Joystick 1/72 Ansaldo A.1 Balilla

Joystick Models kit Joy 15

Purchased: Hannants, £7.40, photoetch wire wheels from Jadar-Model, zł 32.00
Completed: 25 May 2007

• Nation: Italy
• Era: 1910-1919
• Justification: As far as I can tell, this was the only Italian-built fighter to see squadron service during World War I. Some machines saw service with foreign air forces in the 1920s. 

Introduction - who's afraid of the big, bad vac?

I've lived most of my modelling life with an unhealthy fear of vacs. Sure, I've collected quite a few over the years, but these have all been safely sequestered away deep within my stash, with the fervent hope and prayer that I'd never have to actually build one of them. Time and time again I've been saved by the familiar strategy of "if I hold onto it long enough, I'll never have to build it - someone's sure to come out with an injection-moulded or resin kit of this sooner or later..." I'm especially grateful to Academy for saving me from building that vac kit of the Boeing Stratocruiser!

Precisely why vac building has acquired its reputation as one of the Dark Arts is a bit of a mystery; if you listen to anyone who's ever actually done it, they all seem to say that there's nothing to be afraid of and that it's really quite like building an injection-moulded kit. Nevertheless, that advice gets treated with the same kind of confidence reserved for doctors' assurances that "this won't hurt a bit" . Well, guess what? It is really easy - I was very, very surprised.

Conventional wisdom is that one should delve into vac building gently, perhaps by tackling a conversion kit first, or at least with a simple, non-fiddly subject. Well, I'm not very conventional nor perhaps very wise, so for my very first vac ever, I chose a World War I biplane in 1/72.

Why a vac? Simple - cost. The Ansaldo Balilla has been kitted in this scale a number of times. Apart from this kit, it's been issued as an injection-moulded model (by Hit Kit) and more recently, as a very favourably-reviewed resin (by Karaya). Now, normally with both an injection-moulded and resin alternative available, there would have been no way in the world that I would choose a vac. However, this project was meant to be as low-cost as possible; so nice as the Karaya kit was, I just couldn't justify spending over €20 on a 1/72 biplane when there was an alternative at 1/2 the price. As for the Hit-Kit offering, it seems to be quite scarce now and not much cheaper than the Karaya kit when it can be found (while being reportedly of quite low quality). So, vac it was.

 

The kit

I'm assuming that most people reading this article are at least familiar with what a vac is, but just in case, I'm going to take this a bit more slowly than usual. Knowledgeable readers who get bored are invited to skip ahead... Well, the picture at right speaks for itself, really. The shapes that go together to make up the model have been created by a flat sheet of plastic being heated up and formed over a mould. This immediately gives rise to the most noticeable difference with building an injection moulded kit: instead of just snipping the parts off a small number of attachment points holding them to a sprue, the shapes that make up the vac kit must be cut out from the surrounding sheet of plastic that they were formed from. Actually, for anyone who's built a few poorer-quality short-run injection-moulded kits, this is not so formidable (I remember a Yak-25 from some anonymous Russian manufacturer that had nearly as much flash as this kit!) but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The kit provides the fuselage as the familiar left-and-right sides, and includes a surprisingly complete cockpit compared to the injection-moulded biplanes I've built for this project so far. All flying surfaces are represented as single-sided only, meaning that due to the limitations of the moulding technique, one side is completely lacking detail. The kit itself has been produced using a female mould, and there is a decent amount of really fine surface detail, including various panel lines on the fuselage and ribs on the flying surfaces. Moulded templates are provided for the struts, as well as representations of the undercarriage. I couldn't decide whether the latter were intended as templates or to be cut out and used. I eventually decided to use them. Five cast white-metal detail parts round out the kit.

There are no instructions to speak of - just a three-view plan and some general vac-building advice in prose followed by specifications and a brief history of the subject. Decals are provided for two Polish examples, along with some spare decals for Kosciuszko Squadron that can be used on other kits such as an Albatros D.III. On my example, the decals were pretty crude and badly out-of-register.

 

The build

Construction

With no shortage of trepidation, I began construction by following the sequence I'd so often read about but never attempted myself. First, I made a series of scores in the carrier sheet around each of the major parts. This was so I could snap the plastic along these scores and isolate each part. When I had each component on its own small carrier sheet, I traced around each one in turn with a Sharpie marker. Now the fun began. With a new #11 blade, I scored the plastic around each part, trying to undercut the part at around a 45° angle. This cutting out of the parts is, I think, the first of two mental obstacles that most of us have in our thinking about vacs, but in honesty only took around 5-10 minutes. The second of the obstacles was next: sanding! The idea now is to sand away the last bits of carrier sheet remaining underneath the parts that have just been cut away. Cutting at an angle reduces the amount of material that needs to be removed, and the marker pen line indicates the point at which the part originally sat on its carrier - sand thus far, but no farther! Most treatises on the subject recommend gluing down a sheet of sandpaper to a hard surface and then gently rubbing the part against that until the pen line is reached. Instead, I used an emery board and just sanded each part until I reached its pen line. All up, this took around 20-30 minutes, and I was now pretty much at the point where I would have been with an injection-moulded kit. Small parts like the cockpit interior, I simply cut from the backing with a pair of sharp nail scissors.

