Hello all,

New here, just wanted to share something.

I'm heavily into another 'flight' hobby right now, modelling has been put on the back burner for a while whilst I pursue that. But, during a conversation on a forum dedicated to that hobby (powerkiting on racekites.com) we broached the subject of modelling, and aeroplanes came up.

In a fit of pique I went up into the loft and brought down this one, just photographed.



It's a Keil Kraft Phantom, built some 15 years ago, last used maybe 12 years ago and still fully functional. It's fitted with a PAW 1.5cc, one of a bunch of PAW's I bought when a local shop was closing down, I still have three motors unused, are they still in business?

Anyway, out of interest I tried a search for this model and was very surprised to find that there is a still a keen interest in them, so I though I'd share this one of mine with you. It's always been on the cards to get back into this hobby, maybe sooner than later!

Regards

Jerry

Hello Jerry,

Nice plane.

Yes, PAW is still very much in business.

When you get that urge to return, there's always room for one more modeler.

George

Hi, here are the link of Keil Kraft Phantom Mite: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_35...%2Cmite/tm.htm

Jens Eirik

Hi Jerry, your Phantom looks great........yes you'd better get hold of some fuel and fly it again, where's the wheels?
I really like the KK Phantom, I've built a couple and they got me back into the circle a couple of years ago, I'm still flying C/L and having lots of fun ( and a few prangs ) learning the pattern....John

Nice Phantom... Where does it balance?
I just have to find the modelling time and finish mine.

The wheels were removed in a fit of pique during a flying session, I had a couple of heavy landings and found that once it had bent once it bent too easily from there on, so I snipped off the U/C and grafted a weight under the motor to compensate. Hand launching is a doddle with this plane, and setting the prop to rotate to horizontal on engine stop gave me landings no worse than with the U/C on, kind of a dead stop !

The balance axis is about 1/3 of the distance from nose to tail between the slots for the control rods.

Shortly after posting this I dug out an old MAP plan for a C/L Pitts Special, singly my most favourite aeroplane of all time (though the Hawker Sea Fury comes close). In fact I'm amazed how much stuff I still have, I've singled out an unused Irvine 20 blackhead and balsa chips are flying everywhere! . I'm one of those modellers that seems to prefer the building to the using, in particular painting them (I used to run a Motorcylce custom spray shop, and I'm now partly involved with a signmaking business), so it's good to be wittling away again, and looking forward to some painting. As an example these 1/8th Serpents show what I'm in to, this is all paint, there are no stickers on the livery.

Thanks for the replies, nice to know there's some real modellers around still, my local shops are RTF everything, I do feel buyers are missing something.

Jerry

Jerry H.

Your Phantom has one of the nicest finishes I've seen on this model.

A lot of them have a minimum finish and are not as attractive as yours.

The Phantom seems to have achieved "National Treasure" status in the UK and I hope to build one some day.

Thanks for that Dan. I simply dope/tissued it, then used 2 pack spray applied filler/primer, sanding most of it off between coats, then a single coat of two pack colour coat, hand cut decals (back then, have a sign plotter now) then a coat of two pack laquer. Two pack is fuel proof by the way.

I think the art is to get the balsa shaped and smoothed right first, saves the need for a lot of weighty filling with paint to obliterate grain. Anything that does need some 'fairing', like where the fin meets the fuselage on this one, is done with that really light fluffy balsa filler stuff, can't think what it's called at the moment, I think it's bulked up with miniscule hollow spheres.

Jerry

There is a Phantom revival in the UK with some meets having a race class for them.