Schneider trophy aircraft painting (brass/copper wings)

[SprueMan]

Hi guys,

I have recently bought a stack of Schneider trophy aircraft made by the Ukrainian company AMP.

I mostly build cars, but I could not help in supporting them in a difficult time, so why not assist their economy by buying a stack of models.

 

Anyways.. as I am new to the discipline of aircraft building, I am on shaky ground.

So I have to ask; what colors should the metalic surfaces really be?

The instructions for the Piaggio-Pegna P.c.7 dictate copper, but the Macchi M.C.72 dictate brass.

I am assuming here, but I think they should be the same?
 

PS: the Supermarine S.5 instructions indicate a Humbrol 25 as blue - I would not be so lucky to find a Tamiya TS spray equivalent?

 

[dnl42]

Those metallic upper surfaces were radiator panels. The Curtiss R3C had brass panels. I have no info on brass or copper for your subject aircraft, which may well be different for the 2 aircraft.

 

And welcome aboard! 

[SprueMan]

Thank you

And thank you for the reply and the reference.

I would guess that if brass was used for the radiators, they would be unpainted. I mean, if you were to paint them, copper does not seem like a logical change.

[rob Lyttle]

20 hours ago, SprueMan said:

I am assuming here, but I think they should be the same?

Caution required here,SprueMan....⚠️

I think an individual approach will be a better option. 😎

And bear in mind that they were trying to cool 2 things - the oil and the water coolant. So for the S5 (to the best of my knowledge) has oil coolers along the fuselage sides. They are painted the fuselage blue so that's easy . The wing surfaces deal with the engine cooling water. They are given as doped aluminium. 

I've seen great builds of Macchis and Piagios on here with brass and copper surfaces. I'd say you're asking in the right place here! 

[SprueMan]

I see. 🤠

Well, looking at the (restored) Macchi M.72 here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Macchi_M.C.72_at_the_Museo_Vigna_di_Valle

It is definitely a different color than the Curtiss above.

The Curtiss almost looks like a gold leaf brass color, but the Macchi a much darker bronze/copper looking color.

[malpaso]

As a restored, preserved aircraft, the bare metal radiator surfaces may well have tarnished or been varnished for protection.  Presumably in the day it would have been the bare metal for best conduction from the coolant to the airflow. 

[dnl42]

Agree, never trust colors--or features--of preserved aircraft unless your intent is to model the aircraft as preserved. This goes for vehicles and vessels too.

Here's a particular discussion of aircraft features, by @Tailspin Turtle. Other discussions are here.

[SprueMan]

Well, I have the (slightly disappointing) Ralph Pegram book "Schneider trophy aircraft" and it says quite clearly in the mentions about the Macchi and the Pegna: brass radiators.

Brass it will be

 

[Ngantek]

33 minutes ago, SprueMan said:

Well, I have the (slightly disappointing) Ralph Pegram book "Schneider trophy aircraft" and it says quite clearly in the mentions about the Macchi and the Pegna: brass radiators.

Brass it will be

 

Ah disappointing how? I was thinking of getting a copy. There's the older Derek James book as well, hard to judge if all you have is amazon to go by.

[Malc2]

IMHO the Pegram book is one of the best Schneider books around.

New research.

New 3 view drawings of all aircraft correcting previous mistakes

All Schneider aircraft included, even ones not raced.

 

Thoroughly recommended.

 

Malc.

[SprueMan]

1 hour ago, Ngantek said:

Ah disappointing how? I was thinking of getting a copy. There's the older Derek James book as well, hard to judge if all you have is amazon to go by.

 

Well, its good in the sense that it does have three view drawings of all the aircraft and detailed descriptions of each even the very rare ones, but:

It has very few photographs (you will find more with a casual Googing) and those that are there are small and poorly reproduced.

The print quality is poor, with pixels visible in the three views, the maps are rather simplistic and not well done (MS Paint quality), and most annoying, the text is slightly dithered so it strains the eyes.

The editing is lacking in that the book is missing a proper table of contents/index, the header / chapter markers are missing which it makes it hard to look up particular planes at a glance. (Just as it is the editors and publishers job to check that the drawings are not pixelated etc.)

 

Yes, it does cover a rare topic with great knowledge and detail, but actual delivered product is simply sub par.

Unfortunately, it is the only book with three view drawings etc. so I can "recommend" it in that sense.

 

[Planebuilder62]

I agree with Malc2. I have the book and I think its great. To be honest I did not even notice the short comings pointed out above even thogh I have read the book several times. I think the content is brilliant, I can thoroughly recommend it.

 

regards Toby

[Cyberduck]

The Haynes Book on the Supermarine S6B (IBBN 9781785212280) covers all of the Schneider Trophy races from 1913-1929.

 

It is well illustrated with all the participating aircraft, mostly black & white period pictures, but at least 1 colour picture of the British and Italians from 1929.