I have no basis for comparison, so I don't know whether this particular vac kit was good, bad, or indifferent, but I was amazed by how much easier and quicker this all was compared with what I had been expecting!

Construction now followed the familiar pattern. I began by installing the cockpit, which Joystick provides as front and rear bulkheads (the front also containing the instrument panel), a floor, and the white metal seat. With absolutely no guidance from the instructions, I simply had to make a guess as to where these bits went. Fit (at least where I put them!) was excellent. I now joined the fuselage sides and then encountered my first problem with this kit when I went to attach the white metal radiator to the nose - because the radiator is noticeably taller than the nose of the vacform fuselage. I used CA to attach the radiator so that it lined up with the fuselage top. Fortunately, the Balilla's fuselage is flat-bottomed in cross-section. This meant that I could glue scrap styrene to it (left over carrier sheet!) and blend it in so that there was no step remaining between the parts. A lot of putty and sanding later, and it worked out quite well. I painted the fuselage at this point (see next section), and then started worrying rather belatedly about how the lower wing was supposed to attach. Well, if I'd thought about this sooner, I might have been tempted to cut slots in the fuselage sides to accept tabs shaped into the lower wing. But I didn't, so had to come up with some way instead whereby I could safely butt-joint the wings on. The lower wing was scribed with marks showing the position of the fuselage sides, so I separated the wings along these lines and set out to shape the mating surfaces. The problem is that the fuselage sides of the Balilla are gracefully curved, whereas the lines marked on the wing were straight. I now had to try and sand a concave line into the wing roots that would match the curve of the fuselage as much as possible. I thought I did a pretty good job, but later, when the top wing was in place, I discovered that I'd only got it 50% right: the port wing is spot on, but the starboard wing was left with a slight forward sweep. Oh well.

It was also around this time that I briefly considered adding rib detail to the undersides of the wings. I'd read about a technique of filing small grooves into the surface, then liquid cementing fine plastic rod in, then sanding this to almost nothing. However, since things seemed to be going so well, I decided not to tempt fate on my first vac, and left these surfaces smooth.

Painting

As usual, I wanted to duplicate a preserved aircraft, and the obvious choice is Antonio Locatelli's machine preserved at the Bergamo Museum of History. Once again, this aircraft features some elaborate markings (paintings of St George slaying the dragon) that will have to wait until I have enough markings to commission a custom decal sheet from somewhere.

I'm really quite chuffed about how the fuselage paint scheme worked out. This was meant to resemble varnished wood, so I tried out another new technique that I'd read about somewhere. I began by brush-painting the fuselage Tamiya XF-68 NATO Brown overall. When this was dry, I drew wavy lines all over it with a 0.4 mm black draughting pen. In turn, when this was dry, I painted over the top of it all with Tamiya X-27 Clear Red. The effect was magical! I was so pleased with the outcome it made me want to do it again straight away (visions of an Albatros with a fuselage of honey-coloured light wood...) but instead, I painted the engine cowling XF-16 Flat Aluminium, and mixed up a brassy colour for the radiator from the same paint with a little X-12 Gold Leaf stirred in.

The wings and tail were more prosaic, airbrushed in my usual linen mix of 50-50 Flat White XF-2 and Buff XF-57. The red and green identification bands under the wings were plain XF-7 Flat Red and XF-5 Flat Green. On the upper surfaces of the top wing and stabiliser, The same flat green was brushed on in geometric lines with a #00 brush, with XF-9 Hull Red over the top of it in a separate pattern. The XF-9 was really too brown (as I noted once before, but didn't learn from...)

Rigging and final assembly

I'll admit that I cheated a little here. Instead of using the rod and strip supplied with the kit to make the struts, I robbed an Airfix Avro 504K. The supplied stock just seemed way too flimsy to me, and like I said, I wasn't in the mood for tempting fate. Everything went together well, with the only remaining snag being the wire wheels. As with the previous Sikorsky project, I wanted exposed wire wheels on this plane, while the supplied cast metal parts represented canvas-covered wheels. I didn't think that I'd be able to use the same trick as I did on the Sikorsky project, thinking that it would be harder to work with the metal wheels, so I started looking for plastic replacements. Noting that the wheels were about the same size as those of my Fokker D.VII, I found another one of these kits and proceeded to saw one of the wheels in half. Unfortunately, the Fokker wheels were much much thinner than those of the Sikorsky, and I quickly ruined one of them. I started looking for wheels of similar diameter but greater thickness, and tried a pair from a Testors F4U Corsair. These worked OK, but even after prolonged sanding, the Corsair tyres were way too big - the result looked like dune buggy wheels! Eventually, I just ended up cutting discs from sheet styrene, drilling out the centres, and sandwiching the Eduard photoetch discs between them. The result looks way too flat for my liking, but it's the best I could come up with.

