Shopping Cart. The Caproni Trilogy Part I.

"Lynette Zuccoli in front of her 3:5 scale replica of the Stipa Caproni."

No, it is not my policy to include other people's photo's on the weblog, but I felt I had to borrow these from a site called "Legends in Our Own Lunch Times: The Stipa Caproni". The original aeroplane was designed as a "venturi duct fuselage" experiment by the engineer Luigi Stipa and built in 1932 by the Caproni factory. The 3/5-scale replica was built by Bryce Wolf for Guido and Lynette Zuccoli at Aerotec in Queensland (the scale having been chosen, incidentally, for classification purposes apparently).

"A venturi duct fuselage."

A good collection of photo's of the original, as well as a detailed discussion in Italian, can be found at this website by Giorgio Dorati.

"The original Stipa Caproni in flight."

The Stipa Caproni is often ridiculed for quite obvious reasons- some have called it the most ugly airplane ever designed - but it did apparently serve its experimental purpose of testing the thrust effect a tubular duct would have on a propellor engine. Does is not constitute an interesting precursor, then, to the turboprop?

"The De Havilland Gipsy III Engine."