Early effort - Sopwith Camel

Man builds kit 10 years ago!

My first post of 2011 is not very Dolphin-friendly. I've just got round to taking some photos of my first serious effort, dating from about 10 years ago. At the time, I had just noticed that Toko was bringing out some interesting subjects. I immediately got hold of a Snipe, but I decided that the first thing I should build was a Camel, as a kind of apprentice piece.

I used the good old Revell kit as the basis. Roden hadn't brought theirs out at the time - in fact, I'm not sure they existed. The major bit of work was to replace the engine. This was rather rudimentary and I remember as a child not even being sure what it was meant to represent. This job entailed hacking away the cylinder blocks and reaming out the cowling to make room for an Aeroclub replacement. The other main modification was to cut out the control surfaces and reset them at realistic angles. The elevators especially benefit from a bit of a droop.

I added quite a bit of detail in the cockpit, that will never be seen. I also added a Rotherham wind pump: on this particular machine it was on the forward cabane strut, but the placement varied. I added a telescopic sight from plastic rod and made the ring and bead sight by wrapping stretched sprue round another bit of plastic rod the right diameter. Then I added cross-pieces from more stretched sprue and cut them to length in situ. This is not very authentic, of course but it looks better than nothing. I did the rigging in prepainted stretched sprue, added a bit of dried mud to the wheels and that was it.

I think it turned out OK.