Sopwith Dolphin - armament procured

Armament programme under way

My Mini World guns have arrived from Hannants and they look superb. The detail is amazing, and the Lewis guns even have etched brass parts for the sights etc. (this is 1/72nd scale, remember). Mini World is a Ukrainian company, I see, from their instruction leaflet. I don't know what drives the Ukraine to produce so many high-quality WWI scale models, but I hope it continues.

I won't be able to use a lot of these bits, unfortunately. It's a pity, but according to my photographic sources (Windsock 54, конечно, and Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 48)  the sights weren't fitted on the wing-mounted guns, and that's pretty much that. Fair enough, though. You can understand the thinking of 87 Sqn on this point. So the only etched bits I'll be using are the ones representing the little leather handles on the magazines; but this is a nice detail itself. On your typical injection-moulded Lewis at this scale, this feature is represented by what you could only call a blob.

As for the Vickers, they come with a belt of ammo each. Fantastic! I'm definitely going to use those, and have them feeding into the guns from the ammo boxes. And I won't even need to paint them. A bit of fudging will be needed, because the ammo feeds won't quite be wide enough for them (what with the overscale thickness of the plastic card). But I think it should just about work.

Just got to finish those decals first...

Sopwith Dolphin - decals started

Well, I've made a start.

Sopwith Dolphin - some definite progress on markings

Here are the decals for the roundels, which I've printed out myself, and I think they look pretty good.

Sopwith Dolphin - no news

This project is likely to go into hibernation for a bit now. I've had no luck finding suppliers for my custom transfers and so I'm starting to think I'll have to get hold of an ALPS printer. Or maybe in the interim someone will do a commercial set of transfers for the Dolphin. Or Roden will do a Dolphin that I can pinch the transfers from. Or the Vulcans will come and demonstrate advanced and yet accessible decal technology to us. Or something. More news in due course, hopefully.

Sopwith Dolphin - artwork for markings

Didn't make much progress with the Dolphin over Christmas. All I can show for my efforts over the whole period is this screen capture of the artwork for the markings. And I've still got to find someone that can turn them into transfers.

Sopwith Dolphin - even more faffing about with markings

Today, after all the prolonged agonising over markings, I was actually going to sit down and make some effort to realise them in some form or another. I've been rereading David Copperfield, you may recall, and at this stage I felt some sympathy for Mr Dick and his neverending struggles to get his testimonial onto paper.

Anyway, as soon as I started trying to cut out painting masks, I realised it was a pretty hopeless exercise. There's no way I'm going to get the precise results I want this way. So now I'm revisiting the idea of getting custom decals made. Waterslide decals are very expensive, but dry transfers seem much more affordable and so they look like a feasible option. Of course, you have to get the positioning right first time; but if you tape the sheet in place before wielding the ball-point pen or your preferred burnishing tool, it's not too difficult. So I've started investigating potential suppliers.

More soon, I hope.

From the family archives

 

Just now, I remembered I had some old family photos that are relevant to this blog. My grandfather served in the RFC in the ground crew and I assume he was somehow connected with this photo, though he doesn't seem to be in it. Maybe there's no connection, and the photo I've got is a copy of a postcard or something. On second thoughts, maybe that's him second from right at the back. At any rate, the plane looks like a Maurice-Farman, for what it's worth.

He's in the next photo though (bottom right).

That ad for the genealogy website isn't lying, you know.

And we all know this feeling:

Oops