I’ve run a Dayton in a hallway which resulted in the wing mount failing. The point of failure on the first break was right behind he tape in the front. The second failure was just ahead of the tape in the back.

We sat at the pub and contemplated (an important part of the design process). 🙂

Here’s the scoop so far. The Squirrel will rarely break for a couple of reasons. One is the wing held in place by an elastic. This not only allows a wing adjustment (and removal) but it has flexibility.

Secondly, the beam is cut to 1/8×1/16″ (to match the motor stick thickness) instead of 1/4×1/16″. I snipped them with scissors since I made the part from scratch. I could have fractured the wood. Laser cutting might be better here.

What I really like about the taping system is the wing doesn’t shift. The plane stays in trim better.

Perhaps the answer is to go to 1/8th Square here. It’s might be strong enough but I need to make sure we don’t start breaking the wing leading edge or something else. Another thing that has come to mind is to split the tape so that the tape will fail. This would be interesting for kids since the make an extra step to cut the tape thinner but learn about the trade-off of the different fail modes that come forward.