For those who missed it, this is Dustin testing the his new F-16 combat plane. It had a .51 with a pipe, and no landing gear at all. I'm not sure, but I think he also omitted a rudder. It was a foam wing design, with a single spar. The plane was very maneuverable, and extremely fast. I'd bet it'd keep up with a lot of pylon racers.

The problem was that when he pulled high-G turns, the wing had way too much flex. To compensate, he reinforced the bottom of the wing with CF tape. This worked great for inside turns. Keep in mind that a sleeved .40 would have been plenty of motor for this plane.

However, since the top of the wing wasn't reinforced, it still flexed too much on outside turns. Tom named it "the Variable Geometry Wing", which pretty much describes the problem to a "T". As a result, the plane blew apart after an extremely low inverted pass during a sudden, steep climbout.

It was SPECTACULAR! We found pieces strewn over a seventy-five foot area! I'm pretty sure that no two pieces were left connected. I'm talking battery, servos (One found with the surrounding chunk of wing still screwed to it, over twenty feet away!), motor and all. It simple re-kitted itself in mid-air!

Anyhow, he was a good sport about it and we all had a lot of fun watching it fly and especially the hand launches. When these guys figure out the structural bugs, this thing is gonna be a deadly combat plane!