Roden 1/72 Curtiss H-16 By Paul Schwartzkopf

The Model

The Curtiss H-16 was basically the Felixstowe F.2A built by Curtiss under license. The main difference was the powerplants. The Felixstowe used Rolls Royce engines, while the Curtiss used American 400 hp Liberty engines. When Roden released the F.2A, common conjecture was that the H-16 wasn't far behind. It wasn't.

I decided to build this kit straight out of the box. As it is somewhat of a complicated kit, I wanted to show that you don't necessarily have to super detail a model to have a decent shelf display.

I jumped ahead in the directions and started with the cockpit interior. There isn't a lot of detail provided, other than seats for the pilots and front gunner, rudder pedals and control wheels. There are some ammo boxes for the rear gunner. I painted the interior with a wood color and added brown "graining" by streaking it with a water color pencil. I left the two side guns off, deciding I would break them off during assembly.

The interior was glued into the fuselage, and the two halves were glued up. I found that the mounting pins for front gunner's seat were too wide, so I cut them off and added a scrap of sprue under the seat and attached it to the floor.

The gunners scarf rings and Lewis guns were assembled. These are very delicate mechanisms. Beware of the gun sights when you cut the guns from the sprue, as they can easily be broken off. The scarf rings were painted a medium gray, with steel used for the guns.

I then started on the wing assemblies. As each wing is made up of three parts and only "butt-jointed" together, I decided to drill two small holes in each joint and use brass rod as pins for strength. Upper wing ailerons were also glued on. Once the lower wings were glued up, I attached them to the fuselage and glued on the fuselage top. Fit here was poor. I had to do a fair amount of sanding to get the top flush with the sides. Note also that the slots for mounting the wings will need to be cleaned up to let the wing assembly fit properly. The side mounted gun doors also needed to be sanded and adjusted to get them to fit in the closed positions.

At that point, I added the tail surfaces (with bracing) and the wing floats. I positioned the elevators in a relaxed position. As I had decided not to add the extensive rigging, I filled all the holes for the control horns and associated rigging. The model was then painted gray overall, as I had decided to build the American version that was based at Lough Foyle in 1918. When dry, I painted the bracing black, as indicated by the instructions.

The dreaded engine assemblies were now started. Each engine contains roughly 40 parts that are either an engine or mounting part. I had considerable trouble cutting many of them off the sprue and cleaning them up due to the small size. The instructions are also lacking a clear explanation for attaching many of them. You can deduce that for the most part by looking at the parts during a dry run, but this isn't always the case.

I assembled each engine, then painted them. It was a painstaking process, but I thought it would be better to get the parts glued prior to painting. Various shades of gray and metallic colors were used. The exhausts were drilled out and painted with Model Master Rust. I painted the radiators using a brass color. The mounting framework was done in black.

The model was given a coat of Model Master Acrylic Gloss. I used the kit decals for everything except the fuselage roundels, as they were printed off center. Decal quality is still lacking in Roden's kits. I used a couple of Micro Scale roundels for the fuselage. The kit's roundels and numbers did lay down pretty good, but there is still some silvering. The rudder stripes were very brittle, and care had to be observed when trimming them. They did not react at all with Solvaset. I had to cut them back somewhat from the edges on each side and do some touch up painting.

After that, I used Model Master Acrylic Flat on the entire model. Now came the part I was apprehensive about-adding the top wing. I had a fair amount of problems doing this. Roden instructs you to glue the wings up first before mounting to the fuselage (which in hind sight, maybe I should have tried doing). I found that the wings are long, heavy, and have a lot of drooping to them. It wasn't easy to get the struts attached in a perpendicular arrangement because of the drooping. Having 14 individual struts also didn't make it easy. Eventually, I got it attached and mounted the engines. The engine mounts weren't high enough to reach the upper wing, so I had to add several small "fillers" to the mounts. The upper wing stabilizers were also now added.

I used the four-bladed props for this version (two-bladed ones are also provided). They are in two pieces, and need to be assembled. Fit wasn't too bad. They were then painted using the instruction sheet as a guide.

I used the four-bladed props for this version (two-bladed ones are also provided). They are in two pieces, and need to be assembled. Fit wasn't too bad. They were then painted using the instruction sheet as a guide.

Final assembly consisted of assembling the beaching cradle, and attaching the gun rings and windshield. The windshield is way too thick and also too wide for the fuselage, with a rather poor fit. I broke the tiny propellers for the wind driven generators mounted in front of the rear gun position when trying to cut them from the sprue-I am currently working on replacements.

Conclusion

The H-16 kit is definitely not for beginners. I found many of the small parts nearly impossible to remove from the sprue. Clean up went largely undone, as it was then very difficult to hold the parts and work on them. Fit is poor in many places, and the instructions are also hard to follow and inadequate in many steps. Decals should be tossed out and replaced.

On the positive, the detail of the plastic parts is very good. The Lewis guns are sharply done, and the engine detail is almost unbelievable. There are some rigging instructions for those willing to tackle that job. Every successive Roden kit I have assembled seems to get better. I don't think it will be too long before they have everything together, and be producing kits right up there with Tamiya, Eduard, and Hasegawa. The detailing is there; all they have to do is improve the fit and instructions. I would recommend this for experienced modelers only.

Thanks to Roden for providing the review sample.