Here's a 28" rubber/u-control conversion to four-channel R/C with .15 fuel engine, fully resin-ed weighing out at less than 1-1/2 pounds. There's a little fiberglass on the model but for the most part, polyester resin was applied directly over balsa, plywood, plastic, doped tissue, and anything else that comprised the surface or structure of the model. Within the fuselage is a 2-ounce fuel tank, Hitec FLASH 5 radio, and four micro-servos driving ailerons, rudder, elevator, and throttle. True to Guillows' claim, the fuselage is plenty roomy for all of this equipment although I suspect their original claim related to a single-channel pulse system; such is the march of Progress.

New! Electric Conversion of this model is completed! Click here to go right to the article.

Getting right to it, the Sopwith Camel is typically characterized by the amount of itself crammed into the first seven feet of airplane, from prop to pilot including armaments and engine. This rendition captures the effect to some degree, although the selection and placement of the engine (an OS LA .15) places the prop well forward of the real one, which would be just clear of the cowling. Shown here, most of the engine is forward of the cowling. But it worked out for the best; the glow-plug clears the machine guns enough to make attachment of a glowstarter convenient, and the center of gravity for the airplane is exactly where it needs to be without the addition of weight or shifting any of the load.

A Note to Scalers If you desire to place an engine this large into the model compliant to scale appearance, you can do so by moving the firewall back to into the fuselage and turning the second bulkhead into the load-bearing component. But you'll have to get a muffler extension plate and route it through the fuselage. The engine would also have to mount upside-down unless you arrange for a permanent connection to the glowplug ala boat model installation. I'm considering doing this for my current project, an F4U Corsair.

Just to the right of the center of this photograph, you can see a Dubro refueling fitting. This area of the fuselage is molded plastic supplied with the kit. Although the plastic itself is resin-reinforced, plywood was applied behind the component to strengthen the area around this fitting.

The wingstruts provided with the kit are a vinyl material that Guillow has been distributing as a substitute for plywood. The ones shown here are sandwiched vinyl and balsa, with resin reinforcement, some of which can be seen in this photo meeting the fuselage as a "contoured glob".

The pilot and machine guns are made of the same molded plastic as this portion of the fuselage. After assembling their respective halves, resin was applied and then they were painted with Testor's enamel. These parts were then fuel-proofed with polyurethane and epoxied into place. The completed airplane was itself polyurethaned twice, with a three day cure between coats.

After researching the subject, I couldn't find any evidence that this type of paint scheme was ever actually utilized on a Camel. Nevertheless, it's a three-tone. The entire airplane was primed in cloud grey, including the interior. Next, the fuselage, tailfeathers, and wing-undersides were done in a mix of cloud grey and military olive. The topsides of the wings were finished off in unmixed military olive. Then decals were applied and the entire model polyurethaned.

No, that little pilot isn't a rubber-fetishist; I did his jacket in black (with gold trim) because I thought it would offset the red scarf, and generally look better than a brown jacket. Nevertheless, he does look a little like a scuba diver... The "real" fuel fittings shown behind the pilot are touched with gold enamel. While it makes for an indulgent fighter plane, I figured "What the heck... these are the people who invented the Rolls Royce!"

The middle of the fuselage behind the cockpit contains three of the four micro-servos, accessible through the removable hatch shown here. The black wire is the receiver's antenna which routes through the hatch and aft. The red line snaking around the closer servo is the batteries' recharge cable and is simply resting there out of the way until actually utilized. The hatch arrangement appears to be convenient; it will probably show up in more of my projects.

A close-up of the tailfeathers reveals that they are constructed "scale" as opposed to solid pieces as recommended for U-Control construction. Unlike the rest of the airplane, these surfaces are also fiberglass reinforced. All of the hinges implemented in the plane's control surfaces are actually hinges as opposed to single piece plastic.

Note the little copper fittings on top of the rudder holding the antenna wire. The antenna extends another 1-1/2 feet or so behind the airplane. I might put a small styrofoam sphere on the far end of this wire to add to its visibility on the ground and force it to trail without undue surprises in the air.

This photo also shows the fit between the mid-fuselage hatch and the surface of the fuselage itself. The hatch is friction-fitted; there are no screws holding it down. Note that the entire fuselage is covered in balsa (except up front where Guillow provides alot of molded plastic as shown in other photos) and resin reinforced.

