Made another attempt to re-enter and land, this one went pretty well. No damage. The landing was a bit hard, and on the right runway, but the MWS did not light up. Went to the refuelling area as well.
The key I have learned with the DG, at least with what I know now, is to do what I believe is called a "Skip Re-entry" which bleeds off speed in chunks, so that with each skip you can get a little lower and a little slower without risking damage due to stress (and probably heat as well, though the DG does not model that so far as a I know). For me, the skips involved nosing down a bit to get some downward velocity, and then pitching up fairly sharply (around 30 degrees) until the downward velocity becomes upward again. This type of maneuver bleeds off a decent chunk of speed - and on the next skip you get a little bit lower and do the same thing, until you are close enough to the base, at 6 to 8 km altitude with around 1km/sec velocity. At this profile you have attitude and vector control, and can glide the DG to base. In this attempt, I had to use the hover engines during the last 500 meters or so to the runway, and a slight tap of mains to correct vector. The skips started at about 10,000 km from KSC, as my altitude fell below 80km. Think I did around 7. I noticed also that on the succeeding skips I was below 60km when I would normally start to see plasma, but because my forward m/s had been reduced I was not getting re-entry burn at all, or only a bit for a short phase until my upward pitch got to a level where the forward velocity was not enough to cause plasma at the altitude. For example, even at 45km altitude, with a speed of about 4.5 km/s there was no plasma burn.
Just thought I would share this for people on the learning curve.
It is much easier to land when your elevators have not been ripped off earlier in the DEI.