MY 1/48 SOPWITH EFFORTS

Sopwith Tabloid - Special Hobby 1/48 NEW!


The Tabloid kit by Special Hobby is quite ok, but lacks detail, especially if you compare it to the luxury WNW, Eduard, Mirage Hobby and some others offer these days. It is - however - one of the few kits in this scale to represent the types used in 1914 in the beginning of the Great War. And in 2014 you have to do at least one or two models of the planes that flew to war 100 yars ago.

Sopwith 2F.1 Camel - 1/48 Eduard

Converting kit's Clerget to a Bentley was easy, but correcting the cowling was quite a job! N6612 was one of the 2F.1 Camels on H.M.S Vindictive, while the aircraft carrier came to the Gulf of Finland and took part in an operation against Russian Bolshevist army in Kronstadt in 1919. My model represents the plane in a typical Sopwith factory finish. In 1919 the machine probably had a different appearance. More about this build in Pienoismalli (www.pienoismalli.com) magazine vol. 1 & 2 2008.

Sopwith F.1 Camel - 1/48 Eduard Profipack

Eduard's Profipack converted to a Le Rhône Camel of No 3 Squadron RFC. The engine is an Eduard surplus part and the propeller a modified Aeroclub white metal part. More about this build in Pienoismalli (www.pienoismalli.com) magazine vol. 1 & 2 2008.

Sopwith 1 A2 - Roden 1/48



Roden's first ww1 release in 1/48 is a finely detailed and accurate kit indeed. Most parts are made of transparent plastic, which makes the construction a bit more difficult, but generally the kit goes together well. Only parts that gave me trouble were the W-shaped cabane struts. They did not fit well and they are also inaccurate. The inner Vs should be attached to the fuselage, not to the outer '½ struts'. I added only few details to the model. I scratched the fuel tank and the opening for it between the cockpits. I also made the engine valve push rods out of metal wire. There are both plastic parts and an alternative PE part for the rods, but I think wire looks better. I also added seat belts to the pilots cockpit, which was all in vain, since you can't really see them or anything else in the cockpit!

It has been 'discovered' only recently, that most of the French Sopwith 1s were actually 'aluminum doped'. I think that one reason, why they were believed to be clear doped was the fact, that you can't really see any metallic hue in most of the old photos. So I decided to be easy with the metallic while mixing the main colour of the model. I used Citadel ('Warhammer') acrylics like this: 1 part Mithril Silver, 1 part Skull White and 1 part Fortress Gray. The paint looked quite nice before I added the ( a bit overdone!) weathering and satin varnish finish. After those the metallic hue almost disappeared! Well, you live and you learn...

Sopwith "Navy Pup" - Flashback (Eduard) 1/48



This project went trough several catastrophes and it's a little miracle that I ever finished it. This was the first project I started with acrylic paints. The yellow Vallejo colour caused the first catastrophe. It started to peel of with masking tape. I did not know yet that adding 10 - 20 % of Future to the paint will help with this problem. For the rest of the colours I used Citadel acrylics and they gave me no troubles at all. The second catastrophe came with the resin cabane struts. They collapsed totally while I was rigging the plane. I had to scratch new plastic ones. I'm afraid that these catastrophes left some ... er ... 'schoolboyish charm' all over the model. The last catastrophe were the decals. I sincerely belived that I was building E H Dunning's Pup, the one with which he made the first ever deck landing on HMS Furious in August 1917. I found out too late, that 6454 was not the serial for that plane.
Sopwith Triplane - Smer (Eduard) 1/48


In the reasonably priced Smer 'Dogfight' double kit box you'll find the ancient Merit 'Albatros' - a charming piece of the history of plastic modeling - and this accurate Eduard Triplane. Only the plastic parts thought, so there'll be some scratching for essential smaller details. The Triplane is an earlier Eduard product from the times when PEs were an essential part of their kits. Nowadays they produce more and more all plastic kits, which are certainly appreciated by those of us who do not love barely visible pieces of metal getting stuck in their fingers sticky with cyanoacrylate clue (in Eduard's Profipacks you get the PEs too, of course). This is my second effort on the kit. The first one was one of my earliest projects. It certainly was too challenging for me those times. My first Triplane was 'lost in action' but the Vickers mg was still rolling around in my spare part box, so I decided to do a double Vickers version this time. The kit was still quite a challenge for me, thought Eduard has put a lot of effort to make it easy to build. This is supposed to be one of the Clayton & Shuttleworth build twin gun machines, N534 that served in no 1 Naval Squatron. I chose this one partly because the decals were reasonably easy to make with my ink jet - the national markings are the kit's own. According to several references the Triplane might have been painted with PC12. I was glad to take this option, since I'm no fan of PC10. Who is? My PC12 should be a bit more reddish, shouldn't it?

Lentävät kangaspuut www.kangaspuut.net