Academy kit 1623
Purchased:
Hobby One, Brisbane. $AUD 4.50
Completed: 24 January 2007 (but awaiting decals)
- Nation: France
- Era: 1910-1919
- Justification: Some 8,500 SPAD XIIIs were built - making it one of the most numerous fighters of World War I. It also continued in use long into the 1920s with various air forces. One of the many Nieuport types may also have been suitable, but no single model seemed as ubiquitous as the SPAD.
The kit
The parts breakdown, with the wing and cabane struts moulded integrally with sections of wing surface makes me think that like
Academy's Sopwith Camel, this kit may have been inspired by the old Esci kit. Moulding is nice and crisp, but detail is very simplified. There is no cockpit to speak of, and the front of the upper fuselage is adorned with strange mechanical-looking "bits". After consulting reference photos, I determined these to be the machine guns, with a telescopic sight between them. The business end of the guns terminate in non-descript blobs. To me, these look like aerodynamic fairings over the muzzles, but no photos of SPAD XIIIs that I could find on line seemed to sport these features. If you know what these are, please tell me!
The kit's surface features extremely heavy-handed rib detail, which would have been nice on a Junkers with corrugated skin, but is far over-the-top here. Also, like the Camel kit, there are prominent ejector-pin marks in the middle of some of these ribs. The underside of the lower wings also comprise a section of the the fuselage bottom, and this features some extremely heavy detail too - way, way out of scale. It was only from repeated viewings of pictures of
The Memorial Flight's SPAD in the air that I realised that these details should be there at all, let alone so prominent in 1/72.
Decals are provided for one aircraft in US markings (Escadrille Lafayette's "Indian head" and swastika), and are nicely in register and opaque, but very thick and glossy.
The build
Construction
Construction was pretty straightforward, with two horrible flaws. The first of these was between the forward fuselage decking (bearing the "guns") and the radiator cowling (
right - note also slight fuselage mis-alignment). This was shimmed with styrene sheet. A second prominent gap featured between the top of the rear fuselage and the (one piece) horizontal stabilisers. I puttied this over, and tried to re-scribe the intricate, overdone detail to match.
As completed, the profile of the radiator cowling is poor - the underside of it is parallel to the aircraft's major axis, rather than blending in with the curves of the underside of the forward fuselage. Unfortunately, simply sanding this to match was not an option, since this would have resulted in the bottom of the cowling being far too thin when viewed from the front. Likewise, building up the underside of the nose would have distorted the contours there, when (as far as I can see) they appear to be right as-is. It would also have meant losing and re-creating the nice, petite louvre detail, which I didn't want to have to do!
Learning from my experiences with the Camel, I decided to install a rudimentary cockpit at this stage - just a simple seat fashioned from bent sheet styrene and a completely inaccurate instrument panel. The gross inaccuracy of the latter was necessitated by the fact that Academy had already moulded in a conventional "dashboard", while the SPAD's instruments were actually arranged more
like clocks on a mantlepiece, and there was no way I was going to do the kind of surgery required to suggest that. At least the SPAD's cockpit isn't as exposed as the Camel's.
Painting
I wanted to model an aircraft in the French camouflage of the day, and The Memorial Flight's website featured beautiful pictures for reference. I therefore elected to reproduce their aircraft, that of Brigadier Henri Trémeau of
SPA 83 "Les dragons". I began with the undersides, basically half-and-half Tamiya Buff XF-57 and Flat White XF-2 with a dash of Desert Yellow XF-59. I then started the tedious process of masking the four topside colours. During this time, I realised the shortcomings of the reference photos I was using. Tricks of the light made me question whether some areas were or were not the same colour as adjacent areas made from different materials. Other lighting shortcomings meant that I could not see the camouflage patterns on starboard side of the fuselage or the top of the portside lower wing clearly. I downloaded some of the photos and tried tweaking the brightness and contrast in Photoshop, and this helped a little. Eventually, I just had to go with what I could see, and hope that my extrapolations aren't too far from reality.
The lightest green was a roughly 1:1 mix of Tamiya Buff XF-57 and Sky XF-21. I then further mixed this with some Deep Green XF-26 to create the middle green tone. The dark green was Deep Green with just a dash of white for scale effect (and because I couldn't bear using a main colour straight out of the jar!) and the chocolate colour was Flat Brown XF-40 similarly tinted down. The bright blue ailerons are Sky Blue X-14.
As always, the Tamiya paints sprayed on beautifully, but in the end, I was a little disappointed with the finish I'd achieved. Parked next to the Camel, the SPAD has a distinctively more toy-like appearance, and I'm sure this is mostly due to the highly saturated dark green and dark brown colours. More scale effect next time!
Decals
Although I wasn't using most of the supplied decals, the rudder markings were still useful for a French aircraft. Wary after my experiences with the Camel, I nevertheless decided to give them a try. Since my biggest problem last time stemmed from a lack of adhesive, I tried to limit the decals' exposure to water. I just dipped them in quickly then let them sit on the bench for a few seconds, which was indeed enough to loosen them. This time, they stuck much better, although they still proved resistant to Mr Mark Setter. Since the rudder is effectively flat, this didn't prove to be much of a problem. At the time of writing, I'm still looking for French roundels for the model (16 mm diameter, or 5/8" - can you help?) and will need to do the black dragon unit markings and the large number 5 markings on the top wing and fuselage sides later. I was considering buying some inkjet decal paper, but reports of colours fading after several months have put me off. Instead, I'll wait until I have a few more planes in this collection awaiting custom markings, and then look for someone with a dye-sublimation (ALPS) printer.
Rigging and final assembly
I used the same rigging technique here as on the Camel - rigging the mainplane struts before even attaching them to the aircraft. This was a real blessing when dealing with the tiny lengths of rigging between the inboard struts! Unfortunately, I forgot to rig the cabane struts, and only caught the mistake once the top wing was already on. Because of the very small clearance between the top of the fuselage and the top wing, this turned out to be a very expensive mistake in terms of frustration and going cross-eyed. Nevertheless, I got it done. The other mistake I'd made was in failing to learn from my Camel experiences and not checking where the mainplane rigging would meet the lower fuselage along the joint with the lower wing. Again, trying to attach this rigging after the plane was already assembled would have meant a major hassle in drilling holes in the right spots. Fortunately, an alternative and only slightly inaccurate option presented itself by attaching these lines just inside the leading and trailing edges of the wings. This means that my mainplane rigging doesn't line up properly, but because of the difference in the amount of effort involved, I decided I would live with it and remember to check properly next time!
Conclusions
For some reason, this build stands out in my mind as trickier than I know it really was. Maybe this is because of my dissatisfaction with the way that the nose looks and my own mistakes during the rigging process, or from all the boring masking. Eduard's is the current "best of breed" SPAD in this scale is - but photos on the World War I Modeling Page suggest to me that the old Revell kit is probably a better bet than this for a SPAD on a budget. Still, apart from the nose contours that continue to annoy me and the corrugated iron effect on the wings, this little kit captures the muscular, business-like look of the SPAD reasonably well.
Lessons
If I had to build this kit again, I would:
- study the rigging more carefully and drill the required holes before starting
- tone down the dark green and brown a bit further
Images
