This is a British S.E.5a flown by ace Mick Mannock (I think) in WW1. It was built in response to a group build on another site. Roden kits can be pretty challenging as I found but they're pretty good kits for an experienced modeller. They don't include pins or tabs to help position parts and I encountered a few sink marks on the bulkier parts...namely the cylinder banks of the engine which are visible. The decals were just awful. Very glossy (I hate that), thick and out of register. Some were replaced here with aftermarket ones by AeroMaster which are excellent. This kit came with three different turtle-decks, optional headrest and four different propellers...all of which point towards different versions of the aircraft. It's painted with Tamiya acrylics and rigged with stretched sprue. It was my first biplane in nearly two decades...it won't be my last. Roden kits are kinda interesting in that they offer an excellent range of WW1 aircraft, often several versions of the same type. At first glance, they look pretty bad if you're used to Tamiya or similar, but they're actually very well moulded and fit, surprisingly, is excellent. They have 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 models in their range. Decals universally suck though. Some kits feature lozenge camouflage in decal form as Whiterook well knows (
) and one would think that the requirement to cover the entire model with decal would spur them to improve that aspect of their kits. I've wondered about the availability of aftermarket lozenge camo decals but I don't know yet. The last pic is pretty bad quality but I include it for size reference.
S.E.5a b.jpg
S.E.5a c.jpg
S.E.5a d.jpg
Roden S.E.5a 3.jpg
Peace.