Sopwith Camel Question

[Twobad]

I've recently finished building Hasegawa's 1:8 Museum Series Camel.

The model comes with wooden elevators, wing trailing edges and tips. As all of the pictures I've seen of Camels, including replicas built to the original drawings, have metal parts in these areas I converted the model to reflect this. I notice however that the recent Hasegawa 1:16 Camel model is constructed with the wooden parts too.

My question is this: did some variants of the Camel have wooden elevators and wing trailing edges/tips or have Hasegawa carried over an error into their newer model?

You can see what I'm refering to in the following pics.

Shuttleworth Camel replica with metal components in black.

The 1:16 Hasegawa kit.

[Cratecruncher]

All of the Hasegawa kits are designed for ease of assembly so even a beginner can make a go. They sell more kits if more people can put them together. Wherever historical accuracy would require anything fiddly the designers just simplified it. I built the Hasegawa Fokker and it is plagued with the same trailing edge simplifications. The wing ribs are triple the scale thickness and the box spars have ugly exposed edge locating tabs, the distinctive saw-tooth leading edge sheeting was just omitted entirely. In my view, you did the right thing by replacing the trailing edges in the kit. There were never wooden trialing edges on a Camel's wings to my knowledge.

In large scale, the Model Airways Curtiss Jenny is my opinion the closest to true scale construction. Ben Lankford, a renowned ship kit designer, really tried to deliver a great model with very little compromise. He even includes the mitring details on the spars (like the Camel in your picture), all the fuel lines and cooling hoses for the OX-5 engine, and tons more. The Albatros is almost as good but rougher. The Daimler engine has about 150 white metal parts!

Edited January 19, 2016 by Cratecruncher

[Twobad]

I've just started the Hasegawa Fokker Dr.1

I'd noticed the gross simplification of the leading edge and trailing edge. The wing tips are going to require rebuilding too. It's also missing the plywood decking between the cockpit and tail, plus a whole host of other detailled deviations. In fact, in some ways, I think is is worse than the Camel.

[bradleygolding]

Model Airways even do a Sopwith Camel which looks to have all of the right parts, so why build a Hasegawa anything??????

Steve

[DMC]

Have a look at these images. Pretty accurate I reckon.

Cheers

http://www.pbase.com/paulw/image/140957329