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WNW Sopwith Camel F.1 USAS

SdAufKla

Active member
So… I haven’t built a fully rigged biplane model since I was about 9 or 10 years old when I built the old Monogram Wright Flyer. Molded in color, IIRC, the rigging was done by lacing black sewing thread through the molded on rigging holes in the struts and wings. Well, that was back around 1970, so it’s been a while, to say the least.

I generally build armor, but occasionally I’ll do something else, either for the challenge, to learn some new skills or techniques or just because the subject is one that I’ve developed an interest in. In the case of this project, the WNW Sopwith Camel USAS, it’s a bit of all of the above.

boxart.jpg


I’ve got a mate in our local IPMS chapter who grew up in the upstate of South Carolina. Among his stories are some about a gent, Elliot White Springs, and his family. Not to stray too far from the topic of modeling, it’s enough to say that E.W. Springs was a WWI ace who started the war flying with the British in the S.E.5 and later transferred to the US Air Service where he flew in the Camel F.1. He was credited with about 17 kills (the exact number depends on the official source and how the kills were counted differently by the British and Americans).

After the war, he went on to author a number of novels on WWI and early aviation, and he was quite well known for this back in the interwar years. Later on, E.W. Springs took over his family’s textile firm, and for a long time in the '40s, '50s and '60s, he and his company were even more well known for their risque (for the times) advertising campaign that featured the “Spring Maid” girls (a play on their original slogan, “Spring Made”). Buxom, short skirts, very cheese cake, the “Spring Maids” were what every housewife wanted to be if she made up her beds using the sheets and pillow cases from the Springs textile mills.

springs.jpg

elliott-white-springs.jpg

imagesJFL7SXSB.jpg

springs_shirt.jpg


Anyways, with a resume like that, how could I resist the home team ace and entrepreneur, E.W. Springs’ Sopwith Camel F.1?

I’m no experienced WWI aircraft modeler, so I’ll avoid any attempt at adding to the many good reviews of the Wing Nut Wings kit. A simple 5 minute search online will turn up plenty of information about this kit and all of their other offerings. It really is too bad, though, that WNW has gone out of business. However, I suppose there’s hope that their kits will eventually be released. Clearly there’s demand and the kits are so well designed and engineered that they deserve to continue on.

At any rate, I started with the kit a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, since I’m no experienced aircraft modeler, I was too focused on trying to both learn some new techniques and materials while at the same time trying to figure out the best construction and finishing sequences. In sort, I was just to engaged with the work to stop and take any in-progress photos.

I did pretty much follow the sequence and build suggestions by the many WWI biplane modelers out there, so the work illustrated follows, I believe, the conventional approach used by others.

The bracing wires were done with 2# monofilament fishing line. The clevises were cut from .5 mm Albion brass tube. The eyelets were twisted from fine, approx 32 ga. copper wire.

Cockpit-Module-01.jpg



Cockpit-Module-02.jpg


The control wires were made with 3# monofilament fishing line with .4mm Albion tubing for the ferrules. I think if I was to do this again, I’d use Easy Line or the 2# monofilament for these. Although the instructions show the control lines as thicker in diameter than the bracing wires, the visual difference isn’t enough and the thicker mono was much harder to tension and work with.

Cockpit-Module-03.jpg

Cockpit-Module-04.jpg

Cockpit-Module-05.jpg


The seat belts are the HGW laser cut “fabric” belts. They’re really nice and easy to work with, but honestly, they don’t really look any better than the kit provided PE belts. So another lesson learned: Next time I’d just anneal, paint and use the PE belts.

Cockpit-Module-06.jpg


The kit’s Cartograph instrument decals were a perfect fit into the injection molded gages. No trimming needed at all. I did add the switch levers for the magnetos. I also replaced the lines to the airspeed indicator and pulsometer with wire. I have a piece of clear stretched sprue that I’ll add for the pulsometer bulb when I add some Future to the instrument faces.

