1/200 Stipa-Caproni

The Stipa-Caproni was a prototype aircraft designed by Luigi Stipa in 1932 to demonstrate his intubed propellor concept and built at the Caproni factory. The idea of the intubed propellor (a distant forerunner of today's fanjets) was that by running an aircraft's propellor in a venturi tube the propulsive efficiancy of the system would be improved. Flight tests showed that Stipa's theories were correct but the very large aerodynamic drag caused by the tube cancelled out most of the benefits on a small aircraft. The benefits included: low landing/takeoff speed, improved rate of climb and reduced noise footprint, the aircraft was also very stable.

A 65% scale replica was built in Australia over the period 1997-2001 and was found to have very similar flight characteristics to the original. My thanks to the guys at Sequair for making a set of 1:20 scale plans available, they made creating this model a lot easier.

The spherical depression underneath the model is for mounting it on a 6mm BB.