I've been working onto this project on & off in the past few months and I thought I could share what has been done so far.
First let me say that I'm not fond of kits so you can guess by yourself how much I do love ARFs... nonetheless I didn't want to invest any additional time and resources other than those provided in the package (something I paid for) in working out all the things I didn't like.
I just replaced a few hardware items (the tailgear unit and the control horns) and I just added a little bit of mine in the assembly process. Nothing more than that.
As I said I paid for it the way it came...
The assembly starts with the wings and they consist of 2 panels each, the inboard constant chord panel and the outboard one.
Inboard Wing Panel
The first thing to do deals with the
wing strut anchor plate:
the Big Lift design doesn't employ any wing tube! The wings stay where they belongs thanks to the wing struts, a few steel alignment pins (that slide into brass tubes glued to the fuse) and some heavy duty rubber bands.
Check out the following picture:
the wooden block on the left is what actually supports the 4 self-tapping screws that hold the anchor plate in place; next to it is the custom triangle stock I added to support the balsa strip that goes flush with the anchor plate itself.
The funny thing about it is that another balsa strip is required to properly seal the area around the anchor plate otherwise the covering material wouldn't have anything to stick to: I added another triangle stock to support the second balsa strip (no mention about it nor it is included)...
... and I then added the second strip:
Don't skip this extra step or there won't be any support for the covering material!