AMR Giant Stick - Final Assembly and Covering

Well it's all complete now. The wing construction and sheeting was performed without any hassells. I've attached the stab and fin and covered them. One point to note here there aren't any holes in the last former to allow the servo wires for the elevator to come through. Make sure you drill some BEFORE you attach the top fuse sheeting and fin. Whilst you are doing that make sure that you have glued the servo doublers in place as well.

Covering has been pretty straight forward, I find I need to cover a few bits and fail a few times before I get my "covering mojo" flowing. Once that's happening covering the rest is no drama at all.

Wings are covered, fin and stab are covered, rudder and elevators have been hinged.

I've started working on the pull-pull control wires for the rudder. I ran out of hinges for the flaps/ailerons as they didn't include enough in the kit!! DOH!!!

All the control horn hardware is pretty decent quality, but I felt that some washers should've been included to spread the load evenly from the control horns. Also, no pull-pull hardware is included so you have to find your own which was a pain as well. No matter.

In other news, my DLE-55 has arrived, ready for insertion.

AMR Giant Stick - Wing Assembly Continued

I've finished the construction on both wing panels, and am now sheeting each panel. Found a small problem with the W11 parts where the leading edge fillet is incorrectly cut to allow the sheeting to fit against it. It's no biggy, just noting it here for feedback to the AMR guys.

Sheeting is standard as per any other model you've constructed, I use masking tape to set the leading edge curved sheets in place, and I use bar bell weights for the flatter trailing edge sheeting.

One thing I have learned through constructing a bunch of different models, is when you are about to finalise the sheeting, make sure that you haven't left any rubbish, cut offs, dust etc inside the wing. If you do, this will rattle around when the model is finished and annoy you no end - or is that just me? :)

AMR Giant Stick - Wing Assembly Continued

I've begun sheeting the wing panel. Everything is very straight forward. I've fitted the phelonic tube into the fuse, and temporarily fitted it to the wing panel, they are fixed in place with glue once both panels are finished so that they align perfectly.

Once the sheeting is complete, I'll fit up the leading and trailing edges and then do the other panel.

AMR Giant Stick - Wing Assembly

I've nearly completed the left wing assembly. Everything is very straight forward, and the included jig makes assembly very quick.

I placed all the ribs in their holders, added the stringers and then went around and glued everything up.

Only one step had me confused when adding WSW3 and WSW4, fortunately the guys at AMR cleared that straight up for me, I think they are going to ammend the manual with some clarification.

The wing is assembled upside down initially, the wing root is shown at the right of this picture and you can see the servo bays at the rear. You can also see the WSW2 shear webs along the main spar there, I've decided to add shear webs along the length of the wing except for the final bay. The AMR guys assure me that their wing design is extremely strong, and i believe them, but since I'd already glued the WSW2's in place before I spoke with them, I'm committed.

Again, construction is like a big 3d jigsaw. The only other issue I had was the trailing edge part appears to be about 5mm too short for the wing. I've checked all the angles and it seems ok, not sure what the deal is there.

AMR GiantStick - Wing Parts

There are a few parts that need to be laminated with epoxy on the wing. W1, W3 and W11 all have one or more parts that need to be laminated. The manual is a little ambiguous about how W3 is laminated with W3A's and W3B. There are two W3A's laminated on one side (the wing root side) and W3B is laminated to the outer wing side.

W1 through to W3 holds the phelonic tube for the wing joiner. W11 is just the tip rib and is made of two parts.


Like the fuse I decided to flip through and laminate all the parts that need to be laminated for this wing half at the one time, this saves epoxy and time.

A little tip when you are using epoxy is to put the epoxy in some warm water this helps the epoxy run more freely and saves weight, and makes working with the mix much easier.

Don't use boiling water though, this will speed up the curing process too much and your 30 minute cure will become 10 minutes.

AMR GiantStick - Wing Jig

And now the fun begins, I've always enjoyed the construction of the wings in kits. Unsure why, but it's so much more interesting than the fuse.

Anyway, once again the AMR guys have done a stand up job, and have included a wing jig in the kit! The jig fits together very simply and can be changed over for each side of the wing - very ingenious!

The best part is that you can't actually assemble the jig incorrectly, the parts only fit together for a left and right panel. I don't know of any other kit manufacturer that includes a jig in the kit, most other kits require a jig for the wing, but you have to build it yourself.

AMR GiantStick - Tailplane and Fin

The construction of the stab and fin is very straight forward, just make sure you true up the edges of the parts to ensure everything is a nice tight fit.


The fin construction as well is very straight forward, I did run out of 1/4" square blasa which was a bit of a pain, and I'll need to buy some more for the construction of the wing, oh well.