Rigging was a mercifully unremarkable experience.

Decals

As it happens, there was one pair of Italian roundels on the decal sheet, but Locatelli's machine needs two pairs and the ones provided were so far out of register anyway that I didn't try to use them. Decals will wait for now.

 

Conclusions

Well, a lot of things went right here! The vac building experience proved quite painless, and the wood finish on the fuselage was both fun and effective. Go out and build a vac!

Lessons

If had to build this kit again, I would:

• choose a better colour for the red camouflage (repeat after me... Hull Red is not red...)
• find a better way to do the tyres

 

Images

 

Eastern Express 1/72 Sikorsky S.XVI

Eastern Express kit 72218

Purchased: Hannants, £5.99, photoetch wire wheels from Jadar-Model, zł 32.00
Completed: 28 February 2007 (wheels added in May)

• Nation: Russia
• Era: 1910-1919
• Justification: As far as I can tell, this was the only Russian-built fighter to see squadron service during World War I. Some machines remained in service in secondary roles into the 1920s. 

 

The kit

This kit is identical with the S.XVI marketed by Dako-plast - indeed, it still bears the Dako-plast name moulded into the single sprue of hard, brittle white styrene and one can see where the Dako-plast logo has been crudely whited-out on the equally crudely photocopied instruction sheet. Classy!

The quality of the moulding is generally good - with really nice, petite detail on the gun for example. Another, more knowledgeable reviewer has pointed out a number of deficiencies with the kit, including it being about 10% underscale and not representing any particular variant of the S.XVI, but rather, a conglomeration of features from different ones. Decals are provided for a single, generic machine. This is perhaps fortunate because that the paint plan on the poorly-reproduced instructions is useless. With such a simple paint scheme, this isn't an issue though. Options are provided for either wheeled or ski undercarriage, and therein lies one of the kit's greatest shortcomings. The exposed, wire-spoked wheels are a distinctive feature of this aircraft, but here, the four mainwheels are provided with solid hubs - as if they represented canvas-covered wheels. I knew from the outset that I wanted wire wheels, so ordered an Eduard set which three weeks later unfortunately still hasn't graced my mailbox at the time of writing.

One real peculiarity of the kit is the parts breakdown. While it's common for small 1/72 aircraft kits to have a one-piece wing that the fuselage halves sit atop of, generally the cutout on the fuselage halves matches the airfoil shape of the wings. For whatever reason in this case, Dako-plast chose to make this cutout rectangular, and included a rectangular chunk of lower fuselage moulded integrally with the one-piece wing. When you see something as bizarre as this, you just know that it doesn't bode well!

A reasonably detailed little cockpit is provided - with a full forward bulkhead, steering wheel (yes!), and rudder bar. This is fortunate, since the cockpit is one of the most exposed that I've ever seen. A superdetailer could go really nuts here. I am not that superdetailer.

 

The build

Construction

While the major airframe components went together quite well, this kit's devil is definitely in the detail. The main problem early on was, as predicted, the weird wing-to-fuselage joint. This required lots of putty and lots of sanding to get to an acceptable finish. And then there was still a bit more sanding!

The problems with this kit are many, but mostly reflect very sloppy engineering with regard to the fit, placement, and thickness of parts. My experiences, I'm happy to note, paralleled those of Michael Kendix's review that I referred to earlier, and I take comfort in the fact that "it's not just me"!  I'll cheerfully confirm Michael's observations that:

• the fuselage won't fit over the cockpit assembly unless the cockpit firewall is considerably reduced in height first
• the alignment of the fuselage halves is poor (I'll actually disagree with Michael here and say that it is a bigger deal than usual, on account of the fact that the top and bottom of the fuselage on the S.XVI are completely flat surfaces, which makes sanding a real pain)
• the engine cowling won't fit over the engine unless the thickness of the cowling is reduced dramatically. I was especially grateful to have forewarning of this, as I think it would have caused me no end of grief had I blundered into it unaware.
• The location of the machine gun and ammunition chute is anyone's guess really. The only clue provided by Dako-plast, a groove in the forward fuselage, is clearly not an option since in that spot the gun will foul one of the cabane struts. Going on my limited references on this aircraft, it seems to me that the proportions of the kit are quite off in this area, which can't help. The gun also looks a little big to me, making me wonder whether the gun at least is around 1/72 when the airframe around it is in a smaller scale?

