In October 2020, Jay Jolley’s one-of-a-kind custom Carbon Cub, BigFoot, was featured in EAA Sport Aviation magazine and it inspired one young individual to try to recreate Jay’s work of art in the form of a radio-controlled aircraft.
Daniel Baggett has been custom designing and building RC airplanes and cars for quite some time. His passion for building RC models started 14 years ago when Daniel’s father bought him an RC SCX10 truck. Now, at 28 years old, when he’s not busy working full-time for the military, Daniel builds custom RCs under the social media name, Mississippi RC Addict.
Before seeing the feature in Sport Aviation, Daniel had already purchased an RC airplane kit and was struggling to think of a custom paint scheme.
“I had purchased an E-Flite Carbon-Z Cub and I didn’t want the original paint scheme, I wanted something totally different,” Daniel said. “I came across his [Jay’s] BigFoot Cub and was like ‘I gotta replicate this.’ It’s totally different, I’ve never seen another one like that. You see Carbon Cubs all the time, but not with a paint scheme like that.”
Daniel sent a photo of Jay’s BigFoot to Callie Graphics to have them create the custom decals.
“The first step was to take off the decals that came stock on the aircraft, then I lightly sanded the imperfections and wherever any residue was left over from the decals and then I went over it with some spray-on polyacrylic,” Daniel said. “I think I did two or three coats and then I lightly sanded that and then I went over with the base coat of the grey paint and then got the decals from Callie Graphics … and then I went over with some very thin lamination film just to hold everything down. I also 3D printed the wheel caps myself and put the stickers on those too.”
When Daniel finished building his custom RC, he reached out to Jay on Facebook to show him what he had built.
“He sent me pictures of this RC plane that he had built, he made a replica of BigFoot and I thought it was kind of amazing to have done it all original,” Jay, EAA Lifetime 831326, said.
Impressed, Jay showed his daughter, Grace, this custom RC that Daniel made. When she saw it, she knew right away that she had to reach out to Daniel to ask him to create another one for her to surprise her dad with at Christmas.
“On Christmas morning, I opened up this box from my daughter and it was a Carbon Cub ARF kit and I thought ‘Oh that’s cool, I haven’t built a RC plane in several years and I thought this would be nice,’” Jay said. “I was kind of touched by it, that my daughter would spend that kind of money on me and she says ‘Well open it up Dad’, and I open the box up and it was BigFoot and it just kind of touched my heart. It reminded me of my father who passed away about 12 years ago because he got me into radio-controlled flying, which led to my aviation interest for the rest of my life, so I was touched by it.”
Daniel said he had the opportunity to fly in Jay’s Cub and loved it, as it was his first experience in a civilian aircraft.
“Daniel and his wife came by over the holidays and I took them for a flight in BigFoot and he absolutely loved it,” Jay said. “He’s a great guy, and I can’t believe he did it because it’s a lot of work! I put the kit together over the holidays and flew it, and loved it.”