At exactly the forward point where the top hatch ends, the fuselage's bottom hatch starts. This hatch arrangement affords access to virtually the entire fuselage interior. Under this hatch resides the aileron servo (and connections to the ailerons' torsion bars) and receiver. [The battery pack and fuel tank are accessed by removing the engine mount.] The front end of this hatch is held in place by a hinge-like lip which shows up in the photo as a seam running across the fuselage forward of the rear landing struts. The back end is held in place with a single small screw that attaches to a blind nut on the other side of the hatch.

Adjacent to this screw is the radio's on/off switch. This is shown in more detail in the following photo.

The on/off switch is positioned directly underneath the receiver and mounted on the hatch as shown in the photo. Note the piece of vinyl utilized to mount the component. This adds to the space between the switch's coverplate and the switch itself, recessing the switch to the extent that it rides flush with the coverplate. This addresses the concern that a number of designers have addressed in various ways relating to inadvertently sliding the mechanism; here is yet another solution addressing the issue. Also, placement of the vinyl outside (as opposed to inside where it could perform the identical spacing function) has the benefit of protective grommet-like behavior when model fuel starts creeping down this surface in flight. Note that this is the vinyl provided by Guillow as a replacement for previously supplied plywood. So saving the scrap material for miscellaneous applications would include its use as a grommet in situations like this one.

Here's a view of the bottom of the fuselage under the landing struts forward to the cowling. Prominent here is the "seam" previously described as the hinge-like lip securing the front of the bottom hatch. Just forward of this seam is a series of contoured surfaces executed in plywood which replaces the cardboard that Guillow supplies for this covering. The cardboard remains, however, a highly accurate template from which the plywood parts were cut.

Like the wing struts, the landing struts provided in the kit are vinyl. The struts shown here were sandwich-fashioned in the same manner as the wing struts previously described. The amount of resin utilized to join these parts to the fuselage is less than the amount utilized for the wing struts, however. These structural components are subjected primarily to compressing force; the wing struts are primarily subjected to elongating forces that would pull components apart from each other (ie., strut from wing) unless adequately fastened.

Shown here is the undercarriage. These are the same wooden wheels provided by Guillow, with molded plastic "fairings" that attach to the outer sides of each. The design is fairly consistent with the real aircraft, except that the real axle disappears into the bottom piece in the middle; here, the axle is fastened to the top of the piece with shaped plywood sandwiching and three layers of fiberglass reinforcement.

The real aircraft wheels camber under load just as these do here. In fact, the gauge of steel chosen for this axle fairly matches the amount of camber in the real ones for this amount of weight. The "tires" have been painted with a Testor's enamel shade called "Rubber". One coat was all it took to achieve the desired effect. I'm assuming that after some actual use, the "tires" are going to start looking like authentic scuffed rubber.

The ailerons shown here obviously diverge from the real thing. The real Camel implemented a pair of "closed loops" of cabling so that the pull of one aileron would actuate the movement of its upper/lower mate. This model implements a push/pull originating with the lower of each aileron pair. The lower ailerons are actuated by torsion bars hidden in the lower wings connected with ball-linkage to a single servo in the fuselage.

This arrangement is actually pretty flexible; the flier can opt to utilize aileron pairs as shown here, or reconfigure the external linkage to 1) use lower ailerons only, 2) use lower ailerons only but configure the upper ones as permanently deployed (per flight) flaps resulting in a slower (and potentially more stable) flight, or 3) deactivate aileron control altogether and fly the model with three channel control.

The black-colored ball link aft of the lower control horn is there to accommodate deactivation of aileron surfaces; it links this surface to a static fitting (not illustrated) saddled on the rear outward wing strut directly in front of it. The same saddle also accommodates the upper aileron, allowing it to be adjusted for neutral (deactivated) or downward (landing flap) flight configuration. Both lower ailerons have the depicted arrangement.

A couple of aft views show the tail section as rendered to scale instead of using solid flat surfaces as would be done for U-Control. In the close-up, the tail surface linkages are visible. (Since this is such an extreme close-up, the pieces are exaggerated in size close to the camera lens.) The dark portions of the control links are areas banded and reinforced with thread (and glue) replacing the strips of fuel tubing that would often be used here.