Italeri SE5A

[AdrianMF]

Hello All,

I was tempted by this model whilst visiting AAA Hobbies and Crafts, just south of Philadelphia. If you are in the area do take a look: they have a fantastic selection of models, tools and supplies, and were very helpful.

Anyhow, it was cheap (less than a tenner in old money), the box was colourful and the schemes are interesting:




However, when you get inside the box, all is not quite so good with the world. Here are the Albatros sprues:



It turns out that this is a re-box from ESCI, which in turn had acquired the moulds from some other firm, which itself was "inspired" by the Revell kits of the same models. The Albatros is not as nicely done as my Revell copy (and certainly not as nice as the Roden one!) and has the same incorrect pinched rear fuselage to boot! The decals are very nice though, in both subject and execution.

The models are discussed elsewhere on Britmodeller here. The general consensus is to buy the equivalent Revell kits for cheap thrills and Roden kits for contest entries.

So I was sitting at my workbench late on Saturday night and just wondered what would happen if I replaced the moulded-in seat with a scratch build seat and instrument panel...

22 elapsed hours later on Sunday night I had this:

Seat:

Instrument panel and stick:

The Lewis gun looks massive but is within a couple of mm of scale length.

Like the thread says, the moulding is not really recommended. I had to repair a lot of short shot issues on the wing trailing edges (paper and super glue work well for that). But it was fun to assemble and paint up, and the scheme is quite different. I'm still working out whether I should bother to rig it.

The propeller looked like a couple of scimitar blades. I managed to straighten it by brute force. I bent it straight and the plastic went white, beyond its elastic limit, so I hope it doesn't creep back again. The instructions designer obviously lives by the motto "draw what you saw"!

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

Edited September 21, 2015 by AdrianMF

[JimHead23]

That looks terrific Adrian. I'm not too clued up on the period but it looks like an SE5 to me!

Regards

Jim

[Lancbuilder219]

Lewis guns are big! Nice work you have done. I hope one day I will get to holiday in the u.s and model shops will be on my to do list.

[GREG DESTEC]

Superb!, love it.

[Nick Millman]

You've done a very good job breathing life into a very old kit.

As the linked thread mentions these Italeri ex-Esci kits originated in Japan in the late 1960s as poor clones of the Revell kits, first issued by Eldon and then re-issued in turn by Nichimo, Fuji, Entex and Sunny. The Fuji kits were available in the UK at one point and their box art was always more promising than the kits themselves!

Nick

[Blitz23]

Impressive job!