[SprueMan]

Also, I want to add one more comment about that book; The drawings are NOT to 1/72 scale as described in the book inlay

I checked the Supermarine S.5 has a wingspan of 26'9" (which is 8.15Meters) translated to 1/72 should be 11.319 cm, but in the book, the span is 11.25cm.

And it goes for all drawings.

There is a helpful scale in each drawing indicating a length of 2M; this should be 277mm but it is in fact 248mm.

 

They are ALL. THE. WRONG. SIZE.

 

Again, that is some shoddy editing work.

[Planebuilder62]

Ho hum. I am very happy with my copy of the book as it has all the races and all the planes well described, pictured and drawn. 😊

 

regards Toby

[Dave Swindell]

1 hour ago, SprueMan said:

Again, that is some shoddy editing work.

Art department rather than the editor.

I'm sure the drawings for the plans was all produced accurately to 1/72 and the writer and editor intended them to be published at 1/72, but at some stage during the book layout they have (deliberately or accidentally) been resized to suit their idea of what looks best on the page. This is a hazard with any publication printing "scale" plans, if the scale is important to you (eg basing a model on them) you need to check the principle dimensions against published sources and validate any differences. Check both vertical and horizontal dimensions as the resizing isn't always the same in both axes. Work out rescaling factors, scan and reprint and recheck.

[SprueMan]

35 minutes ago, Dave Swindell said:

Art department rather than the editor.

I'm sure the drawings for the plans was all produced accurately to 1/72 and the writer and editor intended them to be published at 1/72, but at some stage during the book layout they have (deliberately or accidentally) been resized to suit their idea of what looks best on the page. This is a hazard with any publication printing "scale" plans, if the scale is important to you (eg basing a model on them) you need to check the principle dimensions against published sources and validate any differences. Check both vertical and horizontal dimensions as the resizing isn't always the same in both axes. Work out rescaling factors, scan and reprint and recheck.

Well, each of the drawings in that books has a "copyright Ralph Pegram" written on it, so I believe they were made by the author, who also is mentioning the drawings in his preface, and even has a section in the end explaining his thoughts on their accuracy, so they are not just added as an after thought, but by careful research by the author.

Yes, I can of course resize the images, but I should not have to, and when someone says "this is in X scale" you should be able to trust that.

I have, just like (I assume you and many others on this forum) many aircraft books, and I have yet to find any of the serious publications to have had problems with scale.

There is hardly an Eastern European book about aircraft that does not have scale plans, and yet they all fit the scale. Incidentally, the Schneider trophy aircraft are actually so small, there is no need to resize them, repositioning them on the page would have been suffice.

Yes, I can resize them myself, but that is not the point.

I do not understand why I or anyone else should accept bad work as good, simply because it is the only work available?

 

To go in a slightly different direction, there are modellers have that are creating absolute wonderful silk purses out of sows' ear modelkits.

Would this mean that we should accept poor quality models that have bad fitting parts, wrong scale parts and are general blobs just because they might be the only model of that topic?

I think not. I think bad quality should be called out.

 

Sorry, but this topic makes me a bit angry as I hate poor QA.

Edited July 17, 2022 by SprueMan

[Dave Swindell]

39 minutes ago, SprueMan said:

Sorry, but this topic makes me a bit angry as I hate poor QA.

I understand and share your frustrations, however the point I was trying to get across is how mainstream publishing works. It's not done by scale modellers or anyone who understands their needs (unless you're exceedingly lucky)

No matter how careful the work by the author, plans draft person and editor, once their copy gets to the publisher they will have little or no input or control over what happens to it after that. The first thing the graphic designer doing the book layout will do is put the text and "pictures" into the house template, adjust the text flow and position and resize the "pictures" to give a pleasing layout. They will neither know nor care that the "pictures" should be reproduced at exactly 100%, and neither will 99% of their readers. 

Specialist modelling publications will have production staff who understand these constraints and will work around them, and they (usually) get it right, but this also comes at a cost. The Pegram book published by a specialist modelling press would have very limited appeal and therefore circulation, and would likely have come at a much higher price than a book from a much larger publishing house who can print and distribute in higher volumes and at lower prices. 

If I'm going to do any serious modelling work from plans I'm going to copy them and work from the copy, rather than those printed in the book as they'll be on the bench and get annotated, dirty, cut up, etc, so a dimension check and resize isn't a big issue for me, and it's something I'd check anyway (and you've obviously checked as you've found the discrepancy) 

I'd much rather have the book with good plans albeit not at the correct scale than not have the book, or have a book with bad drawings correctly scaled (and there's a lot of those about!)

I'm confident your ire shouldn't be directed at Mr Pegram as I'm sure he produced the plans accurately to 1/72 scale as indicated in the text and gave them to the publisher in good faith with little or no opportunity to verify that they would be published accurately.

