Which Stik (stick)

My father has the GP Big Stik 40 ARF and loves it but he isnt doing any kind of 3D stuff with it. Its fast with a .46AX using a 10/6 MA prop. I had (RIP) a Ultra Stick 60 and it was a stone blast to play with. Set it up with flaps and ailerons and did all the mixing stuff (Futaba 9C) and loved the hell out of it. Mine was powered with a Magnum 91FS and was oozing with power. Unlimited vertical, etc. I followed some of the suggestions on RCUniverse and installed the rudder and elevator servos in the tail. If I recall, the plane was very simple to build. Hangar 9 does EXCELLENT build manuals. Only things I will do different on the next one (There WILL be a next one!) will be to go for pull/pull on the rudder and elevator and avoid those high speed inverted dives. Never know when the ground might wander into your flight path... Oh yeah, and beef up the insided of the fuse where the landing gear block is. This is a bit of a weak spot. Of course, I fly of a dirt/rock field and its very rough on landing gear. Flaps down, bang the throttle to full and it will go vertical from a table top. Video (broadband required) looking back at the tail:

I've got an Big Stik 60 ARF with OS 91FX and an Ultra Stick 120. I agree with the other response that you'll likely have more fun with the Ultra Stik set up with flaps and ailerons than with the Big Stik 60. The Big Stik was my second plane (flying it with an OS 61SF ages ago) and am now on my fourth one (RIP the other 3: 1st barrel rolled into the ground, 2nd put into the lake, 3rd had the wing come off in flight), and I still enjoy the heck out of flying it. It hauls butt quite nicely with the OS 91, but I'll give the nod to the Ultra Stick because of its greater acrobatic abilities. One caveat -- to get the most out of the Ultra Stick you'll need a computer radio to allow the mixing of channels to get the crow configuration to work.

I'd call it even between the two in terms of difficulty in building -- either shouldn't be a big problem.

I also agree that if you go with the Ultra Stick put in some triangular stock inside the fuselage to add strength to the landing gear plate -- I've seen several ripped out on less-than-perfect landings even on our concrete runway.

Jim

Jim, have you used the standard pushrods on the tail, or did you move the servos to the tail and use pull/pull?

Go with the Ultra Stick. I had a GP Big Stik and while it was a good model, the Ultra Stick is in another league. I have an Irvine .72 engine mounted on mine and it gives me marginal power. I think a .90 stroke would be better. I have the elevator servo in the tail and the rudder servo is mounted on the top of the fuse in front of the vertical fin and is in a pull pull configuration. I beefed up the landing gear block and also made a removeble hatch on the top front of the fuse to get good fuel tank access and to make sure that the firewall was mounted properly at the factory. A computer radio is a must with this model of you are going to use the flaps and crow features.

The covering is Ultracoat and came on much better condition than the Big Stik did. I had to do alot of shrinking on my Big Stik and I found that the covering was a stick-on deal, not iron-on which really annoyed me.

Good luck with whatever you do.

James

For my Big Stik 60 I used the standard pushrods and servos in the fuselage servo tray, but I did have to add about 4-5 ounces of weight in the tail to get it to balance. At the time I got my 4th one, I was just getting back into the hobby after about an 8 year layoff so it never dawned on me to mount the servos back near the tail.

I have since learned to hold off mounting the servos and battery pack until everything is ready and mounted and then see what has to be done to balance it. I also have more building skills now than then, so if I did it over again I'd mount them in the side of the fuselage back near the tail (that's what I did on my Ultra Stick 120).

Jim

I had the Joss Stik by ModelTech and loved it...it is recommended for a .9