Does anyone else have fond memories of building models from the Keil Kraft EeZeBILT range? I am sure I built almost the whole range when I was a kid. They were particulary good for building while on holiday, especially if you were stuck in a tent on a camp site for a fortnight every summer! You could build them in a day, and then fly them to destruction in any open spaces you could find round about.
When the Peterborough club had their event for the Keil Kraft EeZeBILT Rapier a few years back, I think many of us were surprised at just how well they could fly. 40 seconds was relatively simple to achieve, though of course none of us were using the less than ideal 5 inch props originally supplied with the kit. Or Keil Kraft wood come to that. So it looks like Albert E Hatful knew what he was doing.
I managed to obtain an original Sportster kit at a reasonable price on Ebay, and thought there might be some interest out there in building one. So I have scanned and cleaned up the plan and parts, and made them available here for download.
Here are the kit contents, with the pre-printed and die crunched wood resplendent in tasteful red and yellow. The choice of red for parts E and F seems rather odd, rather than yellow, but I guess there was no room for them on the yellow printed sheets. I bet not many Keil Kraft kits have had yellow wheels included!
The plan can be downloaded as one complete sheet in bitmap format, six smaller sheets also in bitmap format or as a pdf file set up to print out on A4 sheets.
The parts are available as just outlines, or in colour showing the original printing on the balsa. Unfortunately the two sheets including the fuselage halves are a tad too long to fit on a single A4 sheet, so for the pdf versions I have split them into 2 with a huge overlap. The bitmap versions are just left as single images for you to chop up as you please.
For the wing and tailplane patterns I would imagine it would be feasible to print the patterns onto tissue, which could then be attached to the balsa by some means. The fuselage could be simply painted yellow after assembly.
Sportster plan in pdf format on six A4 sheets (123 KB)
Sportster plan, zipped bitmaps to print on six A4 sheets (233 KB)
Sportster plan, zipped bitmap of complete plan (146 KB)
Sportster parts, outlines only in pdf format on seven A4 sheets (36 KB)
Sportster parts in colour, pdf format on seven A4 sheets (145 KB)
Sportster parts, outlines only, zipped bitmaps on five sheets (28 KB)
Sportster parts in colour, zipped bitmaps on five sheets (89 KB)