In the end, this is all just griping though, and there's nothing here that persistent sanding and a little jiggling about of parts won't fix.

Painting

While there's no surviving example of an S.XVI known anywhere in the world, a full-scale replica was built by a group of Russian enthusiasts and finished by Sikorsky in the United States. It resides at the New England Air Museum in Connecticut and I chose to model this aircraft, not only as the closest thing to a real S.XVI in existence, but because of it's easy and generic markings, that incidentally match the ones provided with the kit!

The whole aircraft was painted in a Clear Doped Linen colour mixed roughly half-and-half from Tamiya Flat White XF-2 and Buff XF-57. The engine cowling and forward fuselage were then brush-painted Flat Aluminium XF-16 and that was it! Yay!

Rigging and final assembly

Rigging was pretty straight forward, although I did experience more breaks than normal, probably because the strut attachment points are pretty weak on this model. In fact, the cabane struts are simply butt-jointed to the fuselage sides. In retrospect, I wonder whether I should have cemented these on before the first coat of paint went on - a bare-styrene-to-bare-styrene cemented joint being undoubtedly stronger than an acrylic-painted-styrene-to-acrylic-painted-styrene CA'd joint. Rigging the intricate undercarriage assembly was tedious, but not especially difficult in any way.

I've left the wheels off while I await their photoetched replacements.

Decals

Decals were pleasantly thin and in register and their application was entirely unremarkable. Good!

 

Conclusions

This provided a nice, relatively simple build. A bit dear for what you get in the box, but that's expected to some degree for these obscure subjects. While there were undeniable problems with the kit, these were no greater or more problematic than those of the average short-run product. While apparently not really that accurate, the finished model does capture the S.XVI's ungainly stance quite accurately. I was left with the impression that having mastered aeronautical ugliness to this degree so early on, helicopters were just the next natural step for Sikorsky! :)

Lessons

This list would have been a long one if Michael Kendix hadn't taken the fall for me! But if I had to build this kit again, I would:

• try and achieve more solid attachment of the struts from the outset, to make rigging neater and less painful later.

 

Postscript: Wheels

Well, the Eduard photoetched wire wheels (set 72-439) arrived after a few weeks. The set is a single photoetched fret with finely-etched discs to represent spoked wheels in eight sizes (four discs per size). Each set of four is to equip a single model, since Eduard suggests that you lightly dish the discs using a ball bearing and then attach them concave-side to concave-side before adding a tyre. With double the number of wheels on this aircraft to begin with, laziness once again got the better of me and I resolved to just use one (un-dished) disc to represent each wheel. The big question was: what to do about tyres? Advice I solicited online was either to find a suitably-sized rubber grommet to fit, or cut discs from a length of styrene tube. I chose to do something like the second suggestion. I took the kit wheels, then sawed them in half across their discs (much easier than it sounds - I simply ran them gently back and forth along a razor saw blade until they parted) then drilled out their centres to leave only tyres remaining. I then glued them back together with the photoetch discs in the middle, and used copious amounts of putty to fill the resulting gaps. This made a world of difference as against the kit-supplied solid centres, and I'm very glad I used them.

 

Images

 

MAC 1/72 Phönix D.II

MAC kit 72036

Purchased: Squadron, $USD 11.96
Completed: 14 February 2007

• Nation: Austria-Hungary
• Era: 1910-1919
• Justification: The ultimate development in Austria-Hungary's domestic fighter production. Derivatives continued in Swedish service after the war. 

 

The kit

This is a typical example of the nice short-run kits that have been coming out of Eastern Europe for the last decade or so. Moulding is very nice, even accounting for the slightly thick parts and wide sprue attachment points necessitated by the low pressures used in production. The main sprue contains a number of parts not used for this particular Phönix model, but for other variants marketed by MAC (they also do a  D.I and a D.IIa - see this Internet Modeler article for a comparison of the sprues). Fine parts, such as cockpit details, are provided as photoetch, and there's a small sheet of printed acetate to provide cockpit gauges and a windscreen to cut out.

Decals are provided for three aircraft, which are not identified in the instructions, but which other sources identify as those of Karl Teichmann, Alexander Kasza, and Hans Leiner. These are of the high standard that's come to be expected from Eastern European printers. 

 

The build

Construction

The first phase of construction went very well indeed. The interior parts fitted together well, although the photoetch instrument panel was slightly the wrong shape to sit happily inside the fuselage. I had to trim a little off each side to get it into place, and even now there's still a little gap between the top of the panel and the fuselage. I didn't bother with the photoetch control stick and rudder bar, since the former will be practically invisible and the latter completely invisible once the model is complete. The lower wings are provided with locator pins to aid their joint to the fuselage. These, however, are far too large to fit into the corresponding holes in the fuselage sides, and I ended up slicing them off and just butt-jointing the wings on, after roughing up the mating surfaces to give the cement something to really key to. The tailplane assembly is unorthodox - it slides into a slot provided at the rear of the fuselage once the two sides are together - but works well. I left off the engine head and intake manifolds for now, adding them after the painting was completed. With the prominent exhaust pipes such a focal point of the model, I felt I had no choice but to drill them out, which I did by twisting the end of a new #11 blade in them.

