Two Colourful Pups

Steve Schofield

I participated in the Sopwith Cookup this year, choosing to model Sopwith Pup C272, a 64 Sqn. training aircraft. I like the colour scheme, but with the Airfx 1:72 kit there was a lot of work needed!

The model was started on February 21, 2001.

First a major sanding operation removed all the heavy 'fabric' texture and most of the wing detail. This was achieved under water with 'wet and dry' paper. The resulting wings were then very thin and fragile looking.

Unfortunately, the top wing in the kit was now  badly twisted and I had to substitute one from the scrap heap - that's why one wing looks pre-painted.  I removed the flaps and the control horns from the top of the lower wing and the bottom of the top wing (they're not present on the real thing.)

The interior of the Airfix kit is non-existent, so I started to add a little detail from stretched sprue, rod, plastic sheet and some spare pedals from the Toko Salamander. Seat was from the kit,  straps were from pale brown painted Champagne foil. Various instruments were cut as small slivers from styrene tube, painted black and filled with Klear floor polish to simulate glass.

Undersurfaces were sprayed with Misterkit Clear Doped Linen  before assembling the main bits. Upper surfaces were brush painted with their PC10. Tamiya chrome silver for the front fuselage, lightly buffed with a soft cloth after a coat of Klear.

The decals were very thin and I took the time to cut discs and stripes from plain white decal sheet first. I used these to back the coloured decals so the Misterkit PC10 / CDL paint didn't show through. Woodwork was represented by translucent brush coats of red and yellow acrylic, greatly thinned with Klear polish, over the cream plastic of the kit.

The model was finally rigged with fishing trace (0.12") and lycra thread. I finished on the 24th October 2001, possibly the longest time I've spent finishing a model. That's nothing to do with the detail or complexity, but more to do with  a time-management crisis. I simply couldn't find the time to complete the model due to work commitments until the October half-term holidays. C'est la vie...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the decal sheet for C272 also contained chequerboard markings for another machine, so in a fit of building, I plugged another Airfix Pup together (this time without any detailing or modification to the kit) and slapped on the black and white decals, representing B 7575, a Whitehead built Pup used as a training aircraft at Montrose, 1918.

My thanks to all those members of the WW1 mailing list who lent a hand with the information needed to make the cockpit look busy, most notably Dave Fletcher and Neil Eddy. Ta muchly chaps.