Sopwith Camel WWI RAF Fighter

Like the Academy Spad XIII, this is a good beginner plane because it is such a good price. It’s best used as a beginner’s plane, or a practice piece. It is simple to build, and the parts fit together pretty well, with only one major seam where the tail fits onto the back of the fuselage. The amount of work it would take to fix this hard to reach seam wasn’t worth it to me so I just left it. The seam from where the fuselage joined took a bit of fuss, but was no big deal. I did have to force the nose of the plane together and glue with CA glue to close the huge gap. This is apparently a common problem. The rib supports on the wings were too pronounced and they just looked like lines on plastic and not like ribs covered in cloth. I sanded these down to round them off and make them less pronounced and I think the kit looks much better for it. Also, some of the raised panel lines on the plane should be recessed, but are presented as raised lines. I used the point of my hobby knife to scribe lines on the fuselage using the raised lines as a guide for the knife. When I finished the scribing, I removed the raised lines leaving only the proper recessed lines. There was a small line of flash along some of the pieces easily taken care of with a hobby knife. Some of the parts were too small use sanding sticks and the like. The main problem with this kit is the decals. They are way too thick and didn’t form to the plane very well even after using Micro Set and multiple applications of Micro Sol. They are also too large and I had to trim the ones that are for the vertical stabilizer. Because of their thickness, they had tendency to silver on the edges. I trimmed some of those edges off to keep that from happening, but it wasn’t possible to do that for all the decals. The good thing about the decals is that they are robust, so not a bad choice for a youngster since they don’t tear easily. This kit isn’t bad for the money, but the decals situation makes it a very difficult, and at times frustrating, kit to build.