Sopwith Camel, USS Texas/Guantanemo NS, Roden, 1/72

[Old Man]

i am still considering which of two machines i will finish this as:

The first has standard English P.C. 10 over CDL, with U.S. Expeditionary roundels. It is very probably the machine in the picture below, making the first U.S.N. flight off a turret platform on the USS Texas at Guantanemo Bay:

The second is finished in over-all Naval Grey, with star insignia, and is fitted with Grain pattern flotation gear and a hydrovane. it flew from shore at Guantanemo Naval Station, probably in 1920/21.

The first has more historical significance, and would be less work, the second would have a more interesting appearance.

But i will not have to choose for a while, and may wind up making both....

[VG 33]

I do prefer the Grey one which is more Navy to my taste.

Patrick

[thorfinn]

I vote hydrovanes.

(Selfishly--I've got the same conversion to do, and I want to see how someone else's turns out first.)

[wellzy]

Nice Choice will enjoy this build and will

be watching

Les

[Old Man]

Well, this is started off, in a small way, now....

The seat is from the Tom's ModelWorks 'British interiors' fret. Test fitting suggests the floor piece it and the fuel tanks are on will not fit between the fuselage halves (the sort of thing often encountered with Roden detail bits). I have spares (the sprue these come on is also in Roden's N.24/24bis/27 kits) if necessary.

While I had not intended to pose a 'what model should I do?' above, that people, including an old pal from my early days on ARC, expressed a preference for the later Navy Grey example has decided me on doing that version in this build. I have ordered a second Camel kit, and will do that as the USS Texas 'flying off' machine.

[wellzy]

Looking forward to this build good the see a

aircraft from the early days of the US Navy

Les

[Old Man]

Seriously stuck into this one now, Gentlemen.

Fuselage closed on the interior, some preliminary fit-work done, and the engine ready....

Without getting too deep into the weeds of building a Roden kit, vagaries of the parts supplied dictated a lot of the order and pace of this. I have come to accept that Roden kits do not fit, however pleasing their individual parts may seem (and they are very often very well molded and detailed), and it is oddly liberating. I go into building one expecting to be opposed, and always looking one or two moves ahead, wary of ambushcade.

Obviously, I checked the fit of the frame-work holding the fuel tanks and seat. It was too wide. Rather than work on something holding the seat, I made up one of my spares, and sanded it down to fit. Next step would be fabricating some floor-boards, and as this potentially interfaced not just with the concave area under the nose but with the mating area of the lower wing, I started testing the lower wing fit. It did not; the mating area in the wing piece was too narrow, and the mating areas of the fuselage too shallow. I trimmed away bits of all surfaces till things looked to work right, With the floor-boards and rudder bar in place, I decided to check fit of the cowling to the front of the fuselage. It did not; the fuselage mating area was too wide. Owing to the panel detail so close to the join line, sanding down the outside of the fuselage is a poor option; I sanded down the mating surfaces of the fuselage, and popped out the concave nose bottom piece, with its rudder bar and floor-boards attached. When I had the fusleage mating surfaces trimmed enough that the cowling fit, obviously the seat and tanks frame had to be trimmed further. The upper nose 'hump' piece was now too wide, particularly so towards its rear. I put in a heavy spacer behind the seat (part of the problem being that these 'open-top; fuselage halves tend to slant inwards a bit), a piece which really should be there, but is not in the kit. The fit of the lower wing to the fuselage is now a hair loose, but this is not a problem, as a bit of wiggle room helps get alignments right. As a final touch, the tanks on the frame are too low, and so I removed them from the frame, and attached them so that the gravity tank hooked over the spacer behind the seat.

Every so often, of course, something will fit nicely. The instrument panel is very good, fits into the 'hump piece' properly, slides nicely into the fuselage with only a little trim to the sides, and the Vickers guns interface very well with the panel and the hump piece. The large instrument decals are from an old MicroScale 1/48 B-17 panels sheet I have found quite useful, the smaller is from a Mike Grant decal sheet.

The interior rigging is .004" brass wire, painted dark brown.

Here are a couple of pictures showing test fit of the 'hump' piece and lower wing to the assembled fuselage halves....

Here is the Clerget motor, greatly enlarged. It is a nice little gem as it comes in the kit, all I added was ignition wire (the plugs, even, are on the original piece), and yes, it does fit in the cowling....

[thorfinn]

Lovely work so far.

I wholeheartedly agree with your comments on Roden's kits, both as to their quirky fit and components (on occasion) and as to the odd pleasure in overcoming same. It's weirdly satisfying to build a kit which as been designed with some care, perhaps even affection, yet to know going in it won't be as simple as rattling the box and having it fall out in all it's finished glory. One actually begins to anticipate seeking out the "tricks," rather like the clues in a good detective story.

[Old Man]

Lovely work so far.

I wholeheartedly agree with your comments on Roden's kits, both as to their quirky fit and components (on occasion) and as to the odd pleasure in overcoming same. It's weirdly satisfying to build a kit which as been designed with some care, perhaps even affection, yet to know going in it won't be as simple as rattling the box and having it fall out in all it's finished glory. One actually begins to anticipate seeking out the "tricks," rather like the clues in a good detective story.

