Omega Models 1/72 SPAD S.A.2 By Pedro Nuno Soares

Introduction

As part of the multi kit build up review of the SPAD SA 2, I was entrusted with the task of putting together the Omega Models offering that was first looked upon by fellow modeller and contributor Matt Bittner. As such I won't dwell into the story of this strange approach to a fighter aircraft concept, since it has been already covered. Suffice to say my admiration for those intrepid soldiers who sat in the small pulpit is enormous and if in real life to carry out such a task was always an act of the utmost courage, that courage must surely be in direct proportion with the amount of patience you have to conjure up to get Omegas' kit to shelf display status.

Prior to starting the assembly, I thoroughly washed the parts with a mild detergent to eliminate what vestiges there might be of the mould release agent. Next step I took was to prepare the main parts, carefully cutting them off with a jewellers saw or a sharp knife from the resin 'sprue' and sanding off any residual vestiges of the "gates" that might have been left.

Upon examination of the usual small parts 'waffle' I came to the (also usual) conclusion that most of them were unusable due to being too thick in some cases, or suffering from asymmetric casting in others, or even a combination of the two, so I didn't bother with most of these, having already accepted the idea that I would have to scratchbuild most of them.

The kit's fuselage is of the monobloque type, what has the great advantage of not having to deal with the usual longitudinal seams, a very annoying problem in most WW1 aircraft due to the fact that eliminating the upper seam 9.5 out of 10 times results in doing away with the stringer detail of the turtledeck. On the other hand, fully cast fuselages makes painting and detailing the cockpit twice the work, but as there was nothing I could do about it I grabbed my brushes, paints and watercolour pencils and on I went!

The inside of the cockpit was painted in aluminium and CDL, replicating the demarcation between the two types of finishes that covered the area on the real aircraft, the sidewall structure being coloured with brown watercolour pencils.

Omega supplies enough to build up a pretty busy cockpit, so I added all the tiny bits and pieces supplied (some in resin, like the floor, stick, rudder bar and seat, some in PE as is the case of a couple of instruments and seat belts). A not very accurate representation of the typical SPAD shelf, that once in place blocks from view most of the cockpit details, is moulded integrally with the top cockpit panel, and this was also treated with the my usual wood finish technique (a base coat of Humbrol 63 followed by colouring with brown watercolour pencils) before being glued onto the fuselage casting.

Setting aside the fuselage I decided I'd tackle the engine next. Omega supplies the engine as a small kit by itself, made out of more than 20 small parts. I, for one, didn't like it. The cylinders and crankcase are well cast but putting it all together is difficult and time consuming. The holes for the cylinders on the crankcase had to be enlarged and the base of each cylinder had to have a bit shaved off in order to fit. Worse was to come though: the intake pipes were too thick and brittle and some of them broke when I tried to separate them from the resin carrier, so some of them ended up being substituted by stretched sprue replacements. The other parts that completed the assembly were badly moulded and also too thick, so I decided not to worry about them, bearing in mind that most of the engine would also be hidden away by the front bulkhead.

Next item on the list was even harder: the front fuselage panel. Omega supplies the characteristic side cheeks as part of a large PE panel that has to be rolled up to the correct section profile and which includes the front panel that is adjacent to the cockpit. What this means is that from the firewall that separates the engine from the cockpit to the front end of the fuselage there is nothing but a thin metal panel that was almost impossible to set in place. In fact the difficulties I had to deal with were of two kinds: first I had to find a way of rolling the rather hard to bend PE to a shape that wasn't perfectly circular, which was done after much trial and error, with the help of the neck of a small bottle and second, I had to glue it to the fuselage, what was also very difficult since there was almost no mating surface onto which to apply glue. It took a couple of times but in the end I managed to come to an acceptable result, but a stepless transition, to the front of the cockpit, from resin to PE was only achieved with the help of quite a considerable amount of milliput, that was sanded smooth when dry. I then installed the engine in place and closed the engine compartment with the front firewall/engine bearer PE part.

The way the kit is engineered means that the wings have to be assembled before offering them to the fuselage, since the full sub-assembly slides into recesses on the undercarriage struts. Unfortunately all of the struts were completely unusable, so before getting the wing sub-assembly ready I first had to scratchbuild a new set of bamboo struts. Nothing very difficult but annoying nonetheless.