Feel free to complain to the publisher, but I suspect you'd be a minority voice and I doubt you'd get any meaningful response. I'd complain if I thought it would do any good, but life's too short (and this post is getting a bit too long....)

[SprueMan]

I understand you of course.

I am not blaming the author, as seeing his stamp on all the illustrations, I think they were drawn by him in person.

I am blaming the publisher for this though, and to be honest, I do consider them a specialist publisher that should know better.

It should be clear to even a non-specialist press that there are specifications to follow, just as some of the errors (like the pixelations of the illustrations and dither of the text) should have been picked up by even normal publishers.

 

I will contact the publisher. Not that I expect a reply from them personally, but people need to know that they are making mistakes, and that their mistakes will affect a future purchase.

[TallBlondJohn]

As somebody who studied typography and layout under two of the old masters, I have to point out that book layout and graphics design are two different things. The problem is proper layout is a dying art and publishers today keep hiring designers out of art school who don't know how to do it properly, thus the issues highlighted above (and all sorts of other horrors, don't get me started).

 

From the quality issues it sounds like the original design has been reproduced photographically and printed at medium resolution on a short-run press - thus the dithering and pixelation. The up-front costs still have to be covered by the print run, so you won't even get a low cost. But probably the only way the publisher thought they could get the book done at all.

[Ngantek]

Well thanks everyone for your input on this, and sorry to derail the thread. I did get the book in the end and have enjoyed it very much and generally been very impressed. The scale is off for 1/72, as you say SprueMan, and when actively looking for it, I can see some small amount of pixelation in the 3view diagrams, but not enough to detract from the detail or make them, I suspect, significantly less useful. Having read through most of it so far by low bedside lamp light, I didn't notice any issues in readability, and the maps I think are about right in detail and appear (without having measured) to be correctly scaled. I don't mean to dismiss any of your criticisms which are all valid; I just meant to say, to my much less exacting standards, none of them are big enough to have detracted from the book in any significant manner for me personally.

 

I imagine the author is even more annoyed by the rescaling than you are! However, I suspect there is not much to be done about it, as people have said. 

 

Anyway, how are those AMP kits getting on? If it weren't for the scale, I'd be very interested myself, but instead will be busying myself with some SBS resin ones instead.

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

 

[Quiet Mike]

On 7/1/2022 at 9:02 PM, SprueMan said:

PS: the Supermarine S.5 instructions indicate a Humbrol 25 as blue - I would not be so lucky to find a Tamiya TS spray equivalent?

 

 

I enjoyed building their S5, but it has challenges. Annoying things were the cockpit interior, the instructions tell you to build it all back to front!

I used a Tamiya blue straight out of the bottle, I forget the number but it'll be in the WIP thread.

 

 

[SprueMan]

3 hours ago, Ngantek said:

Well thanks everyone for your input on this, and sorry to derail the thread. I did get the book in the end and have enjoyed it very much and generally been very impressed. The scale is off for 1/72, as you say SprueMan, and when actively looking for it, I can see some small amount of pixelation in the 3view diagrams, but not enough to detract from the detail or make them, I suspect, significantly less useful. Having read through most of it so far by low bedside lamp light, I didn't notice any issues in readability, and the maps I think are about right in detail and appear (without having measured) to be correctly scaled. I don't mean to dismiss any of your criticisms which are all valid; I just meant to say, to my much less exacting standards, none of them are big enough to have detracted from the book in any significant manner for me personally.

 

I imagine the author is even more annoyed by the rescaling than you are! However, I suspect there is not much to be done about it, as people have said. 

 

Anyway, how are those AMP kits getting on? If it weren't for the scale, I'd be very interested myself, but instead will be busying myself with some SBS resin ones instead.

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

 

Its all right
As I have gone off the rails myself, its alright as long as we stay on the general Schneider topic, we can let it go where it takes us

The AMP kits are bad, but not that bad that they cannot be built.

 

As @Quiet Mike posted, their instructions are not that good, their fit and flash is poor and none of them have any locating pins or overlap, which would be good for things like floats and skis.

The Piaggio P.7 (which I am building now) is in 1/50th scale and not 1/48 (aaaaarrghh...)

But the Macchi MC72 actually looks a whole generation better.

They are also making a Supermarine S6 (S6, S6a and S6b) so hopefully it will be much nicer than the old Testors kit.

 

BTW; all of their Schneider trophy planes exist in 1/72 as well as in 1/48 so thy might be worth a look for you too.

I got mine from here:
https://ua-hobby.com

 

[SprueMan]

1 hour ago, Quiet Mike said:

 

I enjoyed building their S5, but it has challenges. Annoying things were the cockpit interior, the instructions tell you to build it all back to front!

I used a Tamiya blue straight out of the bottle, I forget the number but it'll be in the WIP thread.

 

 

Yes, I saw your really nice build and have bookmarked it for inspiration for when I get to build the S.5