Roden 1/32 RAF SE5a w/Hispano Suiza By Mike O'Hare

Introduction

While the Sopwith Camel may be the most famous British airplane from the Great War, the Royal Aircraft Factory’s SE.5a was arguably the more significant one. Flown by numerous aces and scoring countless kills, it truly was a cornerstone of the Allied air effort.

Because of this, it’s nice to see the subject matter get some 1/32 love. Roden have already released excellent kits of the type in both 1/72 and 1/48, with both Wolseley Viper and Hispano Suiza engined versions in each scale. They released the Viper-engined version in 1/32 a few months ago, so this kit fills the final major gap for plastic modelers.

The Kit

Typical of most Roden kits, the sprues are shot in khaki plastic. Detail is quite respectable: you get a full engine, nice plastic guns, decent cockpit detail and nicely restrained wing ribbing. Once again, Roden provide an excellent base for a super detailed engine, which will be completely invisible on the finished model. There are actually two crankcase assemblies, the Viper parts being marked ‘not for use’. The Viper-style prop is also included as an extra but sadly the model can only be completed as a Hisso-engined plane, as the small Viper-specific radiator/cowling sprue is not in the box. Still, the spare crankcase may have some use in displays. Additional extras include both long- and short-chord tail planes, US-style cowl (with Vickers bulge/scoop), long and short style exhausts and both the Viper and Hisso-style wing gun railing – Hispano Suiza equipped SE5a’s had slightly higher gun mounts, and Roden replicate this faithfully. Nice. The pilot’s headrest is an optional attachment, meaning the builder is able to depict subjects both with and without this feature. Exhaust shrouds are similarly included for night-fighter planes.

Molding is well done throughout. Roden still aren’t up to Tamiya or Eduard crispness, and some small details are a tad hazy, but this really only manifests itself on the British style cowling and on the occasional hinge detail. Additionally, I wish Roden had done something to simulate the rib tapes, as these are surprisingly prominent on the SE.5a. This is easy to remedy with paint, however. A bigger complaint is with the sink marks – the kit suffers some in a few really tricky to fix locations. You can see one on the landing gear close-up, and there are some particularly nasty ones in the prop. A little filler and some careful sanding should take care of them, but they are annoying nonetheless. On the plus side, the instrument panel is nicely rendered, as is the rest of the cockpit detail. The seat, in particular, has a nice texturing. The guns and ammo drums are also well executed.

My biggest complaint with the kit, however, is how Roden handled the access panels on the wings and tailplanes. The SE.5a has clear, acetate panels in the corners of these surfaces, allowing ground crews to see inside the control lines and pulleys inside in the wings. Roden’s wings are solid, with a raised, triangular border around the ‘panels’, and they would have the modeler simply apply cheesy looking decals over top – white triangles with black lines meant to look, kind-of, sort-of, like the pulleys. I thought this looked weak when I built the 1/72 kit. In 1/32, it’s very toy-like, and borderline inexcusable. The solution? Not easy: if you have a mill, it wouldn’t be too hard to hog out those triangles, add a semblance of pulley detail and then skin the top with some thin acetate. Us normal modelers without a milling machine will have to drill through the wings to remove the whole triangular area, then re-skin the lower surfaces with sheet styrene. Which wouldn’t be TOO hard itself, except that the areas in question run into the wing rib details, so may look a little too flat on the finished model. It’s an area I intend to deal with in my build… I’m just not quite sure how.

Accuracy

In general, accuracy is very good; the only truly noticeable errors are two small teardrop bulges missing from the bottom of the upper wing. There’s a flat, raised detail in the kit which the instructions would have you paint PC10, but they should actually be proper bulges. Simple fix with some styrene stock, or even scrap sprue. The kit parts were laid against some enlarged drawings from the Windsock Datafile special, and no major complaints were visible, though there are a few minor discrepancies. If you’re the kind of modeler who isn’t fussed with being out a millimeter here or there, skip to the next section.

First off, to scale the drawings, I scanned them, cropped to the length/span in Photoshop, then re-sized the cropped images to (1/32) the published dimensions for the plane, before finally printing the drawings off. So I’m perfectly willing to accept that I may have introduced some slight dimensional errors by this process. Further, while Windsock’s drawings are generally well regarded in the WWI modeling community, I make no assertions that they are without fault. I’m simply comparing what is probably the best 1/32 SE.5a, with what most people would consider the best scale drawings of the type.

Generally things are pretty good. The wings are about 1.5mm too broad in span, but fine in chord. The wing tips look a teeny bit too curved to my eye, but it’s hard to quantify because of the dihedral. The pilot’s cutout on the upper wings is ‘wrong’ – kit parts are a little too curvy (see photo). The tailplanes are about 1mm too wide on either side, but this shouldn’t be noticeable on the finished model. Fuselage length looks spot on. The fuselage itself is about ½ mm to 1mm too tall. More of a concern is the leading edge of the tail, which is too curved, lacking the subtle-yet-distinctive square top. A bit of plastic card should solve the problem, however. The only other accuracy issue worth correcting is the tail skid, which is about 1mm too tall. This pushes the skid itself down too far, and the leading edge too far forward. Simple fix, though: just saw the skid off the fuselage half, sand 1mm off the cut line and re-attach.

Markings

The included decals cover four schemes: Gwilym Hugh’s mount with black and white painted engine louvers and large ‘K’ markings on wings and fuselage; RS Dallas’ aircraft, overpainted in camouflage; a London Air Defence aircraft with low-vis roundels; and the oft-seen generic Australian Flying Corps plane with white kangaroo on a red fuselage stripe. With the exception of Dallas’ plane, all aircraft are in the standard PC10 over doped linen finish. The decals themselves look fine – crisply printed and opaque.

Conclusion

All in all, it looks to be another excellent offering. If you have built any of Roden’s kits recently (excluding the He-111), you will have a good idea of what to expect from this one. It provides the intermediate builder or WWI newcomer a solid basis to churn out a nice looking, nicely detailed model, and while advanced builders will be able to transform it into a super detailed masterpiece.

Thanks to Roden for the review sample.