Painting

With no preserved aircraft to serve as a guide, I based my paint scheme on information provided in the instructions and on the box-top painting. Actually, I think I followed the box-top too closely, resulting in an aircraft that's predominantly brown instead of predominantly green, as it should be (according to the instructions, anyway). Reading that the real aircraft's camouflage was applied with a rough sponge, I began a search for a suitable tool. I wondered if there were another way to apply this rather than stippling it on with a dry brush. Fortunately, inspiration struck in the form of a type of eye makeup applicator. This is a short stick, about 50 mm (2 inches) in length, with a fine sponge at the end of it. I bought a pack of 12 for just $AUD 4 from a nearby chemist (in a "convenient purse pack"), and tests on some scrap plastic showed it to be ideal for the job when used almost dry. I just wish I had the colours right!

I'm pleased to report that I can indeed learn from past experiences, and after the paint was on, I made small holes about mid-chord where the lower wings meet the fuselage and attached the first rigging lines here.

Rigging and final assembly

This is where things all went pear-shaped. As I proceeded to attach the upper wing, it soon became apparent that something was very wrong.

I had begun by attaching the cabane struts to the fuselage, using a card template cut to the width of their attachment points on the upper wing to keep them properly aligned. I followed this with the upper wing itself. So far, so good. I was still feeling pretty happy with how this model was going together. Next, I went to put the interplane struts in place. They wouldn't go. And as I wrestled with the struts on one side, the cabane struts broke loose from their attachments to the fuselage. Fine, I thought, I'll finish with the interplane struts, then re-attach the cabane struts. Except that when I did, the interplane struts broke loose. Uh oh.

Putting the model aside for a moment, I tried to work out what the problem was. I realised that there were three possibilities: the forward interplane strut was too short, the cabane struts were too long, or there wasn't enough dihedral on the lower wing. Consulting the beautifully-drawn plans on the back of the instruction sheet, I confirmed that the lower wing shouldn't have any dihedral at all. OK - so it's a problem with the struts. MAC provides all four interplane struts as identical parts; however, the drawings clearly show that the forward struts have to be longer than the rear ones. Returning to the model, I trimmed an end off two of the struts and lengthened them about 3 mm with scraps of sheet styrene. Now everything went together with minimal fuss. So beware! Actually, had I done a bit more research, I would have been forewarned of this problem, since it's mentioned in the Internet Modeler review of this kit, as well as in two reviews of the closely-related D.I kit. 

Rigging followed and presented no particular problems, other than pulling out the odd strut attachment here and there (presumably weakened by the foregoing mucking about).

Decals

I only used the national markings from the sheet, and the decals performed exactly as expected. They were  crisply printed, very opaque (even the white around the national insignia) and very thin. Actually, maybe even too thin, given that they were also provided with very powerful adhesive - I managed to tear two while positioning them, but was able to lay the fragments in place before the adhesive really took.

 

Conclusions

This project started out pleasantly enough, but the dramas provided by the strut debacle really soured the experience for me. The struts pulled out and were reattached so many times that the finish around the points where they meet the wings is well and truly trashed. Coupled with my getting the paint scheme wrong (only my own fault), that means I have a model here I'm not very happy with. One day I might come back and re-do it, and when I do, I'll be satisfied to use the same kit.

Lessons

If I had to build this kit again, I would:

• cut the forward interplane struts from scratch!
• read the painting instructions more carefully

 

Images

 

Revell 1/72 Fokker D.VII

Revell kit 04177
Almark decals A-31 and A-32

Purchased: kit from eBay, $AUD 10.50, decals from Hannants, £2.95 per sheet
Completed: 5 February 2007

• Nation: Germany
• Era: 1910-1919
• Justification: The zenith of German fighter development during World War I, the Fokker D.VII was even named specifically in the Armistice treaty (Germany was required to surrender all aircraft of this type).

The kit

I don't know the history of this particular kit, but the inclusion of a pilot figure and a slot for a display stand (flashed over) makes me think that it's been around for a while. Nevertheless, the moulding is of extremely high quality, with next to no flash or alignment problems. The wings and tail surfaces sport rib detail that is, to my eye, just right. The honeycomb pattern of the radiator is beautifully represented, and there's the faintest of faint fabric traces moulded into the plastic. This is so fine that I can't imagine it surviving even a single coat of paint. The quality of the moulding is really quite incredible. Unfortunately, the level of detail doesn't carry over to the engine or cockpit, but the guns are quite nice too. In fairness, if the pilot figure was installed, you really wouldn't be able to see the absence of the cockpit. The engine is provided as cylinder heads and exhaust only - and with this assembly as exposed as it is, there's plenty of opportunity to add details of the valve gear if one were so inclined (I wasn't).

