Brian,
We were trying to get the plane to snap on demand. His Sterman was so lightly loaded and with a std thickness airfoil it just would not stall easily. We had to use fuctional flying wires and lots of titainum fittings to meet the weight limit of 10 Kgs back then. Once they removed the weight limit is when we built the larger Extra's in 40 and 50% size in the early nintes as biplanes lost their bonus points. Most people never saw his 50% Extra fly including myself as He had aileron flutter ealry on with the crappy servos we had back then and we couldn't fix it before the TOC that fall and Steve sold the plane right after we got home in 98.