Andrew's Camel Goes East **Pranged the Ruddy Kite**

[AndrewR]

Here we have the old Revell Camel



Which will not display properly this evening. Thanks Photobucket!

Here is the cover art

[Stuart]

This'll be good Andrew - nice to see a Camel!

[VickersVandal]

Photobucket drives me up the wall too
I need to find a better picture web hosting service.
Anyway, muchly looking forward to seeing your Biggles camel take shape.

[AndrewR]

Right, Photobucket seems to have righted itself this morning, so an early start on the Labour Day holiday:



Two sprues, twenty-ish parts, lots of flash, injector pin marks in annoying places. Bring it on!



Biggles moulded onto his seat
Is nothing sacred?
The rack of 20 lb bombs encased in flash will be omitted!



Hubcaps for the wheels will make painting easier. The struts are flimsy and need sanding. Not my favourite combination.




Nothing to see inside. No surprises there.



Fit of the rudder looks bad. I'm not sure if the depth of the fuselage at the back is quite correct. We will see when the horizontal stabilizers get fitted.



The fit along the turtleback is okay, but throws the fit underneath off.



The engine. Oh dear!



Dihedral on the lower wing and none on the upper looks about right.
I have already removed injector pin marks from the top of the lower wings.

cheers

Andrew

[Stuart]

That looks like a challange - I'm sure you'll sort it by gad.

I have the same kit so I'll be watching with interest.

Cheers

Stuart

[AndrewR]

I say, the bally Revell pilot figure is so awful that I've decided to substitute this jolly good chappie from the Airfix Camel.



At least he doesn't have the seat moulded to his backside, don't you know?

Toodle Pip

[PaulBradley]

Interesting read, that book - better than some it has to be said. My parents brought me part of my old Biggles collection when they visited recently, and I've been reading them again - this was one of them.

[AndrewR]

And a quick wash of everything in some soapy water. A chap has to have a clean kite to fly around in.

[VickersVandal]

And a quick wash of everything in some soapy water. A chap has to have a clean kite to fly around in.

Good work, Smyth

[AndrewR]

A bit of sand primer sprayed around. I removed the large pegs which were supposed to support the cyborg pilot and chair. I am scratchbuilding a chair for Airfix Biggles to sit on, and I will mount this on the floor of the fuselage between the lower wings





In theory, I could do most of the painting with primers. I have sand, bronze green, white and dark grey. I need to paint red (over white primer) and wood (over sand primer). The engine and tyres I usually leave as the dark grey primer anyhow.

I considered chopping out the engine and replacing it with a spare one from the Roden Camel kit, which comes with three engines, but decided not too, as the cowling would need a lot of work. So I need to paint the engine a slightly lighter shade of grey than the background. I used the dark grey primer over the whole engine compartment as a first step.




And here's Airfix Biggles, in his prime with the wheels.



Finally, looking at the cover art again. The wooden panels around and to the sides of the cockpit seem to be missing. There are white stripes on either side of the cockpit too. I think I am going to put the wood panelling in as in real life. I may use decals for the white stripes.




cheers

Andrew

[AndrewR]

More priming after installing a home made seat on the floor of the cockpit. I also put an instrument panel in. I seem to have lost the machine gun pack from the kit.
I'm now making replacements!





Pretty close to putting the old kite together now.

[VickersVandal]

Powering along!

Nice work on the seat. I made replacement guns for my Airfix Camel using the Roden parts as a guide. They were fairly easy to make using plastic rod. I'm sure it will look far better than the Revell kit part.

[AndrewR]

Powering along!

Nice work on the seat. I made replacement guns for my Airfix Camel using the Roden parts as a guide. They were fairly easy to make using plastic rod. I'm sure it will look far better than the Revell kit part.

I found some Tom's Modelworks PE with Vickers bits on them. I'm using a few of them plus some rod to put something together.

[PaulBradley]

When researching my recent Camel build, it appeared that some Camels had that wood paneling overpainted with PC10.

[AndrewR]

When researching my recent Camel build, it appeared that some Camels had that wood paneling overpainted with PC10.

Good! That will save some masking. Thanks Paul.