Decals are provided for two aircraft: Rudolph Berthold's famous eye-catching red-and-blue example, and (much to my surprise) Hermann Göring's machine! I would have thought in a marketplace where the populous is protected from seeing a swastika, little mementos like this of Göring would be similarly verboten, but apparently not. The decals themselves are exquisitely printed: perfectly in register, and opaque, and with no excess of carrier film surrounding them - very impressive. One peculiarity is Revell's provision of pre-printed lozenge patterns for the underside of Berthold's aircraft - as black-and-white outlines only! The paint plan on the instruction sheet informs the modeller of how to paint in the colours, but who's going to do that? Surely printing this in colour wouldn't have broken the bank for Revell.

The build

Construction

Assembly was a breeze, with everything fitting together well and hardly any gaps to speak of. A little putty was needed under the nose, but that was it. I made a generic instrument panel and seat from 0.5 mm styrene and popped them in and then it was time for paint and the extensive decal job. I left all the tail surfaces off at this point to help facilitate the latter process.

Painting

As with previous aircraft in this series, I wanted to do a fairly generic machine, and wanted very much to use the distinctive lozenge camouflage of the era. Looking at photos online of preserved aircraft, I settled on a four-colour lozenge, and bought Almark's upper and lower sheets. Each of these provides four strips of camouflage, with rib tapes in a self-colour. The lower colours seemed a good match for the aircraft in Paris and the two in Canada, but the upper colours didn't look so close to me. I don't know whether this is because it's meant to represent a different fabric from the one used on these aircraft though. The lower colours sheet seemed to have some registration issues - I think some of the lozenges have been deliberately printed slightly oversize to eliminate the possibility of any blank spots between them. In any case, it's only noticeable under really close inspection. Choosing a museum aircraft as a starting point, I initially selected the one at the Deutsches Museum. Although I was aware that this is apparently a post-war Dutch aircraft now wearing spurious markings, I felt that it is at least preserved in Germany, as the Camel and SPAD I modelled are preserved in their home countries as well. I therefore mixed up a dull red from Tamiya Flat Red XF-7 with a dash of Hull Red XF-9 (really more a brown, if you ask me...) and sprayed it on. At this point, disaster struck for the first time. Although the mix looked fine to me, it sprayed on very transparent and runny, making for a really horrible finish. I waited for this to dry, then tried again without any thinner in the mix at all, and got the same result.

I still don't know what really went wrong, but it was while I was waiting for this mess to dry that I started looking very closely at photos of various D.VIIs to try to plan how I would apply the lozenge. The more I looked at the Deutsches Museum's aircraft, the less satisfied I was with it as a subject. For a start, the upper and lower surfaces both appear to wear the same fabric - I don't know whether this was true of any WWI examples or not. I also noted that this machine's red cowling and struts were at odds with three other authentically-preserved machines, whose were a grey-green. Again, I don't know which was more typical. Finally, I came to realise that the most direct solution to the problem I was having with my red paint was to choose another colour! I mixed up what looked like a suitable shade from XF-19 Sky Grey and XF-26 Deep Green in about a 3:1 ratio, and pressed on. At this stage, I made another decision that I was to be very glad of later - undercoating the entire aircraft in that same colour. I reasoned that this would be less obvious than the bare white plastic under any stratches or gaps in the lozenge decals.

Decals

The Almark decals were a real joy to work with; everything a decal should be! At first, they seemed rather thick to me, but once on the model, they settled down of their own accord, clinging tightly even to the rib detail, and this without any softening agent. They were also strong enough to withstand a little bit of tugging that was sometimes needed to manoeuver them exactly into place. Because they were covering so much of this model, I wanted to take no risks of them lifting or peeling, and used Mr Mark Setter as I went, but I got the impression that they would have adhered quite happily even without this. For guidance as to its application, I looked to the photos on the World War I Modeling Page. I was able to make out the patterns on the upper and lower wings, as well as the fuselage sides and top, but was unable to discern the pattern on the underside of the fuselage and tailplane. Fortunately, a call for help on the Hyperscaleforums yielded almost immediate results in the form of a scan from a Windsock datafile on the D.VII. I completed the undersides first and then wondered about rib tapes. At first I thought I wouldn't worry about this little detail, but realised that I would agonise about it afterwards if I didn't. So I set to it. Instead of using the tapes provided on the sheets, I thought I would use thin strips of lozenge, as I know was done on some aircraft. Covering the undersides had used all of three of the four strips of lozenge supplied, and a little of the fourth. With a steel rule and a new #11 blade, I cut the remaining decal into thin strips. When I started applying this to the underside of the top wing, I found that the strips broke up the pattern far too much for my liking. No doubt this was because the strips I had made were too wide for this scale. I had only applied four at this point, and was still able to remove them before they had set. As it turned out, this was another very fortuitous decision.