Thank you, Sir.

That is my attitude towards them as well. I think of it as trying to keep a few moves ahead in a game of chess against a stout opponent; what will he have up his sleeve, and how can I pull its sting and not get caught out in a false position?

[Old Man]

A good deal more progress on this one now, Gentlemen.

Fuselage uppers are attached, along with lower wing and tail-plane and cowling.

Tail took a little tweaking: I had to shim the sides of the mating notch on the tail-plane piece, and extend the rudder post a little. The turtle-back and forward decking sat a bit wide on the fuselage pieces, and took some sanding down (the tail-plane notch might well have fit the piece as it came originally....).

On the starboard side of the fuselage, I replaced the narrow raised line provided to represent a taped seam with a strip of striping tape.

I scribed rib-tape detail onto the wings and tail-plane. These are quite prominent in photographs of Camels, and the tape and primer and sanding method I use on scratch-built wings would have been a bit much on these kit pieces.

The motor is not glued on, merely trapped between the cowling and front of the fuselage, it will glued in later.

The thing has been given a preliminary coat of 'Navy Grey', but I got the mix a little too dark, and will adjust later....

[wellzy]

Very nice build a joy to watch this one coming together

Les

Edited September 16, 2013 by wellzy

[Old Man]

Very nice build a joy to watch this one coming together

Les

Thank you, Sir.

I expect to get a good deal more done this coming weekend. Though I seldom succeed, I try to get these things done without last minute dead-line efforts....

[Old Man]

Have been working on this, but have not had the chance to post up pictures promptly, so there is a bit of a backlog being caught up here.

Trickiest bit was getting the serial on the fuselage sides. I have no white lettering matching the font, or even coming close, so wife made me decals. It was rather tricky, and worth describing how she did it.

The numbers were taken off the profile photograph above. Setting the number portion into PhotoShop to do this, by the way, made it clear these were applied by sailors, not sign-painters; the numbers are not accurately oriented to a base-line, and the intervals between them are not regular. She made a long bar, wide as the lettering, and placed this over the letters in the photo, at various angles, and trimmed at various points, to create the shape of the letters at their proportion of heights and widths in the photo. I took a measure of the model for the length, and she printed out one copy of the serial on a black background on paper, which cut out, checked against the model for size.

She then printed out eight copies of the serial, with the letters against a black background, first on paper, and then on white decal film taped over where the print was.

To apply the things, I cut the invidual elements out, and applied them. The '5' and '2' gave me fits, and I finally figured a way to get them off the backing without incident. I took a large flat brush, and wet it. When the decals were ready to come off, I put the piece decal side down on the flat brush. The backing could then be slid off, leaving the decal, glue side up, on the brush. Touch the glue side to where it should go, and slide off the brush, and voila. Took me a while to figure it out, though....

Once the decals were on, since my trimming was not perfect, and left bits of grey or black at the edges here and there, I painted over the decals in white, and here and there did bit of dressing from the outside with the Navy Grey.

Here is a picture pf what is left of the decals, and the 'centering' paper:

Here are a couple of shots of the thing with decals on, including the national markings:

This weekend I got the upper wing on, and the under-carriage. Not much point in going into the process, except to say that the cabanes in the kit are too long, and need trimming by a bot over a half millimeter, and all locator pins on the struts must be removed.

This is going to get a bit last minute, as I have not yet done the conversion bits, which include a large generator as well as the flotation gear and hydro-vane, but I expect I will get it in under the wire next Sunday....

[VG 33]

Still a very nice subject and I hope you will arrive just before the deadline.

Patrick

[thorfinn]

Great decal work. It's really coming out beautifully!

[Old Man]

Thanks a lot, guys.

I am just setting to finishing up this afternoon. No pictures just now, but I have the structural rigging in, have put the hydro-vane on the undercarriage, and have made the flotation gear pieces.

Still have to make (or find in the spares) the large windmill generator, and put in the control wires. Then it will just be attaching a few bits, is all....

[Old Man]

Finished, Gentlemen.

There were some last minute crisis, but nothing worth rabbitting on about....

I am reasonably happy with how the build went, and turned out. I like very much the scribed rib-tape technique I tried out here, and expect i will be doing that often in future.

[Old Man]

I vote hydrovanes.

(Selfishly--I've got the same conversion to do, and I want to see how someone else's turns out first.)

Just a little note, Sir, on conversion elements.

For front legs of the hydro-plane, 15mm seems about right, perhaps 15.5mm; they should go forward straight from their attachment to the fuselage, and be about 10mm apart at their lower ends. For the pieces from the axle assembly to the hydro-plane, 10mm worked well. I made the hydro-plane 16mm long. All these dimensions are by eye, and trial and error: they suffice to clear the propellor disc. The line from the hydro-plane to the axle should be parallel to the ground when the thing is at rest on wheels and skid.

I made the bags 25mm long, and the rod they suspend from 27mm. The rear of the rod aligns with the trailing edge of the lower wing. The bags started out as strips 2mm wide and 1.5mm high. The finished pieces are attached to the lower wing, close to the landing gear as I could manage.