Vintage Guillows Sopwith Camel Build

[42swing]

Yep, one of the the old 100 series kits. Lots of neat subjects there that aren't available now - Albatros, Pfaltz, D-8, D-7, Snipe, Scout, Nieuport 17, Nieuport 23, SPAD, Camel, Se-5...

[Chris A.]

In the past(late 50's) I built the Albatross and the Snipe. Both came out heavy but looked good when finished and had added details like strut and flying wires. Vintage Models from England makes laser cut sort kits of the 100 series, I have the Neuiport 28 to build using very old water slide decals from a partial original kit. The short kit came with very high quality light balsa.

[Johnny ace]

I made the DVII while I was in the Navy.I really liked those kits!The hard plastic nose was a big plus since I built for display,not fly.

[scigs30]

I used one piece of tissue for the left side, one piece for right side and one piece for flat bottom

[ekram]

Actually David, biplanes normally require more rubber because of the added drag of struts and wires. Scigs usually is very good at trimming for rubber power so if it's going to fly on rubber he can do it. The lighter the better though. Good luck Scigs.

Actually, David was right. The airplanes of WWI had less powerful engines and having two wings was one way to compensate for that in terms of lift. The more power you have the less surface area you need on your flying surfaces. Jet aircraft are a good example of this. This is why rubber powered models often need down thrust adjustment. Because rubber has a radical power curve where the greatest amount of power output happens at the beginning of the power run. And down thrust helps cancel out the stall tendency. Now, Steve is correct in that you get much more drag out of two wings as opposed to one. This means a slower linear speed. But that may be just what you want to give it a scale flying speed look.