Cockpit-Module-08.jpg


Cockpit-Module-09.jpg
Cockpit-Module-10.jpg

Cockpit-Module-11.jpg


I still have the bracing wires for the first two bays of the floor to add along with the clear parts and gloss on the gages, but these last two shots show the cockpit module test fitted into the fuselage haves. The gaps between the top edge of the fuselage opening and the interior framing are cause by some slight warping of the fuselage parts. These parts are molded pretty thin, though, and the gaps will close up with just a little finger squeeze. The famous WNW reputation for excellent parts fit is well deserved.

Cockpit-Test-Fit-01.jpg

Cockpit-Test-Fit-02.jpg


So… My hat’s off to all the guys and girls out there who regularly build fully-rigged biplanes! I was looking for a bit of a challenge and something new, and I can say that this rigging stuff is a “whole 'nuther kind of model building nuttiness”!

Now onto the fuselage interior…
 
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Beautiful, you have a future in this business!

Elliot White Springs was an American Indian, if I remember correctly.
 
Beautiful, you have a future in this business!

Elliot White Springs was an American Indian, if I remember correctly.
Thanks for the kind words.

You must be thinking about a different flyer. E.W. Springs was from "old money" southern families. His father's side had started and owned textile mills in South Carolina for a couple of generations and was very influential, both socially and politically, in the way "old money" families often are. His biological mother (who died when he was quite young) and his step mother (who was only a few years older than him - Spring's father remarried a much(!) younger woman) were also both from old wealthy southern families. I've read a number of works on Springs and there's no mention of any Native American ancestry in his family tree. (Possible, but none mentioned.)

He learned to fly after the war started while he was a student at Princeton as a member of the Princeton flying club, which received its instruction from US Army officer pilots. (This was before what we know of today as ROTC). All of the members of this club along with the members from a couple of other university flying clubs were inducted into the US Army and then sent to England to finish their training and then fly in British squadrons to gain experience. Springs actually earned his "ace" status flying with the British in the SE5. Once the AEF arrived in France and the USAS squadrons were established, these US flying officers, to include Springs and his close pilot friends from the Harvard flying club, were all transferred back to US squadrons.

Interestingly enough, among the Ivy League "flying clubs," Princeton's trained US Army pilots while Yale's trained USN pilots.

After the war, Springs wrote several aviation adventure novels and was quite well known as an aviation author. His book writing career was over the interlude between the war and when his father finally convinced him to come work in the family business. Like many young men, he was quite rebellious and very critical of his father and step mother. At the time of his war service, he was very much affected by the attitudes of his British comrade flyers and officers and culturally torn between his brash American heritage and the British sang froid, which he greatly admired and tried to emulate. His father was very much against his choosing the air corps for his military service (because the life expectancy of pilots was sooo very short). Springs, himself, was actually very surprised to survive, and after the war suffered from some pretty serious PTSD. During the war, Springs had a very contentious relationship with father and step mother over their pride in his accomplishments and how that pride played out in the society circles they ran in, and his own desire to keep the details about his flying career private.

His most well known book, "War Birds: The Diary of an Unknown Aviator," is perhaps his most famous and controversial work. He was accused of plagiarizing the wartime diary of one of his fellow aviators and very good friends, Lt. Grinder, who was killed in action. Springs actually published the book anonymously, but later when his authorship was discovered and made public, Grinder's family sued him. Springs claimed that he only ever wanted to portray the true nature of the war for his cohort of fellow pilots while allowing the work to speak for them all and not any specific man. A detailed analysis of the book shows that it was a combination of material almost certainly taken from Grinder's diary along with mostly original material from Springs. Springs settled the suit by adding Grinder's name as co-author and refusing to accept any royalties for it.

Multiple combat ace, respected and famous author, and a very successful businessman... E.W. Springs was a guy I would have loved to have met and shared a few icy cold adult beverages with!
 
