Back about 4 years ago, when I first came back to the hobby, this photo caught my eye.
I thought it, by far, the most beautiful Camel I had ever seen and wanted desperately to build it in 1/48 scale. I had seen it built by Karen Rychlewski, an extraordinary modeler from West Virginia, using a conversion kit from Lone Star Models. Full of anticipation, I dashed off an email to Mike West only to find that the Camel Comic conversion kit was not longer available. I fiddled around with a few conversion attempts, chopping up an Eduard fuselage, trying out various upper decking modifications, but was never really satisfied. Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, Colin Strachan, owner of Freightdog Hobbies, sent me a resin conversion kit he had been working on. I guess I must have made a pest of myself on the 'drome, asking all sorts of silly questions about seat type and location, fuel and oil tank location, paint color, instrumentation and the like, to the point where Colin took pity on me and sent me this marvelous little gem of a kit. The kit is quite complete with a full fuselage with head rest, a pair of Foster mounts and Lewis guns, Holt flares, nav lights, and frames for the wind screen and Fosters. I made a vague promise to Colin that I would review the kit, but never really got around to it and for that I am sorry, Colin. Hopefully, I can make up for it with this build log. I've been working on it feverishly and reckoned I'd better put some photos up before I got too far along.
Here's a shot Colin sent me of some of the kit parts before sending the kit.
I started painting the interior as soon as I got the kit, blowing my chance of showing the parts in the raw, then let it languish for a couple years.
While working on Monington's D.VII, this kit started calling to me from the stash pile, so I hauled it out and decided to finish her. First off, I wasn't all that keen on using the Eduard seat, so I worked up a Lone Star resin wicker seat I had in the parts bin. There were a few air bubbles that I had to patch with green stuff, then I sanded off the backing of the open section of wicker.
Then some paint.
Here's a really crappy photo of the instrument panel and rudder bar. It's blurry because I was moving so fast.