ACADEMY 1:32 SOPWITH CAMEL

 

Reviewer: Pete Noyle  (peternoyle@kw.igs.net)
Kit Review submitted:  19 July 2002

Aircraft:

Above courtesy www.cavanaughflightmuseum.com

Immortalised by the cartoon character Snoopy! Small and lightweight, the Camel was one of the best fighters of its time and during the First World War Camel’s shot down 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other allied fighter. It was a bitch to fly and the training casualty list was long indeed, the life expectancy of a British pilot was two weeks. The mounting of the machine guns on the top of the fuselage and firing through the propeller arc was a first for British aircraft. The aircraft modelled is of the replica built in 1968 that now resides in the Cavanaugh Flight Museum.

Kit parts:

The kit was made in Korea. Three sprues of gray plastic holding 26 parts. All well molded and detailed except for the engine. A gnome engine has only one push rod at the front of the cylinders, not two. Large holes are provided in the struts for the rigging. The engine halves were so out of alignment that it was fortunate that the assembly was mainly hidden inside the cowling. A hank of black plastic thread is included for the rigging.

Instructions:

8 pages of 8.5 by 11 folded concertina like in 10 languages. Page one reproduces the box art in black and white and gives a short description of the aircraft. Pages 2 to 5 give the assembly details in 8 steps and pages 6 and 7 provide the paint schemes. Page 8 gives the parts location diagrams on the sprues. There are no difficulties in following the diagrams, even when it comes to the rigging.

Construction:

This was the first 1:32 scale kit I had attempted and the first from Academy. As with any biplane model painting must be done as construction continues. I followed the painting instruction provided, detailing the parts with extra stuff as I went along. I scuffed the rudder slides to represent the marks left by the pilot’s boots and I dry brushed the wicker chair to bring out the detail of the weave. One thing not provided is a safety harness – why? There were no harnesses fitted to these aircraft, the pilot tied himself in with a bit of rope over his thighs. The fuselage inner surface was painted with ‘desert sand’ and the iron frame highlighted with black.

I masked the rear of the fuselage and spray painted the engine cover and the separate cowl with red auto paint from an aerosol can and this produced a highly polished finish. I sprayed all the red bits at this time.

The box art shows the cockpit sides to be plywood with a distinct grain. To reproduce this I went to my local lumber yard where they sell wooden flooring. Picking up a couple of brochures about these floors I had some printed grained wood that I could carefully cut out to correspond to the contours of the cockpit. I glued this ‘plywood’ to the cockpit sides! The museum aircraft shows the plywood covered in red paint.

The rest of the fuselage, tailplane and wings were brush painted as work progressed.

The engine mold is in two halves but the register of the halves is badly out of alignment resulting in large steps in the cooling fins. The fuel supply spider at the back of the engine did not align with the cylinder heads, no matter what combination of cylinders to spider I tried. The front spider has two radial arms but the Gnome engines have only one. It would have made more work to correct this error and besides – perhaps there was an engine around with two!? An after market engine should be used instead of the kit parts. The cylinder heads fouled the cowling necessitating removing plastic from the inside of the molding. Once the engine was in place on the fuselage the propeller was fitted but when this was pressed home on the keyed engine shaft the prop rubbed the cowl. I ended up gluing the prop to the shaft using a temporary card spacer resting on the cowl leading edge to ensure that the prop was true to that cowl edge.

I had the lower wing in place and I then set about fitting the upper. This turned out to be easier than expected. Once the struts on the fuselage were in place the upper wing had a reasonable anchor point. The inter-plane struts provided the final anchorage and I did not have to resort to a holding jig while the glue set.

The machine guns assembled quite well but like the engine, suffered from misalignment producing noticeable steps that had to be paired away. The kit comes with a machine gun sight tube but the museum replica shows a bead and ring attached above the left side gun. I added a bead and ring. No windshield is supplied in the kit and this needs to be scratch built.

Tailplanes of these old biplanes were always in the dive position, but the kit mold does not allow for this. The length of the engine, armament, controls and the cockpit was only seven feet, so any pilot fully padded out with his cold weather coats and underwear could hardly move in the confined area. Pushing the stick forward – putting the tailplane in the “dive” position – was the only way he could clamber out. Having said that, the hinge detail on the tailplane is excellent.

I followed the rigging diagram given in the instructions. Each strut had large holes to thread the plastic cord through and a drop of quick setting glue held it all together. For the control wires I used a thinner silver thread purchased from the local fabric store. This illustrated the difference between rigging wires and control wires.

Options:

There are no alternative parts.

Versions:

Two paint schemes are suggested, one for 209 Squadron and one for 43 Squadron. The 209 Squadron machine, B7270, is the one depicted at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum.

Decals:

The red centre of the roundels was separate from the blue and white which made the centering difficult and with at least one of the decals that I applied I managed to get the red disk out of centre. The decals settled down well although the fin stripes needed several applications of Micro Sol. I applied the large roundels to the wings starting at the leading edge. This was a mistake, the decal just did not settle into the dips in the fabric. Apply these decals by laying them parallel to the main spar so that as the decal goes down it follows the peaks and valleys of the wings.

Accuracy:

The model is 3 mm short on wingspan and 3 mm short on length. The model captures the stubby features of the original well.

Conclusion:

As I said at the beginning, this was my first model in 1:32 scale and maybe I expected more than I got. I do not know how much the kit cost, it was a gift, but in general these larger scale kits are not cheap. I do not think that you get your money’s worth considering the out of register of some of the parts. I built the kit two years ago and now the rigging is drooping, although the silver thread that I used for the control wires remains tight. A poor choice of thread by Academy. If you really want to build a Camel in this scale buy a new engine and use different rigging thread.


© Pete Noyle 2002

 

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