1/48 Monogram British SE5A

Gallery Article by Edward A. Fuquay on Dec 29 2003

 

In 1985 I was living in the beautiful city of Cali, Colombia. I came across this kit at a sporting goods store. I picked it up along a Fokker D VII. When I opened the box I discovered these were old Aurora kits repackaged and improved. I was delighted. I immediately began to build the SE5A. I found some reference drawings in the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aviation, a publication in Spanish. The rigging was well detailed, so I got very involved with this model. I used stretched vinyl sprue from a set of Italeri tracks to create the rigging. The model went together well and there were no glitches until I dropped!

 

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Having invested quite an amount of time and effort in the construction of the model I patiently fixed it and then decided it was time to build a base for it. I created the muddy grass field by chopping loafer to little bits and cementing it in clumps with brown dyed white glue. I created ruts and footprints before the glue dried. The fence posts were also attached at this time. The concrete base of the windsock tower was also placed as the clumps of wet materials were applied. I made he fence of really thin balsa wood stock. I stained it with raw umber and weathered it with washes of white and light gray.

My wife refused to leave in Colombia this little vignette and I am glad she forced me to put it in the crate with some of our stuff. Today I was cleaning and repairing it and thought that ARC readers might enjoy this simple kit. It by far is accurate in many ways, starting with very dubious shades of green and tan, and perhaps the blue is way out! All of the markings were airbrushed or hand painted, as the original decals became food for tropical insects. I used the remains of the transfers to mix the colors on the national insignias. Well it was a very hard kit to finish, but almost twenty years later it still looks good. Well once again…Happy modeling!  

Edward A. Fuquay

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Photos and text © by Edward A. Fuquay