Eighteen years of flights end at a light pole

The detail that jumped out at me is the age: this foamy has been flying for eighteen years, and it has been buried nose first in the dirt more than once, patched up, and sent back out every time. That alone makes this sad pile of parts worth a close look. The final days read like a proper send off. One day the maker caught a tree on approach, pulled out of three full turns of a flat spin, and still touched down softly. The very next flight ended against a light pole during the pullout from a dive, and that strike did more damage than any earlier nose dive. The wreckage itself is laid out on the hood of a red car with peeling paint. There is the white foam fuselage with a yellow and green floral tail fin, an orange propeller on the front motor plus a loose spare blade, a single landing gear wheel, and a crumpled clear canopy. The broken wing sections still carry their tape repairs and servos with trailing wires, and the internal wiring shows plainly where the foam split. A black Spektrum DX7 transmitter sits with the wreckage. The open question is whether any of it can be saved, and the maker does not know the answer yet. My own view: an airframe with this kind of history deserves every repair attempt, even if the tape and spare foam have to do the work all over again.