5x SPADs and a Nieuport 17 - finished

[AdrianMF]

The assembly line continues:

 

The Academy (grey) needs some filler on the starboard root but surprisingly the Eduard will need quite a lot of 

1 hour ago, Courageous said:

whittling

before the top decking will fit.

[AdrianMF]

I have chopped away the fore-aft connectors at the top of the ESCI struts and stuck all the lower ends:

 

I will leave this to dry and then fill the slots in the top wing after marking where the struts go, so that I can drill holes for them later. There’s also some lower wing filling to be done to hide the ribs carrying the struts.

 

Meanwhile the Eduard Spad is giving me a certain amount of grief. I had to trim away a lot of the coaming underside and the backs and tops of the instruments to get the top decking to fit, and even then it is too wide and will need sanding. And the lower wing, centre section and under cowling panel needed a similar load of trimming before, and I had to do some plastic stressing bending before it would fit without anhedral.

 

I know the Eduard kit is “better” but I know which one I’m enjoying the most!
 

[AdrianMF]

The state of play at the end of the weekend:

 

Academy and ESCI are taped up so the struts can dry in place prior to taking the top wing off again. The Eduard has been cleaned up and now awaits far more fragile (and scale) struts.

[bigbadbadge]

These have really come on well, the interiors you have created look very nice indeed,  great work . 

Chris

[Terry1954]

Coming along great Adrian, and I particularly like your approach with the struts. I have a stalled Gamecock build on here somewhere, and you are shaming me to get back on the case!

 

Terry

[AdrianMF]

Right, a bit of light relief after deconstructing a Bristol 142! I’ve turned the propeller around so the leading edge is now curved and the trailing edge is straight, WWI style, made the top deck and MGs a bit more realistic (hidden by a very close top wing) and done a whole lot of filling and sanding:

 

Time to paint the prop and engine grill and to undercoat the wings and filler to see what it looks like.

 

Meanwhile in Academy-land I just noticed some rather random locating pin placement

[bigbadbadge]

Great work on the prop on the Esci kit , looks good.

 

Chris

[AdrianMF]

37 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Great work on the prop on the Esci kit

Thanks Chris! The Academy one is unsalvageable but the Eduard kit has two alternative styles of propeller so I can pinch one.

 

I’ve given the ESCI a coat of priming coat of sand:

 

I wish I’d stuck the undercarriage on now, then it would be assembly over apart from wheels and exhausts.

[Terry1954]

Nice progress there Adrian. I do love a Spad!

 

Terry

[bigbadbadge]

Lucky the Eduard one has the two props and the Esci one looks good in primer too.

Chris

[AdrianMF]

Well I need to step up my game on the Eduard and the Revell (still in the box!!):

[AdrianMF]

The Eduard has the interplane struts done now:

[2996 Victor]

Just found this, Adrian, and I'll be following along if I may!

 

I've got an Eduard SPAD XIII in my stash and plans for a couple more, one of which will be Italian, so watching your progress there very closely!

 

@Brandy, has your MAC Distribution SPAD VII arrived yet? They seem to be hard to come by, apart from the DUX-built version - are there any fundamental differences from French-built aeroplanes?

 

Cheers,

Mark

Edited November 21, 2021 by 2996 Victor
Android phone b*lls-up :(

[AdrianMF]

There’s a morning of my life I’m not getting back…

 

The aileron actuator struts (with cranks, behind outboard set of struts) were fiddly but doable.

 

The inverted-“v” front cabane struts simply didn’t fit so I fitted the half that did and made a new front strut from shaped white plastic card. The rear cabane strut slot did not have an indentation above it, so the bottom end of the strut stuck out with an elbow. I trimmed off the bottom of the strut to match the fuselage cross section so that all the struts are in line and flow into the fuselage, as shown by the red line below:

 

I'm prepared to believe that the kit is perfect and that it was me, but I can’t see how, given that the gap and stagger is set by the inner “H” interplane struts. Ho-hum. Moving on, I’ve still got the cabane pipework to do!

 

[Brandy]

3 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

has your MAC Distribution SPAD VII arrived yet? They

It has! It arrived a week or so back. I'll try to remember to make a comparison of it with the Pegasus one and some Data file plans.

 

Ian

 

[2996 Victor]

3 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

There’s a morning of my life I’m not getting back…

 

The aileron actuator struts (with cranks, behind outboard set of struts) were fiddly but doable.

 

The inverted-“v” front cabane struts simply didn’t fit so I fitted the half that did and made a new front strut from shaped white plastic card. The rear cabane strut slot did not have an indentation above it, so the bottom end of the strut stuck out with an elbow. I trimmed off the bottom of the strut to match the fuselage cross section so that all the struts are in line and flow into the fuselage, as shown by the red line below:

 

I'm prepared to believe that the kit is perfect and that it was me, but I can’t see how, given that the gap and stagger is set by the inner “H” interplane struts. Ho-hum. Moving on, I’ve still got the cabane pipework to do!

That's disconcerting: Eduard has such a good reputation that it's a surprise that the cabane struts are so far out. One to watch out for! But you've sorted it out and it's a great job!

 

Looking forward to seeing your next instalment.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[AdrianMF]

Well the Academy has pulled ahead:

[2996 Victor]

1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:

Well the Academy has pulled ahead:

Looking fantastic, Adrian! I love the Great War French camouflage.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[Courageous]

Steaming ahead Adrian. Nice to see the paint going on. Looking great.