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Gorgeous. You're really doing this proud. I think the USAS Camel is the only one I didnt get. Love the seat and the wood work.
James
 
Local boy makes good!
Have you ever read about John Henry "Luke" Williamson out of Greenwood Co?

Great start Mike, love the rigging so far.
 
Excellent start Mike!

Looks Good GIF.gif


I have a slew of WNW kits in my stash and am building my skills before doing anything to one of them. Might try the MengNut triplane as it is also a wingnut designed kit. As to the kits being released again, I know the molds exist, it will just depend on who ends up with them.
 
Local boy makes good!
Have you ever read about John Henry "Luke" Williamson out of Greenwood Co?

Great start Mike, love the rigging so far.

Had to look Williamson up! Seems like he was the real deal!

Here's another snap of E.W. Springs later in his life posing with one of his personal planes on his private airstrip at the family farm outside of Ft. Mill, SC. I've heard that he kept a collection of aircraft for his personal use.

elliott_springs_5.jpg
 
So… I haven’t built a fully rigged biplane model since I was about 9 or 10 years old when I built the old Monogram Wright Flyer. Molded in color, IIRC, the rigging was done by lacing black sewing thread through the molded on rigging holes in the struts and wings. Well, that was back around 1970, so it’s been a while, to say the least.

I generally build armor, but occasionally I’ll do something else, either for the challenge, to learn some new skills or techniques or just because the subject is one that I’ve developed an interest in. In the case of this project, the WNW Sopwith Camel USAS, it’s a bit of all of the above.

View attachment 132471

I’ve got a mate in our local IPMS chapter who grew up in the upstate of South Carolina. Among his stories are some about a gent, Elliot White Springs, and his family. Not to stray too far from the topic of modeling, it’s enough to say that E.W. Springs was a WWI ace who started the war flying with the British in the S.E.5 and later transferred to the US Air Service where he flew in the Camel F.1. He was credited with about 17 kills (the exact number depends on the official source and how the kills were counted differently by the British and Americans).

After the war, he went on to author a number of novels on WWI and early aviation, and he was quite well known for this back in the interwar years. Later on, E.W. Springs took over his family’s textile firm, and for a long time in the '40s, '50s and '60s, he and his company were even more well known for their risque (for the times) advertising campaign that featured the “Spring Maid” girls (a play on their original slogan, “Spring Made”). Buxom, short skirts, very cheese cake, the “Spring Maids” were what every housewife wanted to be if she made up her beds using the sheets and pillow cases from the Springs textile mills.

View attachment 132472
View attachment 132473
View attachment 132474
View attachment 132475

Anyways, with a resume like that, how could I resist the home team ace and entrepreneur, E.W. Springs’ Sopwith Camel F.1?

I’m no experienced WWI aircraft modeler, so I’ll avoid any attempt at adding to the many good reviews of the Wing Nut Wings kit. A simple 5 minute search online will turn up plenty of information about this kit and all of their other offerings. It really is too bad, though, that WNW has gone out of business. However, I suppose there’s hope that their kits will eventually be released. Clearly there’s demand and the kits are so well designed and engineered that they deserve to continue on.

At any rate, I started with the kit a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, since I’m no experienced aircraft modeler, I was too focused on trying to both learn some new techniques and materials while at the same time trying to figure out the best construction and finishing sequences. In sort, I was just to engaged with the work to stop and take any in-progress photos.

I did pretty much follow the sequence and build suggestions by the many WWI biplane modelers out there, so the work illustrated follows, I believe, the conventional approach used by others.

The bracing wires were done with 2# monofilament fishing line. The clevises were cut from .5 mm Albion brass tube. The eyelets were twisted from fine, approx 32 ga. copper wire.

View attachment 132476


View attachment 132477

The control wires were made with 3# monofilament fishing line with .4mm Albion tubing for the ferrules. I think if I was to do this again, I’d use Easy Line or the 2# monofilament for these. Although the instructions show the control lines as thicker in diameter than the bracing wires, the visual difference isn’t enough and the thicker mono was much harder to tension and work with.

