French Sopwith Baby 1/72 kit bash

[stevehed]

Thought I would maintain the Gallic flavour with what I suppose is really a SACA. This was a spur of the moment build that revolved around the contents of my spares box. Most of us of a certain age will be familiar with the late Alan Hall’s Baby build in which he used the Airfix 504K as the donor kit. I have the article and for some years had a kit reserved for the conversion. Then a fellow modeller built a Sopwith Strutter on ATF. This was based on an article in the Airfix magazine, circa 1981, which used the RE8 and 504 as the donors. But instead of the 504 the front end of a Revell Sopwith Triplane was used and the substitution worked very well. Now at the time I had a Tripehound which had succumbed to some rather drastic sag of the wingtips and was destined for the spares box. Intrigued I wondered if the fuselage could be used in a Baby conversion. The Munson profiles which are handily 1/72 were more useful than the Airfix plans and comparison of the Revell fuselage to the profile indicated a bit of work, but compared to the 504 conversion in which the fuselage is cut into four or five pieces before rejoining three of them, it appeared to be the lesser evil by far. Something resembling a Baby looked plausible so work began.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234925484-sopwith-baby/






In a quirky kind of way I have grown to love this Baby. Its not the best looker in the room but it allowed me to reuse a kit heading for decades of oblivion in the spares box and find a use for a pair of Airfix Camel wings that had tips which had distorted in the moulding process. Also I think its easier than the 504 route.
Regards, Steve

[coyotemagic]

That's a gorgeous Baby, Steve!  I have a real soft spot in my heart for that little kite.  My first WWI kit bash was a 1/48 Eduard Baby and a Special Hobby Schneider.  http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47577&highlight=sopwith+baby
It was easy.  Yours looks a bit more challenging, making it all the more lovely.
Cheers,
Bud

[IanB]

Nicely done, definitely good use of a couple of old kits!

Ian

[lone modeller]

Excellent use of kits which would otherwise be destined for oblivion. I too remember the A Hall article (I intended to build it once but never got around to it), - you have done a really good job there and in interesting markings too. I think that it looks like a Baby and to me that would be good enough.

Stephen.

[stevehed]

Thanks Ian and Stephen. Bud, I found the Baby on a trawl of the site and it's marvellous. Thanks for the link which would have been a great help at the time. Don't know about the rest of you but I find the Archives on the Aerodrome very hard to fathom.

Regards, Steve

[coyotemagic]

Yeah.  Me, too, Steve.  As you may have noticed, I'm no longer welcomed there as coyotemagic.  "Shot down".  Regardless, your Baby conversion is brilliant.  Clearly no help was needed.  You can be really proud of that one.
Cheers,
Bud

[Des]

An excellent conversion Steve and a great use of two old kits, the end result is a stunning model.

Des.