Building a Great Planes Big Stik 40
The Great Planes Big Stik 40 kit is a great vintage kit not only for a seasoned builder, but for someone who has not built an airplane before. The Big Stik is known as a great flying airplane, and it goes together quickly and easily due to it’s simplified design.
With the Stik, there are a few decisions to make before building gets started. It was designed to use tricycle landing gear, or to be set up as a tail dragger. This kit was produced before electric airplanes were really a thing, so there’s not a recommended electric set up in its instructions. It gives the recommended engine size for both 2 cycle and 4 cycle nitro engines, but I’ll be making this one electric.
This was one of Tom’s old vintage kits that had been sitting in his basement for who knows how long. He finally decided to let it go in the hopes of seeing it built, so here goes.
New pictures will be posted as progress is made, so check back often!
Table of Contents
Building the Fuselage
One of the things that makes this airplane go together so fast is the way the fuselage is designed. After the inside of the fuselage sides are marked, there are die cut alignment blocks that get glued to the inside that lock the fuselage formers in place. The formers are then dry fit and rubber bands are used to keep pressure on the fuse sides while it gets glued together with thin CA. The fuselage alignment is checked before it gets glued by setting it on top of the plans to be sure everything is straight and true.
Broken Balsa Repairs
There were a couple pieces of the die cut balsa in this kit that had a corner broken. This happens every now and then, but since balsa is easy to fix it’s nothing to be worried about.
One of the pieces on the rear stab was also damaged. It was another easy fix!
Building the Wing
Building the wing on this airplane is very simple and straight forward. The parts are all die-cut, but some of the pieces weren’t cut all the way through and had to be removed carefully. The rib spacing was very easy to do because the front and back of the ribs sit in slots already cut in the leading and trailing edge pieces. All of the ribs and spars are dry fitted and glued after everything is aligned. The wing goes together super fast, so much so that I forgot to take a lot of pictures.
