This has been whispering quietly to me for the last few days and I finally decided to dig it out and take a closer look.
I've built one other MAC kit, the Fokker D.VII, and I seem to remember it went together fairly well. I replaced the engine and struts but don't recall any other issues.
I suppose I'd better follow tradition and start with "what's in the box"...
First off, the two parts trees.
The detail looks pretty good. Nice crisp mouldings. A bit of flash on the mould joint lines but nothing major.
All that moulded rib detail will be removed anyway as it's overdone, and even on the wing undersides!
There are also a couple of resin Lewis guns, a small etch sheet and a clear piece for the windscreen and instrument panel (which is wrong anyway!)
Decals look good, with 4 options included
I want an early RNAS aircraft so will either do 1250 as included
or 1244 as seen in this pic
Both were at Eastchurch in June 1915 and there are pics of both in the Windsock datafile. The kit shows 1250 with an over wing Lewis but the photo doesn't and since I want something "accurate but representative" I will probably go for 1244 and fit a Lewis to the right side of the fuselage firing at 30° off the centre line, as fitted to quite a few RNAS aircraft. It isn't visible in the photo, but then neither is the right side so no-one can say it wasn't there!
That will mean I will have to make either decals or masks for the tail numbers, and I will also have to do the same for the roundals as the photo clearly shows them full chord, and with no white centre, just a thin white ring around both inner and outer edges of the red ring. The kit roundals are too small and have a solid white centre.
OK, so onto the parts themselves. I've already mentioned that I will remove all the moulded rib details, as I don't like that look, although it is moulded in the right places so it could be acceptable for others.
What about size?
Both upper and lower wings are slightly short (3mm, about 21cm in full size) so I will add fillets to the tips to correct that.
The fuselage is also slightly short. The error appears to be in the rear fuselage so I'll probably cut it at the rear decking once it's all glued together and add a small fillet to correct the length. There is also a moulded line just forward of the tail which shouldn't be there so it will be filled. It looks as though MAC have mistaken the front horizontal stabilizer strut for a fuselage join line!
The tail parts are nicely sized, but again have overdone rib detail. They are also quite thick so I'll replace them with sheet stock as I usually do.
The engine is not too bad, especially as it's almost entirely hidden in the cowling. But it's the wrong engine! Early machines had a 7 cylinder Gnôme, not a 9 cylinder Le Rhone! I raided a Sikorsky S.XVI kit for the correct engine (that aircraft did have a 9 cylinder Le Rhône and I already have a Small Parts replacement for it so I won't need it there!).
That will do the trick!
The cowling will also need adjusting slightly as the earlier ones were more rounded at the front. It should be an easy fix.
Eventually I took sanding sticks to plastic and the wings are done.
There are 2 upper wings in the kit, one with a centre cut-out for a Lewis mounting and one without, so these are comparing the unaltered one with the one I've done.
Unfortunately the lower wings are far too thin now I've removed the rib detail so I'll scratch new ones from card. Odd that they were different thicknesses!
That's the state of play for now, thanks for looking in!
Stay safe!
Ian
