Wingnut Wings Sopwith Camel BR.1

CAMEL

By Dave Hooper

Kit No: 32070

Scale: 1/32

Type: Injection Moulded Plastic

Manufacturer: Wingnut Wings www.wingnutwings.com

The Sopwith Camel must be one of the most iconic aircraft of World War I. Ask anybody to name one World War I aircraft and they are likely to name the Camel (unless particularly clueless about historical events in which case the Spitfire will probably be chosen). Like the Spitfire, the Camel was a highly manoeuvrable fighter, but unlike the World War II fighter was very unforgiving to fly and it’s thought that as many young pilots died in accidents as they did by enemy gunfire.

Wingnut Wings originally said that they would not tool a Camel kit, because they felt that there was already a perfectly good kit available in 1/32 (the Hobbycraft tooling). However the increase in popularity of Wingnut Wings and pressure from the fans and punters were probably instrumental in a change of heart and the kit was announced about four years ago. Finally, at the beginning of this year the kits were released in six different boxings.

The version I had for review was the Bentley Br.1 powered version. This kit contains four grey plastic sprues and an additional clear sprue of plastic parts such as windscreens and inspection hatches. In the manner of previous kits from this company a very small photo etch fret is included as well as a very large A4 size sheet of decals that provide five colourful options to choose from. A brief in box review was published in a previous edition of SAM and was very favourable. At the time I think I said that the kit looked like it would be a fairly simple model to build. But would these predictions prove to be correct?

Internal Detail

Like almost all Wingnut Wings kits that I have experienced, the construction begins with the assembly of the cockpit tub. This is an extremely important stage of the build, as get this wrong and you will find that you are likely to have problems later in the build, as like all modern CAD drawn models there is no latitude for error. The first section of the cockpit assembly deals with the instrument panel and machine gun magazines. The instrument panel is particularly impressive and as with other WNW kits has a very fine selection of instrument dial decals to enhance the finished appearance of the panel. In the case of this kit each dial has a choice of two faces, and it is left to the modeller to choose which is appropriate. Next the floorboard and under shield sections are assembled on which the control column and rubber bars are fitted.

I chose to assemble the cockpit in small manageable sections and then paint and decal these sections before final assembly. The instrument panel and floor sections are then glued to one of the side panels and here is where you need to be extra careful, particularly when fitting the butted edges of the under shield to ensure that a tight, snug fit is achieved. I ended up with a slight gap on my model which I filled, but this then affected the fit of the lower wings, and potentially upper wings later in the build.