 

Stuart

[AdrianMF]

11 hours ago, Brandy said:

It has! It arrived a week or so back. I'll try to remember to make a comparison of it with the Pegasus one and some Data file plans.

FWIW the Airfix kit of the SPAD VII matches the Harbourough “Fighters of WWI” plans pretty much perfectly. Of course, that might a curse rather than a blessing

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Brandy]

Ok, so here is the Pegasus v MAC

 

Both are nice kits with good surface detail. Comparing the upper wings and fuselages to correctly scaled Datafile drawings, the MAC fuselage is about 0.5mm too long and the Pegasus upper wing is 1mm too long. Overall the surface detail on the Eduard kit is far better but the Pegasus is still good.

 

EDIT - I started typing Eduard instead of MAC - the detail is that good that I forgot who made the kit! Maybe this is a repop of an old Eduard kit? If you want a good SPAD VII I would highly recommend it!

 

 

 

MAC is the dark green plastic, Pegasus the grey.

 

The MAC kit comes with 3 decal options: Capitano Giorgio Pessi, 91 Squad. 1917, Lt Armand Pinsard, Esc N26 (first SPAD VII victory) Aug 1916, and Adj Marcel Henriot Esc Spa 65

 

 

Just out of interest I also compered the Airfix kit. Not too bad size wise, the fuselage is about 1mm too long behind the cockpit and the wingtips need reshaping, but the biggest problem with it is the trenches on the wings. They will have to be filled, not sanded down!

 

Ian

[AdrianMF]

1 hour ago, Brandy said:

Pegasus v MAC

Thanks for that Ian - they both look like nice kits, both miles ahead of the Airfix one. I have some of the Pegasus WWI subjects and they do seem to be very detailed (I need to actually build one!)

 

I notice how the Italians, or maybe subsequent researchers, seemed to play fast and loose with regards to green or red being front or outer of the markings. I have gone for what I’ve gone for on mine, with fingers firmly crossed that no contemporary digital colour photos turn up!

 

The whole thing has been an interesting project. In the well known picture of Baracca standing in front of his SPAD, you can see it’s an early one because it doesn’t have the extra cabane struts at the front. So that’s driven me to use the ESCI kit as the basis for his aeroplane, because it has the early rounded wings. The Eduard “early” boxing (which I don’t have and am not going to get) includes a colour scheme, but that doesn’t match the colour scheme in the photo. So I’m using the scheme from FCM decals as found on wp.scn.ru, with Terry’s excellent decals. The Eduard will wear the Nungesser scheme and I haven’t decided about the other two yet.

 

So I’ve chosen cream rather than blue or grey undersides, red outer ring, green stripe forward, red horse, wood finish undercarriage, roundels above the wings and the tricolour underwing, all of which are debatable. And it’s a rubbish kit compared to the Eduard.

 

HOWEVER

 

My intended recipient/audience wants a biplane with Italian markings, a colour scheme with no blue in it (clashes with the room scheme dahhhling), a picture of a horse on it and a man standing in front (1/72, I don’t have to stand there all day). The Blue Rider decals point out that the horse was red while the Count was alive, and changed to black after he died. I have just confirmed that this is OK with Mrs MF so the first comment won’t be “why is the horse red?”. The Academy kit is considerably beefier than the Eduard so it may survive cleaning and rearrangement a bit longer than the Eduard.

 

So, TL;DR, it won’t win any prizes but it’s fit for purpose. And thanks to the generosity of @Terry1954, it does have gorgeous decals:

[2996 Victor]

2 hours ago, Brandy said:

Ok, so here is the Pegasus v MAC

 

Both are nice kits with good surface detail. Comparing the upper wings and fuselages to correctly scaled Datafile drawings, the MAC fuselage is about 0.5mm too long and the Pegasus upper wing is 1mm too long. Overall the surface detail on the Eduard kit is far better but the Pegasus is still good.

 

EDIT - I started typing Eduard instead of MAC - the detail is that good that I forgot who made the kit! Maybe this is a repop of an old Eduard kit? If you want a good SPAD VII I would highly recommend it!

 

 

 

MAC is the dark green plastic, Pegasus the grey.

 

The MAC kit comes with 3 decal options: Capitano Giorgio Pessi, 91 Squad. 1917, Lt Armand Pinsard, Esc N26 (first SPAD VII victory) Aug 1916, and Adj Marcel Henriot Esc Spa 65

 

 

Just out of interest I also compered the Airfix kit. Not too bad size wise, the fuselage is about 1mm too long behind the cockpit and the wingtips need reshaping, but the biggest problem with it is the trenches on the wings. They will have to be filled, not sanded down!

 

Ian

That's brilliant, Ian, thank you for taking the time to compare the kits. Now, who has the MAC kits stock?!

 

Cheers,

Mark

[Terry1954]

7 minutes ago, AdrianMF said:

And thanks to the generosity of @Terry1954, it does have gorgeous decals:

 

You are very welcome Adrian and it is so rewarding to see them used at last, on that lovely Spad of yours. All they needed was to find a good home and it seems they did!

 

Glad Mrs MF approves of the red horse!

 

Terry

[2996 Victor]

Fantastic work, Adrian, an absolute beauty and an inspiration to have a crack at a SPAD!

 

Cheers,

Mark