Short Feature Article by Robert Serfőző
The red-nosed camel Korea
A note from Geoff…
It is with great pleasure that I welcome Robert to SMN and with him comes his lovely model of the Academy Sopwith Camel in 1:72 scale. Being an aircraft modeller for sure I recognise what must go into building bi-planes in such a small scale. I’ve really only ever tackled several in 1:32, so how he and all of you that build bi-planes in small scale leaves me aghast and hugely respsctful of what you achieve.
So what follows is a short feature article where Robert explains what he did to create such a good end-result – no small challenge for sure! Here’s a photo of Robert’s completed model…
The Sopwith Camel FI in World War I was one of the most famous planes of that conflict. Frankly I must confess that I am not really attracted to World War subjects, and planes, however, sometimes it has occurred to me – you should try to build a biplane. One model appealed to me, the Korean Academy product, so I bought myself one. And then it rested on my shelf for a year. Then one day I was leafing through a book on the history of flight. The images presented showed aircraft sitting in museums, operationally and right up to today.
I noticed the Camel engine, pitot tube, petrol pump, contemporary governments pedals, etc.. I remembered the little box on a shelf and thought: I can make a plane out of it and the Camel, without the addition of extra parts – just what the manufacturer supplies in the box. However, when I saw the contents, my heart faded a little. It was a really simplified model that is broadly similar to the famous plane. I tried to plan, everything that would be needed to fix it or build it. Finally, hardly any parts remained that did not have to be fixed!