View attachment 132478
View attachment 132479
View attachment 132480

The seat belts are the HGW laser cut “fabric” belts. They’re really nice and easy to work with, but honestly, they don’t really look any better than the kit provided PE belts. So another lesson learned: Next time I’d just anneal, paint and use the PE belts.

View attachment 132481

The kit’s Cartograph instrument decals were a perfect fit into the injection molded gages. No trimming needed at all. I did add the switch levers for the magnetos. I also replaced the lines to the airspeed indicator and pulsometer with wire. I have a piece of clear stretched sprue that I’ll add for the pulsometer bulb when I add some Future to the instrument faces.

View attachment 132482

View attachment 132483View attachment 132484
View attachment 132485

I still have the bracing wires for the first two bays of the floor to add along with the clear parts and gloss on the gages, but these last two shots show the cockpit module test fitted into the fuselage haves. The gaps between the top edge of the fuselage opening and the interior framing are cause by some slight warping of the fuselage parts. These parts are molded pretty thin, though, and the gaps will close up with just a little finger squeeze. The famous WNW reputation for excellent parts fit is well deserved.

View attachment 132486
View attachment 132487

So… My hat’s off to all the guys and girls out there who regularly build fully-rigged biplanes! I was looking for a bit of a challenge and something new, and I can say that this rigging stuff is a “whole 'nuther kind of model building nuttiness”!

Now onto the fuselage interior…
Beautiful work.

EJ
 
OH WOW! This is freaking outstanding!
:tens::wow::blink
Thanks for the props! Since I've started working on the fuselage and cockpit decking I've discovered some areas that needed additional painting (along the top edges of the framing) and have added some more bracing wires. I also found a fit problem with the MG receivers and the forward decking. Most of these issues come from my inexperience in general with biplane kits. I'm having to learn as I go about how the parts fit together and what should be the best sequence for construction and finishing.

I had just planned to add the floor bracing wires under the two front truss bays, but after checking some more reference photos and test fitting the fuselage and cockpit decking, you can see through the gravity tank fuel filler hole in the decking, and the missing brace wires would be obvious. Since I didn't want to put too much side to side tension on the cockpit subassembly, I used elastic EZ line for these wires. The ferrules at the ends can't be seen, though, so I simply drilled holes in the framing and passed the EZ line directly through those.

I also wasn't really happy with the diagonal supported brace wires (outside of the forwardmost truss bays) which I couldn't get tensioned enough to take the bow out of the monofilament. So, I replaced those wires with more EZ line.

Finally, I found that I had to trim about 1/4-1/3 off the tops of the leather pads on the rear ends of the Vickers MG receivers. I think the fit could have been improved just a smidge if I had glued these on as low down on the receiver ends as possible, but even then there would have been some clearance issues with the forward decking. In the end, in addition to trimming the pads down, I also had the significantly thin the undersides of the decking piece over the locations of the pads, so I'm not sure what is wrong. WNW has such a well-known reputation for fit that I'm reluctant to blame them, but I can't really see where I made any error in following the instructions or preparing the parts for assembly.... Still, my inexperience with biplane kits in general can't be ruled out.

At any rate, an option would be to simply leave the pads off of the receivers since they were not universally used. In fact, there are suggestions that E.W. Springs didn't have them on his plane since he spent a few weeks in hospital and convalescing after a crash landing where he smashed his face and head into the back ends of the MG's.

I've also figured out that I should go ahead and paint the cabane struts now, so that's another slight deviation from my plans. The cabane struts also have some rigging eyelets that should be added along with the lines that run between the cockpit and the wing for the pitot tubes.

Any way, I'm muddling along, but not making as much progress on the fuselage as I had expected with having to do more work on the cockpit subassembly. Hopefully I'll have some more in-progress pics to add soon.
 
