For those of you that have experience with the Great Planes Big Stik 40 ARF, is fiberglassing of the wing center section a desirable modification? Glassing of wing center sections is still ingrained in me from earlier experience. I would like to join the wing panels with no dihedral and use the airplane as an engine test bed for .40 to .50 class two stroke engines and be able to pull lots of positive G's without fear of the wing folding. I seem to remember some issues with the .60 size Stik in this regard but was wondering if it is an issue with the smaller version. Thanks for any advice in advance.

I don't think it is necessary on that plane in my opinion.

I generally put anhedral in my high wing planes so for my Big Stick 40, I flipped the dihedral brace over. This left a gap at the top that I filled with scrap balsa. I do a lot of maneuvers, including ones using flaperons for tighter radii and I have had no trouble. I forget if I used 30-minute epoxy or Gorilla gule.

By the way, that isn't enough anhedral to cancel the roll in the direction of the rudder for good knife edge and point rolls. I need to add downward tip plates. I got lazy and just flipped the dihedral brace when I knew it needed 3 degrees on each side.

The plane comes out pretty nose heavy and that's the reason for the rudder servo in the rear and the big, wire tail braces.

Thank you for the responses.

Ed, I saw your pictures in an earlier thread and was intrigued by your mods to the Stik. The anhedral wing reminds me of a Midwest Attacker I once had. Are the tail braces just a means of adding structural weight or is there any tail fluttering tendencies without them? Did you have to add any hard-points for attachment of the wire braces to the horizontal/vertical stab?

Dave