Well perhaps not pilot, the lil guy under the canopy looked freaked just before launch so perhaps it's the mechanic that did the prefight or perhaps did not do a through preflight.

I decided to maiden my GWS 38 even though the spinners had not worked out and I had not pulled new ones. I figures lets get her in the air and see if she is worth the time to pull my own. So I range check and set throws, check balance all that good stuff. I walked out onto the field to give her a toss and away she went..... and started to bank so I went to correct and it felt like I had no response... she just banked harder. She then went inverted and rolled twards the ground. I felt helpless as she dove to the ground all I could do is cut the throttle and watch her nose in.

The pilot bailed as the nose and one wing smacked into the grassy outfield. I ran over wondering what the heck. I wiggled the sticks and I had aileron movement. Everything checkout out okay on the controls... then it hit me.... well my buddy anyway... "Were they backwards?" ....... Thwap as I hit my head. Plug in the batt agan and sure enough I had checked everything but not confirmed my controlls were correct.

Well no pics of the crash as we don't want the NTSB grounding us The good news is I had glassed the entire plane and all I had was a clean break on the nose and a couple fracture cracks on the wing and booms. All easy fixes. The not so easy fix will be the one cowl that was shredded. The other is okay and the nose I'll just carve out of some foam.

So don't rush the preflights! You'll set yourself up for some more bench time.

Steve

man that sucks...at least it sounds like you'll be able to get her back in the air in no time...

I feel for ya dude... I did the same "controls reversed" thing once too, man I sure felt like an idiot but learnt a good lesson