Everything went well until I was reaching the end of the upper surface decalling. I had finished the wings and fuselage top, and now had both fuselage sides and the horizontal stabiliser to go... and only one strip of decal left! As I started on the broad tailplane upper surface, it was already apparent that I would run short. I did the best I could, but had to complete the decalling with scraps and offcuts from the workbench and is therefore far from correct. Still, this was far more palatable than springing for a whole new sheet for the sake of only a few centimetres of decal. I think that if I had been more frugal as I worked, I would just have made it, so take note! I definitely wouldn't have had any decal left to make rib tapes for the upper surfaces though.

Final assembly

Final assembly was as easy as it gets with biplanes - the struts lined up perfectly, and really, it all just about fell into place. The almost complete lack of rigging was also welcome! I used the Revell decals for the national markings in all eight positions. In use, these lived up to their promise on the sheet. The white parts of the insignia were nicely opaque and yet they also hugged the model nicely. Very impressive.

Conclusions

Overall, this was a really pleasant build. About the only thing I would do differently is be more frugal with the upper surface decals.
Parking the finished model on the shelf next to my Camel and SPAD saw the new arrival dwarfing the Allied fighters. Annoyed, I assumed that the kit must be slightly out-of-scale. However, measuring it showed it to be pretty much spot-on to dimensions I found on-line.

Lessons

If I had to build this kit again, I would:

• be more frugal with the upper-surface lozenge decals

Special Thanks

To "Mira from Czech" on the Hyperscale forums for the Windsock scan

Images

Academy 1/72 SPAD XIII

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

Academy 1/72 Sopwith Camel

Academy kit 1624

Purchased: Hobby One, Brisbane. $AUD 4.50
Completed: 13 January 2007

• Nation: United Kingdom
• Era: 1910-1919
• Justification: The only other contender for this place in the collection was the SE5a. I chose the Camel because of its unmatched service record (1,294 enemy aircraft destroyed) and its place in popular culture, but really, there wasn't much to choose between them. The easy availability of Camel kits didn't hurt either.

The kit

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was the unconventional way that Academy provided the struts - parallelograms that included the struts themselves as well as a section of the wing surface above and below. I knew I'd seen this before, and recalled an Esci SE5a I'd built years ago. Sure enough, a quick Google turned up this photo of Esci's Camel kit, showing an identical parts breakdown. This is unsurprising since in Academy's early period their releases seemed to show generous "inspiration" from other manufacturers' products.

The kit itself comprises about 20 parts, nicely moulded, if very simplified. My example had only the tiniest traces of flash, and then only around one of the undercarriage struts. My first impression was that the ribbing detail on the wings was too heavy-handed, but when compared to photos of the real aircraft such as this, I revised my opinion somewhat - it's not truly to scale, but it does convey a sense of the real thing. The biggest flaw with the actual moulding is the placement of a number of prominent ejector-pin marks: two each on the lower surface of the top wing, on one surface of the (symmetrical) horizontal stabiliser, and, most vexingly, on the top surface of the lower wing. To add insult to injury, one of the blemishes on the lower wing actually goes right through a rib.

The level of detail is very low. The cockpit is simply a hole in the top of the fuselage with a nondescript step moulded into it to provide some idea of a seat. The twin Vickers guns are plain sticks, and the engine is moulded integrally with the front of the cowling and is represented only by nine pairs of well-defined and crisp pushrod covers! At least the cylinders in the 6 o'clock position are provided on the back of the cowling (albeit as shapeless blobs), so that when viewed from underneath there's something other than void in the big gap at the bottom of the Camel's cowling. The tail skid doesn't resemble anything I saw on any of the photos of Camels I've found on line, and I'm guessing is simply wrong. Finally, I'm confident that on real Sopwith Camels, the length of the two propeller blades is equal, quite unlike the propeller in this kit (a 3 mm difference - very visible).

Decals are provided for one aircraft - B6299 of B flight, No 10 Squadron, RNAS, with the distinctive, red-and-white striped cowling of that unit. While very thick and glossy, at least the decals are in perfect register and quite opaque. I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure, but my impression is that at least the upper wing and fuselage roundels should have a thin white border to them, which Academy missed although they are present on the Esci sheet (representing the same aircraft). Likewise, Academy omitted the large "B" markings for the wings and tail, even though they are shown on the model photographed for the box art (an Esci kit?)

