1/32 Wingnut Wings Sopwith Pup RFC

Gallery Article by Rafi Ben-Shahar on Apr 26 2010

 

Building the Sopwith Pup confirmed a variety of superlatives attributed to Wingnut Wings' products. I quote Brett Green in his review summary to acknowledge what also I found during the build:

"Cleverly engineered for ease of assembly; modest parts count (not intimidating); outstanding (my it) representation of fabric, tape and general surface detail; high quality mouldings with fine sprue attachments; comprehensive decal sheet in perfect register with minimal carrier film, photo-etched seat belts; full-colour instruction booklet doubles as a one-stop reference."

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The building process works like a breeze, at least for the first half. The parts fit well together. You are practically spoon fed with the detailed instructions and accompanying illustrations and photographs. If you miss that, then some parts are engineered to fit the right way, Tamiya style. The fit of parts is tight and is similar to Eduard's recent WWII models. In a hind sight, after examining my photographs of the completed model, some putty is required but could have been spared if I had paid more attention when joining parts together.

Now, for the bad news; It is a WWI aircraft model. There is no way around it, which means:

  • Very delicate parts
  • Comprehensive wiring for control cables, engine ignition wires, and fuselage bracing wires. You may though, choose to skip this detailing phase without affecting the final appearance of the model.
  • You will do the majority of assembly work after the parts are painted and the model is weathered because this is the best way to gain the authentic look.
  • Wings assembly is tricky. Take a deep breath. All the struts broke in my first attempt and I had no choice but, revert to epoxy glue. Wings alignment is critical and does not fall in place. The reason is probably an engineering error from combining fuselage ribs and secondary struts in one piece. The result, a significant tendency of wings not to align properly with the main struts. Solution: separate (a kind word for break off) struts in parts A19 and A17 for later attachment.
  • No bracing wires supplied. I flattened copper wires to attain the desired RAF type support wires.
  • Although the rigging work is relatively not intensive for this type of aircraft, it may test your patience and endurance because of closely parallel wires across the wing and the abundance of control cables.

 
Final verdict; highly recommended, although I would guess that only experienced WWI aircraft modellers will benefit from the finesse of surface detail to enjoy the build.
 
I thank Wingnut Wings for the review sample.

Rafi Ben-Shahar

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Photos and text © by Rafi Ben-Shahar