Had to share! And I have a question too....
Attached are pics of my first kit build. It's a Great Planes Big Stik 40 that I started about 13 years ago. Yes YEARS. I got it about 90% done in a month or so and then it sat for 13 years. My son and I soloed with some trainers (you can see my Telemaster in the second pic) in October so I dug out the Stik and finished her up. This is my first covering job and while the scalloped ailerons and elevator and the tapered wingtips aren't perfect, I think they came out pretty good. You can't see the bottom in these pics but the wing and stab are black underneath.

Anyway, I took her out for her maiden Sunday. After flying my Telemaster to get the jitters to calm down, I did a brave/stupid thing. I doublechecked everything, taxied the Stik out, did a few low/high speed ground runs and then went for the takeoff. She took off just fine but as soon as I was in the air I realized I had about twice as much control throw as I needed (or wanted) and she needed some trim badly. I managed to get some altitude and get away from the pits so I could start sorting things out. In the meantime a couple of more experienced pilots came over to see if I needed help. Just them standing near me and reminding me to throttle back some helped and I had her trimmed out in under a minute. But man, what a scary minute!

I did a few slow passes to see how she handled at low speed and found that she floated amost as much as my trainer. I had to make two landing attempts before I could get the throttle and approach angles right for slowing her down but the landing was sweet! I dialed in 70% rates on everything, fueled her up, and went again. It was much nicer flying trimmed with sane amounts of throw. My son took for a few flights after me and did great too. Our plan is to use this plane to get ready for his next one, a GP Shoestring (I think my son has fast enough reflexes to handle it but I don't know about me).

THis leads to my question. I had the control throws set where the manual spec'd them and they were touchy! Is this typical for the recommended throws? If so, would it be wise to set up dual rates at say 70% of those throws for the inital takeoff and trimout of a new model? The Stik was pretty quick with an OS46AX but I'm a little worried about the 91FS on the Shoestring on that first flight...

Mark