SE5a Flight Build: Part 3 of 3

My wife has done a fair bit of pottery, and she can spend many, many hours on a piece...kneading the clay, making the form, trimming it, drying it, bisque firing and glazing...only to have it all ruined with the final firing (too hot, running glaze, exploding piece...whatever). I have shared that kind of anguish making models. You go through all the meticulous steps, only to have the finished plane ruined by a spray of the matt clear coat which, wrecks the decals, or mottles the finish or whatever. I thought I was headed into another one of those awful experiences as I was finishing off this flight of SE5as. As I spray coated the undersides, I was getting some staining...and I thought, crap...this Dullcoat is reactly badly with the Future floor wax on the models.

Happily, as it turned out, the mottling was minimal. All's well that ends well.

So, here were the final steps of the build...

I got all the decals on and sealed them with a generous coating of Future floor wax. Then I added the painted exhaust stacks...kind of rusty at the front end and darker metal towards the rear. Here is a shot of the planes just before the upper wings went on the the interplane struts were popped in.


I had previously sprayed the propellers with a deck wood paint color. Then I stained them with a sepia wash and when that dried I painted the tips light grey.


Here the SE5as have their wings on and struts in. At this point, they just need undercarriages, props, Lewis gun mounts and tailplanes. The Roden kit has no guide holes for the attachment of the landing gear, so I drilled these out as best I could.


And the result...five models in under 3 weeks. Much better than my normal build time.


I Dullcoated the models, glued magnets to the undersurface of each plane, and presto...they're ready for a game of Canvas Eagles.


Would I like to do more with these builds? Yes. They deserve a little representational rigging. I game with rigged and unrigged planes. Although there isn't much of a difference on the game table, rigged planes just look better overall. These guys will get some stretched sprue rigging at some point. Also, I have some pilot figures I'd like to paint up and pop them in as well.


Well, now that that build is done, I'd like to move on to a flight of Jasta 19 triplanes from April 1918. Here's a preview!


Happy gaming!

SE5a Flight Build: Part II

Building biplane models is always about three times harder than I think it's going to be when I start the project...

So, here are the five planes of "C" Flight, 56 Squadron, with lower wings masked and ready for a coat of paint.

I wanted to call this blog installment "Wrestling With Decals". I spent the weekend applying decals to these aircraft. For the most part, I used the markings from Americal sheet #143. However, there weren't enough lower wing rondels for all five SEs, so I scavenged a set from a Sopwith Strutter sheet.

The Americal 56 squadron sheet is quite comprehensive, and I was really looking forward to marking up "C" Flight...however, I was kind of disappointed that the fuselage letters didn't really match the "type" seen in the strong photographic evidence of this flight. Booo! Anyway, the decals were very well behaved and didn't disintegrate like the many other sheets I tried to source bits and pieces from this weekend.

One pain point was that I didn't have the proper rudder stripes anywhere. Those supplied on the Americal sheet were too wide. As it turned out, I had to cut strips of colored decal and assemble the rudder stripes bit by bit. Aggravation!

One of the reasons I was so keen on doing "C" Flight was the strong photographic record, each plane shot in early March, 1918!

Here is flight leader, Fielding Johnson in "U".

Here is Jarvis, in "V".

Mealing, the flight's 14-victory ace in "W". He was shot down and killed on the 24th of the month.

Franklin in "X".

Finally, here is Walkerdine in "Y".

As of the end of the weekend, all planes have their base coat of paint, all decals on, including their serial numbers, and the wheel disks are in their proper blue color. As you can see in the photo, the models look quite glossy. This is because I coat everything with Future floor wax to seal the paint and create a slick base for the decals. When the builds are done, they'll get a spray of Testors Dullcoat to create a matt finish. Anyway, next comes a little fuselage detail painting. Then it will be time to attach the upper wings and landing gear. The end is in sight!

I'll close this installment with a shot of "C" Flight taking off for a very chilly patrol in February.

I'm hoping that the next post will see the end of this project...but who knows? Like I said, biplanes are always longer builds than you think they're going to be.

SE5a Models for Canvas Eagles: Part I

On the hobby table, October, 2009: "C" Flight, 56 Squadron RFC, March 1918.

So, my current project is a flight of five 1/72 scale SE5a scouts for an upcoming Canvas Eagles game. The genesis of this project occurred about 10 years ago when I was collecting a lot of WWI material. I had been building one-off WWI aircraft models for gaming, but was interested in doing a cohesive unit; a jasta or flight. At the time I was reading Alex Revell's "High in the Empty Blue". This was the unit history of 56 squadron, RFC/RAF. Famous British aces like Ball and McCudden flew for 56 squadron, but I was more interested in some of the lesser known pilots from the unit. In our Canvas Eagles campaigns, I can often get pilots to 5 or 6 kills, then they get shot down. This seems to have been the plight of many WWI pilots who never rose out of obscurity to reach the celebrity of the well known WWI aces.

Anyway, I was attracted to the members of "C" flight, who in March 1918 were able to combine their efforts to achieve victory over 19 enemy aircraft with the loss of just one of their own members (the most accomplished, as it turned out). Four of the pilots were ranked as modest aces, with 6 to 14 victories each. Note, that for the British of this era, a victory was counted as an enemy aircraft either destroyed or driven down "out of control", and "shared" victories counted as full credit for each pilot involved. A pretty liberal policy which would have never passed muster with the tougher victory criteria of the Germans and (especially) French. Nevertheless...

Here is a photo of "C" Flight pilots from March 1918.

From left to right...

M.E. Mealing. 14 victories. SE5a "W". KIA March 24th, 1918.

W.S. Fielding Johnson (Flight Leader). 6 victories. SE5a "U". Died 1953.

H.J. Walkerdine. 7 victories. SE5a "Y". WIA April 11th, 1918.

L.W. Jarvis. 7 victories. SE5a "V". To Home Establishment May 24th, 1918.

L.N. Franklin. 1 victory. SE5a "X". KIA July 14th, 1918.

A.L. Garrett. 0 victories. POW June 28th, 1918.

For this project, I'm using the Roden 1/72 scale kit, since it has options for the correct engine, radiator, exhaust stacks, landing gear, cockpit cutouts and propeller types for "C" Flight's aircraft.

After a couple of hours wrestling with this kit, I was able to get the ridiculous 6-part fuselage structures closed up. None of the radiators fit correctly, but never mind...by this point I was just happy to get everything glued together and puttied. This photo shows the five assemblies, wings painted, along with stacks of assembled landing gear, propellers and Foster Lewis gun mounts. Oh, and the small pile of 20 main wing struts.

Here I've attached the lower wings to the fuselage sections. All fuselage filler has been sanded down at this point.

Now, I've built a number of WWI biplanes and as you may know as well, the biggest pain is getting a good alignment for the attachment of the upper wing. What I like to do is get the cabane struts set correctly...then attach the upper wing and pop the interplane struts in as the last step. Of course, it's always tricky to get the cabane struts set up correctly. As you can see in the next photo, I've made a little jig out of card with holes drilled in the correct alignment for upper wing attachment.

Using the jig, setting the cabanes to the correct angle went pretty smoothly.

In the next installment, I hope to show the fuselages painted and the upper wings attached. Fingers crossed!