Once the struts were fashioned they were glued onto the locating recesses in the upper wing with a touch of CA, the same method being used to attach the two lower wings.

The wings being done I had to turn to the undercarriage struts, since as I mentioned above, they assume a very structural function in the model.

The problem is that the u/c struts butt join to the fuselage with a contact area between the two parts so small that it really is very difficult to get it right. This problem was also compounded by the fact that one of my struts was badly formed and the fact that the struts attach at an angle, thus reducing even more the contact surface.

I also had to scratchbuild a new spreader bar since the one in the kit broke beyond repair possibility.

After several attempts I succeeded in getting both struts and spreader bar in place, but when looked at from head on there was something funny about it, besides the fact that they really were way to thick and I realised that the angle at which I had glued both struts to the fuselage was slightly different in each case. Not being such a great difference in angle I decided to leave it as it was since starting again would probably mean another spreader bar or even a strut broken without being 100% sure the results would be better.

I was now ready to test fit the wing assembly to the u/c struts. I wasn't very confident about this and my fears proved to be well founded: there was quite a gap at the lower wing roots between the strut and the wing itself, so I extended the lower wing roots with pieces of evergreen plastic.

Painting time came as a welcome pause in the trials and tribulations of the build up. I had chosen to finish my model in the only A2 scheme that is profiled in the FMP "French Aircraft of the First World War" book and this proved not too hard to do, provided one plans the masking sequence carefully. Paints used were a mix of my usual household enamels (Dyrup Vanilla, in this case, for the CDL) and Humbrols. I think the 'cream' panels came out a bit too dark, but I did like the global result.

After paint had dried I assembled the wings in place (not an easy chore, even with the root extensions) and filled what little gaps there might be with white glue.

Rigging came next and this was done in smoke coloured invisible thread. Spads had double flying wires but I was so scared of fiddling with the precarious wing assembly that I only installed single wires.

Next step were the decals, and this was meant to very simple since there were only the four wing cockades to apply. But again things turned much harder than expected: I usually use 'Klear' (Future) as a setting solution for decals. This time the decals reacted very strangely and wrinkled to the point of curling up onto themselves. I managed to stretch them out and smooth them with a cotton bud but they expanded somewhat and the red circles were now a bit irregular at places. In the end I managed to touch them up with a brush so as to get them round again. (I think this problem might have something to do with the fact that the Klear I'm using is more than 10 years old and getting probably a bit too concentrated, so the decals should not be blamed for it).

I was getting near the finish line and now the pulpit, which had no assembly problems other than the struts being too thick, was ready to be attached. Unfortunately this proved to be Mission Impossible #5: the struts attach to an axle bar that runs in front of the spreader bar of the u/c and due to the fact that there was some misalignment in the u/c as reported above, the pulpit would not align properly with the rest of the fuselage. There was nothing I could do about it so I unglued the axle bar from the u/c struts and worried about getting the pulpit properly aligned irrespective of how bad the strut arrangement would look. The pulpit is also held in place by the propeller shaft and two struts that attach to the mast supporting the gun mount, that I fashioned out of pieces of evergreen card.

The gun mount was made with armature wire bent to shape and inserted into pre-drilled holes in the pulpit. The machine gun I used was a Lewis that I found in my spares box (probably from a Toko 1 1/2 strutter kit), since, again, the ones in the kit were hopeless.

The final touch were the wheels. Omega supplies a pair of PE wheels with small rubber o-rings to act as tyres or resin inserts to be used with the same 'tyres' if you chose to use covered wheels, as was my case. Unfortunately neither the O rings are thin enough nor the inserts were correctly moulded, so I hunted again in my spares box until I came up with a pair of decent SPAD wheels.

Conclusion

In the end I was able to finish the kit, but the final result leaves a lot to be desired as far as the undercarriage is concerned. Also I found the kit to be extremely difficult to build up due to the break down of parts, to the extensive use of PE in the front fuselage and to the way the wing to fuselage join was conceived in the kit.

With other alternatives in the market, if you really must have an SA2 in your collection, you'd probably better read what Matt and Steve have to say before committing yourselves to the Omega offering.

I'd like to thank hobbyshop.cz for the review kit and my fellow SPAD SA reviewers, Matt and Steve, for the help provided.

References:

French Aircraft of the First World War, Dr. James J. Davilla and Arthur M. Soltan, Flying Machines Press, 1997.