Keil Kraft Caprice gets electrified!

[Stuart Eggerton]

Hi John, your Caprice looks magnificent!

[John Farley]

Ta Stuart

It really enjoyed a flat calm evening at the last Old Warden model weekend drifting around in circles 10ft above the free flight crowd's heads!

J

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[John Farley]

Dear Stuart

Glad you enjoy lane changing!. Secondary safety in cars is so much better these days, but primary safety by swerving under control and avoiding the accident is even better!

Do you still fly as a pilot?

J

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[John Farley]

Well done you!

If www.aviewfromthehover.com interests you then send me a message and I will sign one and stick it in the post.

J

[Gazza58]

What tremendous memories from this thread. I didn't realise that so many KK Caprices had been built !

In the late 60's we went as a family to the Nationals and always took a couple of FF models for some fun on the airfield. One year my dear old mum showed some interest in building a model for the Nats and so she built a Caprice. She made a really beautiful job of it under the guidance of Dad who was an experienced modeller.

Come the great day, the model had a test glide / hand launch and was trimmed accordingly. The dethermaliser was fitted and a piece of lit fuse put under the elastic band. A quick launch on a hand held drill with about 100 feet of fishing line and off she went. She then carried on wenting. The Caprice circled beautifully in a generally upward direction and we all congratulated mum on the great job she had made of her model. She was beaming from ear to ear. The DT went and we all saw and heard it operate. The tail plane kicked up at about 45 degrees. Then it really went up, and up, and up. It became a tiny dot in the sky and was lost out of sight never to be recovered.

There ended mums one and only effort at aeromodelling.

Gazza

[Phil Green]

Chris Stewart & Alan Morgan flew a brace of single channel KK Caprices at the Ponty do this year. They went very well off a small bungee & were getting some good times - lovely, graceful model. One thing to be aware of is with an escapement and torque-rod, the underfin reverses the sense of the rudder to one for left, two for right. Not a problem if you use a sequential escapement or a servo of course!

Cheers

Phil

 

 

Edited By Phil Green on 29/12/2013 14:29:13

[Nigel Goodwin]

Loved these stories, just came across this thread. I built my first caprice when I was about eleven or twelve in 1966, flew it on Epsom Downs. I have built maybe 3 more since, there is a slightly damaged one in my work room which I flew with the kids about 15 years ago, caused much hilarity when it flew across the downs and landed in the garden of a pub and I had to retrieve by leaning over the fence with a long branch.

I moved on the the Inchworm, lovely model with similar shape.

I then built a 1.5 scaled Inchworm and put a Merlin diesel on top with a pylon and 2 channel proportional radio. It would go up for ever. But my engineering skills weren't so good, it was too heavy, I had covered the wings with balsa, and had not strengthened the spars. So coming in to land, I did a turn, and the wings folded.

Never lost a Caprice, but have lost a chuck glider and a 1/2a powered model.

My Inchworm once flew from Epsom Downs all the way across to the other side of Epsom (maybe 5 miles) and landed in somebody's garden, unharmed. They phoned my house and my mum took me to collect it.

Ten years ago I started flying proper pre-made electric gliders, but they weren't as fun or relaxing. I am still useless at flying. When i tell my kids I am going to fly, they say 'you mean you are going to crash'. Been too busy at work to spend any time, I have a couple of big competition electric gliders which are still in their boxes.

Must repair my Caprice and fly again. It has the normal problem, child stepped on it and broke fuselage.

I think tow lines are banned on Epsom Downs nowadays.

[Piers Bowlan]

I never built a Caprice Nigel but my dad built me a KK Conquest, only 30in span, which we would fly in Wormwood Scrubs Park. I was very young and impressionable at the time but from that moment on I was hooked on aviation (my wife uncharitably calls it a disease!). The Conquest met its nemesis when our wire fox terrier, who used to love to chase it, eventually caught up when it landed. You can guess the rest! I never built another one as I moved on to Cox Babe Bee powered little screamers after that but I have recently looked at the Conquest plan on Outerzone and mused about scaling it up. Perhaps a Caprice would be a better option.

