually found very helpful). Its an awesome looking plane and I figured what could possibly go wrong?
I like to think of my self as confident rather than stupid, I guess there may be other ways to describe this decision, but in the past there haven't been many things that I couldn't fix so I though ill give it a try.

First flight was yesterday morning, a fairly steady Wellington breeze about 13 kph, the T-28 was eager to get in the air, accelerating into the wind and me pulling about 50% on the elevators it quickly lifted off then rapidly darted to the left, which somehow I recovered from. I think I got a good 10 seconds fly time before I landed a bit earlier than I was planning and sure enough...  smashed the prop and gave the front wheel a good beating. I straightened the front wheel, fitted a new prop and went for another round.

This time I took off, much better than the last attempt, it seemed that I may actually have some control over it! I was about 60% throttle and I was thinking, man this thing is fast! then suddenly for some unknown reasons it did a crazy stall turn then a barrel roll and nose dived into the ground . This bit of attempted flying went for a good 25 seconds. I thought to myself, that was fun,  I think I might be able to get the hang of this.

I didn't stop to question the random behavior of the plane, I just put it down to me being a very amateur pilot.

I walked over to the wreckage and it didn't look too good, the motor had taken a beating and had been punched inside the fuselage it had broken the plastic motor mount plate, the motor cowling and again bent the front wheel. Well not to despair, to the repair shop I went!

The main problem was how to repair the plastic motor mount plate, as it is installed when the fuselage is in two pieces (long ways) and I wast too keen to cut it back in half to repair it. I decided to just cut the nose off the plane with a hack saw and this is how that went: SCARY

I cut about 10mm behind the motor mount plate, from the top, the cut was straight down and the bottom it was at about a 45 degrees angle. That way it had a larger surface area for when I was to glue it back on once the motor mount plate was all fixed.

The motor mount plate was smashed to pieces. I cleaned up each bit and made it so it all fitted back together nicely. I then cut a flat bit of plastic (approx 2mm thick), wiped a thin film of oil on it (to use as a thin separating compound) and screwed it to where the motor mounts too. I then mixed up some 5 minute epoxy and plastered it in to all the cracks, I also added some extra strengthening ribs to help keep it together.

After letting that set for about an hour I glued the nose back on using some more epoxy, I tried to set the thrust angle about where is was before the crash.

Once it was dry I reassembled it and needed to add 1.6mm plastic washers under the bottom of the aluminum motor mount. This put the thrust angle back where it was before the crash. Unfortunately things had moved while the glue was setting. I straightened the motor shaft using a DTI and a small vice and it was the ready to fly again!