Re: Comments on the old Smer

Bill Shatzer (bshatzer@ednet1.osl.or.gov)
Sun, 26 Nov 1995 19:44:28 -0800

>
>
>
>On Sun, 26 Nov 1995, Charles Hart wrote:
>
>>
>> I would appreciate hearing how accuate anyone else found other kits in
>> this series. Has anyone compared the Ansaldo SVA with the Datafile.
>
>The SVA kit surpisingly enough compares well with the Datafile drawings.
>The only big discrepency is the tailplane which is too small in area.
>
>The wings are kind of weird. In cross-section they have no chord shape.
>Simply a curved piece of uniformly thick plastic.
>
>Has anyone built this kit?
>
>--Jesse
>
Yes, although it was -quite- sometime ago. I concur in the comments about
the size of the tailplane. Also, the wings have _no_ dihedral and
the landing gear is a tad (well, more than a tad actually) too long
which causes the a/c to sit at a kinda funny angle. There were a
couple of fit problems, especially at the wing/fuselage join and
I seem to remember something of a struggle to get the struts set up
and positioned correctly.

But, considering the age of the molds, all in all not a bad effort.
With some work, it builds up into a nice enough looking model to
impress the non-WW1 types at the local model club although it probably
wouldn't survive close inspection by real WW1 buffs or bring home
much hardware from a regional. Although, I think if I did it again,
I could clean up some of the general 'clunkiness' better and add more
detailing and maybe have a more competitive model. 'Course now
I'd be competing against Eduards and DML's so it still probably wouldn't
stand a chance. Still, not a _bad_ kit.

'Course I built this kit during that vast dry period after the demise
of Aurora when there were _no_ quarter scale WW1 aircraft available at
all 'cept for the occassional SMER's which dribbled in from Czechoslovakia
and the old Aurora's and K&B's which showed up occassionally at inflated
prices so I may have been more forgiving of the kit's faults than is
really warranted.

Cheers,

--
Bill Shatzer - bshatzer@ednet1.osl.or.gov (soon to be bshatzer@orednet.org)
-or- aw177@Freenet.Carleton.ca -