The build

Construction

For the most part, assembly was quick and easy, and with the tiny part count, there's not much more to say other than the fit was generally very good. The worst problem early on was the joint between the lower wings and the fuselage, which I fixed by gluing in a shim cut from 0.5 mm sheet styrene (see right). The only putty I used was around this area, apart from filling in the ejector pin marks. I sliced off the tail skid and replaced it with a short section of straight rod. The biggest construction problem was with the struts - while the way they're provided makes assembly very easy, blending in the segment of the wing that's moulded together with them into the rest of the surface of the wing is a formidable challenge. In the end, I made things fit as best I could, but didn't do too much about them. Unfortunately, these remain a highly-visible flaw in my completed model.

Painting

I decided early on that I didn't want to use the highly-distinctive markings provided with the kit, opting for a more generic aircraft instead. Throughout the build, I'd been relying on photos of F6314 in the RAF Museum, and realised that this was a perfect match for the Camel I see in my mind's eye - Khaki upper, plain linen under, and a bare metal cowling. This aircraft currently shows markings for 65 Sqn, and I noted a reference on a web forum that pointed out that this aircraft never flew with that squadron. When further internet research failed to show up details of a more authentically-marked Camel in the same generic scheme (or for that matter, whether F6314's markings were authentic after all), I decided that what's good enough for the RAF Museum was good enough for my little collection too, and chose to use this scheme.

I mixed up a plain linen colour from Tamiya Buff XF-57 and Flat White XF-2 in about even proportions. For the upper surfaces, web research taught me that the exact shade of the PC10 dope used is open to conjecture and debate, and seems to have changed during the duration of the war. I was most persuaded by the arguments that it was on the browner end of brownish-green, and since this is the apparent colour of the aircraft I chose to model, I mixed up something like it from Tamiya Khaki Drab XF-51 and Flat Earth XF-52 in about a 2:1 ratio. Lastly, the plain wooden parts including the struts and the "doghouse" around the cockpit were brush-painted in Flat Earth and the cowling was brush-painted in Flat Aluminium XF-16.

Decals

The Academy decals provided a very frustrating experience. They parted company with their backing sheet almost as soon as they hit the water, alerting me that there probably wasn't any adhesive behind them to speak of. I was right. Even with Mr Mark Setter applied, they didn't want to stick. They also proved practically impervious to Mr Mark Softer. It took repeated applications to get them eventually to lie down. Apart from the missing white outlines to the roundels, I'm also conscious that my model is missing the black serial number from the rear fuselage. Before I cleaned out the paint jar containing my linen mixture, I painted some of this onto some of the leftovers on the decal sheet. I hope to later come back to this model and apply plain linen patches from this, once I have some small enough numbers and letters in the spares box!

Rigging and final assembly

Esci's strut design made rigging comparatively easy. I was able to attach the rigging between the mainplane struts and the cabane struts even before attaching them to the model (right). I was surprised that I couldn't find a rigging diagram of a Sopwith Camel online - but by looking long enough at museum photos, I think I figured most of it out.

 I eventually decided on a slightly simplified version, omitting the control wires (since there are no control horns provided on the kit anyway) and, at least for the time being, the tailplane rigging, since my preferred rigging method (superglue and smoke-coloured mending thread) doesn't lend itself very easily to rigging from flat surface to flat surface, and I was admittedly not foresighted enough to drill the required holes before starting assembly. One hole that I wished that I had drilled was at the junction between the fuselage and the lower wing, near the point where the rear main undercarriage strut meets. This would have made it far far easier to attach the wire that needs to run from this point to the top of the aft mainplane strut. I also omitted the wire that runs vertically from the top of the axle assembly to the underside of the fuselage, and simplified the mainplane rigging by only using one wire instead of the double-wires on the original.

With my "keep it simple" strategy in mind, I had originally decided to ignore the non-existent cockpit, believing that the top wing would restrict visibility into that part of the model anyway. However, with everything together now, I discovered I was quite wrong - visibility into the open cockpit was quite good. I suppose this means that in real life, the pilot's field of view from the cockpit was quite good too; and that conversely, he was also sitting quite exposed and in the open in front of the enemy's machine guns! Anyway, I decided to put something in there to fill the empty space, so made a little seat and instrument panel out of 0.5 mm styrene and glued them in. At some stage, I may come back to making a windscreen as well, but for now, I'm done.

Conclusions

Apart from the terrible decals, this kit's greatest shortcoming is merely its lack of detail. I haven't compared it to plans, but in general outline and shape, it looks distinctively like a Camel to me. Anyone looking for an accurate replica will be looking to the Roden kits, I suspect, but for what it is, this one's not too bad.

Lessons

If I had to build this kit again, I would:

• find some aftermarket decals
• drill small holes through the lower wing for rigging before attaching them to the fuselage
• install an instrument panel and seat before attaching the top wing and rigging the aircraft

Images