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Kit: Eduard (1:72)
Couple of pics of the Eduard 1/72nd Nieuport 17 in progress. Seat back is from Tom's Modelworks etched set; belts are from Eduard pre-painted French WWI set; a few scratchbuilt bits.
Rigging is stretched sprue, prop carved from wood, paint is Polly S "Metalline" Aluminum with the cowling & forward rudder stripe an Xtracolour Roundel Blue/USN Blue mix. Decals are from Americal/Gryphon. I managed to piece together the tail codes from their No. 1 Sqn. sheet but I had to hand paint the red surrounds as AG printed these the same size as the black numbers which kind of defeats the purpose!
Kit: Roden (1:72)
Update from Andy: Finally finished that 1/72nd scale SE5a I started eons ago - pics attached.
Prop is carved from wood with a p/e boss from Extratech, rigging is stretched sprue. Pulley inspection panels were cut out, the bottoms (or top in the case of the top wing) were covered with .005" sheet and the clear covering is decal film. The pulleys are punched from .015" sheet. This is a big improvement on the horrible black & white decals Roden supply for these panels!
Markings are from Americal Gryphon's No. 1 Sqn. sheet which was very disappointing. All the fuselage codes & serial numbers were printed too large so I picked aircraft "Y" which was the easiest to trim to size, though there wasn't much I could do about the serial number. The white outlines on the roundels were out of register so I substituted some from Pegasus, though these were not without their problems either being very brittle and somewhat translucent. I overlaid the white centres with some white backing circles from Fantasy Printshop which mostly solved the translucency problem.
Couple of in-progress pics of my Roden 1/72nd SE5a. Used part of an Eduard p/e set intended for the old Revell kit which works fine in Roden's kit.
Kit: Roden (1:32)
I feel a sense of loyalty to Roden. Long before that New Zealand upstart was even a glint in a certain film director's eye, Roden was quietly amassing an extensive catalogue of WWI aircraft kits in all the popular scales. Sure, some of their efforts aren't quite as nice as Wingnuts are and they may not fall together as easily, but Roden held fast to an era that most manufacturers wouldn't touch with a barge pole at the time and for that they deserve our thanks and our patronage. The last time I built a 1/32 scale kit I was about 15 so I'm pleased that it was a Roden kit that got me back into large scale after all these years. I'm still mainly a 1/72 fan, but I'm sure an occasional foray into other "lesser" scales won't kill me. I added some cockpit detail and reworked the kit engine a bit. Rigging is RB Productions etched RAF wire which I think looks much better than the flat elastic marketed by WNW. Kit decals are a bit brittle but otherwise went on okay. Paint is Polly Scale PC10 which looks a bit too bright and too green to me so I threw about 10% red/brown into it to tone it down a bit. Linen areas are Xtracolour and Humbrol Coal Black was used on the cowling, metal panels, fin and wheel covers. The Vickers guns are from Gaspatch and are absolutely stunning. Prop is carved from thin mahogany and oak veneers laminated together, the boss was carefully sliced off the kit prop, sanded down paper thin and painted Testors Metalizer steel.