1/48 Roden Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter

[PA28Ace]

These are photos of my Roden 1/48 scale Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter.  This kit was Roden’s experiment to mold a biplane kit in mostly clear plastic with the idea of light shining through the painted wings as photos of real cloth-covered aircraft appear from below with the sun above.  Great idea in concept but not in execution!  The clear plastic is quite brittle and made for tense moments, especially when cutting at the horizontal stabilizer/elevator line to show the elevators droop.  I was sure the whole part was going to shatter!  The clear wing parts are a bonus when it comes to depicting the clear portion of the top wing center section and the pulley inspection panels on all four wing tips. The fit of the two clear fuselage parts was very bad, and it didn’t help that there were no alignment locators.

I scratch built much of the cockpits using Airscale instrument decals and bezels to spruce-up the kit instrument panel, and Eduard seat belts on the pilot’s seat.  I scratch built a fuel tank to go between the cockpits, and a Lewis gun magazine rack for the rear cockpit made front various bits of Evergreen plastic.  I had to reengineer the cockpit floor, internal side formers (which I also rigged) due to the bad fit of the fuselage halves, and ability to accommodate all the scratch built components.  This was accompanied by a good deal of picturesque language.  I added some Eduard photo etched bits as a fuel filler on top of the part depicting the wood panel between the cockpits.  Wood texture throughout the model is done with a base coat of Model Master wood, wood grain drawn with a brown pencil, over coated with Tamiya clear yellow.  The real gems of this kit are the pettitely molded machine guns and Scarff ring.

My single disaster with the kit was utterly destroying the landing gear struts.  I couldn’t get another set from Roden, so I ended-up having to buy a whole new kit to get them.  This seems to be a common fault of mine with WW1 kits, since I’ve done it on the Roden Fokker DVII and Eduard Fokker Dr 1.  I wish companies would include two sets of landing gear struts because I seem predestined break them!

Once I got the fuselage together things got much easier with basic assembly and finishing.  I pre-shaded around all the control surface interfaces with flat black.  The lower surfaces are painted with Humbrol clear doped linen (CDL).  On the lower surfaces I highlighted the wing ribs and fuselage formers with a brown pencil and misted over them with more CDL.  I painted all the upper surfaces with Model Master faded olive drab, covered the ribs and formers with 1 mm Tamiya tape, and misted (darker) olive drab over the masked areas to get some surface contrast.  The natural metal cowling areas were painted with Alclad aluminium.  I went over the complete surface of the cowlings drawing little circle with a blunt No. 2 pencil to a simulate machine turned finish.  I over coated that with Future.  With the exception of the Sopwith logo on the vertical tail and the serial number, all the markings are painted on using Montex masks.

Last step: rigging!  The Roden instructions have great, complete rigging diagrams.  I used Wonder Wire with fly fishing tubing for turnbuckles.

With an above average bit of perseverance, this makes into a very good looking Strutter.  I’m doing the Sopwith cycle, having also completed a Camel and Pup; I’ve got a Tabloid, Baby, Dolphin, and Snipe yet to go.

 

 

[Cat Barf]

Excellent Strutter! Your engine turned finish on the cowl is superb! I will be shamelessly stealing that technique. Outstanding work on a tough kit.