The wind finally died down enough at an appropriate time for me to get in some flying yesterday morning using my newly designed motor mount, which didn't work very well.
In the never-ending quest for a better motor mount (because I can't find aluminum right-angle stock) I came up with a quick-and-dirty design using two smaller zinc right angle brackets from Lowe's. Because of the form factor, I was only able to mount the motor using two mounting holes, which proved to be woefully insufficient after a handful of flights. For reference, here it is:
The zip ties loosened up after half dozen crashes and the motor flopped around a lot, completely nullifying any trim in the system whatsoever. I do have a one-piece larger right-angle bracket that I'm going to try next. It's heavier, though, so we'll see what happens. And WOW the motor gets WARM.
It *did* fly, however. I had also previously placed a big gob of play-doh in a plastic bag on the nose in an effort to move the CG forward to 10" from the nose. This turned out to be unnecessary - it turned out the weight of the play doh was doing more harm than good.
I also realized that you really need to give the plane a good throw to get it airborne, even at full power, and preferably at about a 45 degree angle to give it some altitude.
Long, slow banks were also difficult to achieve - either I just didn't have enough back pressure on the stick or real rudders would help out. Or I'm just a crappy pilot.
And the previous advice on learning on a BIG field - big means BIG. Like bigger than a baseball diamond, for example.