I have not built the Camel, probably the Pup, but I've used those guns on another build, can't recall which and found later in the instructions I was using the wrong leather pads. Just a heads up, they do include other parts for other kits in these boxes. I know you wouldn't fall into that rookie mistake but sometimes instructions are wrong.

You keep this up I'll never build another WNW again...:popcorn
 
I have not built the Camel, probably the Pup, but I've used those guns on another build, can't recall which and found later in the instructions I was using the wrong leather pads. Just a heads up, they do include other parts for other kits in these boxes. I know you wouldn't fall into that rookie mistake but sometimes instructions are wrong.

You keep this up I'll never build another WNW again...:popcorn
LOL! Well... You did make me go look!

One of my references on building WNW kits does mention multiple kit options for the Vickers MG pads (included in other kits), but the USAS kit, 32072, only provides one set of them, parts D23. However, just in case they're in the kit but not called out, I did carefully check all of the sprues, but no joy.

The kit does provide two options for the Vickers MG, one pair with the Sopwith-Kauper interrupter gear (parts A7) and one pair with the Constantinesco synchronizer gear (parts A5). There are also decal options that use both. However, only one set of padding parts (D23).

A very (VERY!) close examination (under magnification, no less!) of the illustration in the instruction booklet, bottom of page 4, does suggest that the pads should be attached lower than I did, so the mistake is almost certainly mine.

I would submit, though, that the padding is most appropriate for one of the kit marking options that also have the cut-away cockpit decking and coaming (modify part B7 by cutting the appropriate area away and then adding part A33). These modified planes exposed the rear ends of the MG receivers which in the un-modified planes are tucked up under the cockpit decking with the coaming padding still protecting the pilot. Basically, in the unmodified planes (one of which I'm building) the MG receiver padding really serves no purpose.

If I built this same kit and markings again, I would leave the receiver padding off. With any one of the options with the cut away decking, though, I'd add the pads. Such are the things that experience is built upon!

LOL! It's stuff like this that keeps ya coming back for more, tho! No such thing as the perfect build that I'd repeat exactly the same with not even a single small change!

Cheers!
 
If you use nylon fishing line for the brace wires you can fit it pretty slack then wave a soldering iron tip near it and the heat tensions the line, that way you can set it as tight as you like ? otherwise as you tension each line the previous ones will go slack and you will be chasing your tail :)


FE2bFinished (8).JPG



FinishedBrisfit2.jpg


As you can se i am much more in my element with aircraft over tanks :cool:
 
If you use nylon fishing line for the brace wires you can fit it pretty slack then wave a soldering iron tip near it and the heat tensions the line, that way you can set it as tight as you like ? otherwise as you tension each line the previous ones will go slack and you will be chasing your tail :)

Good advice. I'll have to build a little fixture to test to see how that works and get a feel for the technique. As I understand it, there's a brief moment between the heat making the line sag then tighten and using too much heat a causing it to break.

I've read about this technique before along with similar suggestions to use something like a smoldering incense stick - pass the stick under the line and watch the smoke rise to judge the direction of the hot air - or light a match then blow it out and use the glowing ember on its end with its smoke in the same way.

On your photos, what did you use for the control lines? Some of them look like elastic polyester lines. I can see already on the Sopwith Camel kit that the molded control arms are all too small / fine on their tip ends to even consider trying to use monofilament to rig them. Right now my intention is to use EZ line or Infini Models line (depending on the size needed). Any tips on dealing with these?

Cheers!
 
If you use a constant heat source like a soldering iron you very quickly get to learn about the distance and keeping the iron under the line for example and its all constant . If you use something thats cooling straight away it will not hold heat long enough to do a run of more than an inch or so. I actually have a soldering iron with variable temp so thats ideal. I think you will struggle to do wing rigging with a match without burning through some wire trying to get to others as its all against the clock as the match cools.
All the line, bracing and control are the same fishing line but if you want controls to look heavier just run a brush down them with thinned black paint and they thicken up like eye lash mascara :).
 
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