If its for display, I'd do a Sterling PT-17 - I've done 3 of them and they're not hard at all. Figure on eBay they should be about $125.

Since the wood is die crunched, have a spray bottle of water and an iron to wet the bad spots on the sheets and then seam the wood to get rid of the crunches. Be prepared to cut some new parts out of better balsa too.

Sand the elevator to about 70% thickness, use Robart hinge points for the tail feathers. Go find a full-scale Stearman and take about three rolls of pictures of all the little details - attachment points for the wires and struts. I did and I constantly refer to them as I build.

SAND anything behind the cockpit as much as you dare or you'll have to add weight to the front to get it to balance for hanging. I'd probably get one of the Williams Bros radial kits and use that.

There are at least two and probably three versions of the Sterling kit - one had a crappy plastic radial engine in it, an alumuminum cowl that polishes up REAL nice. The other had neither of these and a thinner box. I think the last ones were the end of the run, because they had a lot of bad balsa in them.

Another hint I'd pass on is to take a lot of typing paper and trace all the parts that are diecut so you have something to work with if a piece is broken OR if you want to build one to fly <G>

I have one in the box and one that I've flown a couple of times. If you're interested, it takes a .91 to 1.08 to fly them reliably - I tried a Fox .78 back 20 years ago and you have to really plan when you fly it. It should come out at about 8 lbs max, but it also has a pile of drag to contend with. I built a Ziroli Stearman with a 54 inche wingspan and it flys great on a .61, but it weighs about 6 lbs.