Allied aircraft

by Andy Bannister

Nieuport 17

Kit: Eduard (1:72)

Couple of pics of the Eduard 1/72nd Nieuport 17 in progress. Seat back is from Tom's Modelworks etched set; belts are from Eduard pre-painted French WWI set; a few scratchbuilt bits.

The kit is finished as Bishop's B.1566. This is one of the easiest biplanes I've ever built; everything goes together very nicely and putting the top wing on was a piece of cake. I was fairly underwhelmed by Eduard's engine however so I replaced it with the Le Rhone from a Roden Camel which is far superior, though I did cut off the induction pipes and used the Eduard piece for these instead as Roden's looks a bit two-dimensional. I also thought the tapes on the wing struts were rather overdone so sanded these down considerably.

Rigging is stretched sprue, prop carved from wood, paint is Polly S "Metalline" Aluminum with the cowling & forward rudder stripe an Xtracolour Roundel Blue/USN Blue mix. Decals are from Americal/Gryphon. I managed to piece together the tail codes from their No. 1 Sqn. sheet but I had to hand paint the red surrounds as AG printed these the same size as the black numbers which kind of defeats the purpose!

RAF Se5a

Kit: Roden (1:72)

Couple of in-progress pics of my Roden 1/72nd SE5a. Used part of an Eduard p/e set intended for the old Revell kit which works fine in Roden's kit.

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