Welcome to the forum by the way.

[Piers Bowlan]

Double post!

Edited By Piers Bowlan on 09/08/2017 09:36:13

[Nigel Goodwin]

i don't think you would go wrong with a Caprice. But getting a kit may be difficult. Even if you had a plan, getting the ribs shapes woudl be tricky - I don't think they are shown on the plan (which I probably have somewhere).

The Inchworm is another bigger option, I think the plan is available, but to be honest I would modify an Inchworm to lighten the fuselage and lengthen the nose if you are going to fly it for fun. I also prefer the rib configuration of the Caprice tail. That tail is really light (1/32 ribs) but also strong.

Maybe a 1.5 x Caprice, with a bit of carbon in the spars?

Wish I had time to mess around again.

[Nigel Goodwin]

i see the full plans with ribs are at

https://outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=1332

Back to work!

[Erfolg]

This thread had my mind going back so many years, to the middle of the previous century.

Like Piers, a KK Conquest one one of my earliest models, the second flyable model. It was almost like yesterday, that I had visions of going to the local derelict or now called a Brown Field Site, with my mate, with his conquest, his girlfriend in tow. Unlike derelict land today, this very large field, surrounded almost completely by factories, with a canal on two sides, was totally barren. No doubt due to toxic chemicals, virtually nothing grew.

Our towline was ordinary cotton, I do not remember what the tow ring was, from memory we had no flag on the line. All three of us took turns in towing. When success was achieved, the model would probably be no more than 20 foot up. But that minute or less of flight was magic to us. Mostly the tow failed, again my crystal clear memory fails me.

My mate did have a Caprice and a Topper, from memory he was flushed with cash relative to this 13 year old pauper.

My first successful model was a Frog Minx, a rubber powered, duration type. It also flew well, although I limited the flight to short motor runs, just enjoying the prolonged glides of a few hundred feet.

I have considered building both of the models, as two channel, micro gear models, with the frog using an indoor type motor set up.

Unfortunately nostalgia is not quite powerful enough to get me building such models.

As a post script, most of the KK and Veron models were total failures when i built them, scale and my heavy weight building did not work well.

[Charles Smitheman]

Laser cut rib sets for the Caprice are available from igull ebay shop. Easily found with a google search, I do not know how to put in a link.

I bought a set for the Graupner Cirrus last year. They are immaculately made.

If I did not have a ridiculous amount of projects I would be building another Caprice, my first one in 1969 was a really good flyer, and I have many fond memories of it.

[Nightflyer]

Hi I believe Ripmax has just released the Caprice as a laser cut out so that might be a quick and easy route to building a model.

[Mike Etheridge 1]

My nephew Nigel who used to compete in the Nationals at control line combat about 10 years ago once brought along a Caprice which flew very successfully during one of the manic free flight sessions at Grantham. Manic because people get hit by the planes as I did by an electric ME 109 which hit me full in the face and dislodged one of the lens in my glasses. However many years before I assisted Nigel with the construction of a KK Topper which he and his friend Dominic took to Epsom Downs. I met them there and they towed up the Topper which headed off towards the grandstand and was spotted by a dog (Not a Dalmatian!) and promptly flattened on landing. The Caprice still exists I think, but not so long ago at a market held at Chagford in Devon I found an original Caprice kit and bought it to help fill up my wardrobe. I gather the kit is now available for about £54.

[Nigel Goodwin]

There seem to be a lot of Nigel's on Epsom Downs!

[Mike Etheridge 1]

We can always check for Nigels with John Privett the Epsom Downs club's treasurer. As for my nephew Nigel he now lives in Bolton and works with British Aerospace and his friend Dominic now lives in Australia and builds Harpsichords so they are unlikely to visit Epsom Downs. Unless you still visit the Downs NG they could be Nigel free but there are still plenty of dogs and horses.