Supermarine S.7

The finished model:

The story:

It’s a boat! It’s a plane! It’s SUPERMARINE S.7!

I love building scale models, but one glance at the main topics of my modelling blog and you should be able to tell that I chose my subjects based more on the story and the machines rather than from a strong personal experience or interest in the military. The military planes are quite central to my Area 88 themed builds, but my interests in Tintin and Studio Ghibli are much wider and varied, and they sometimes lead me to projects in unexpected directions.

Speaking of the Studio Ghibli films, if I’m forced to choose a favourite, I’d probably settle on Porco Rosso. It’s got a great story set in the Adriatic Sea in the late 1920s, so it should come as no surprise that the real stars of the show are really the airplanes. Besides Porco’s awesome (but partially fictional) Savoia S.21, there’s also the Curtiss R3C-0 and Macchi M.52. – all three with the championship racing pedigree of the Schneider Trophy. There is, however, one notable exception from the list – the Supermarine “S” series.

So, despite the fact that it’s not actually in the movie, I simply couldn’t resist adding the British entry to my stash of float plane/flying boat kits, and the racing Group Build on whatifmodellers.com was all the excuse I needed to actually start building it.

The build:

If you’re looking to build a Supermarine S.6 in 1/72 scale, you basically have three choices: Airfix, Frog or Pavla. The nicests of the bunch is the Pavla kit, but it’s a pricey short-run kit from the Czech republic, so in practical terms you’re down to Airfix or Frog – both of which are ANCIENT. I suppose in the late 1950s/early 1960s when they first appeared, they were probably cutting pretty close to the edge, but the years haven’t been kind to the moulds. The Airfix one has been OOP since the late 1980s, but luckily the Frog kit has been recently been re-boxed by Eastern Express and Ark.

One look at the plastic and I knew I was going to be in for a challenge though – flash, flash everywhere!

Luckily, given that it was destined as a WHIF, I decided that I didn’t just want to limit my creativity to trying to build a Supermarine S.6 out of the box. Instead, I decided to soup it up a bit and add some of the logical next steps that were present in the upgrades from the Macchi series – namely counter-rotating double propellers and in-wing/pontoon radiators. I also added a non-descrip hump to the engine block, just to beef it up a bit.  And just like that the Supermarine S.7 was born!

Once I got started, things were more or less humming along. I scratch built a bit of an interior and then got down to work with some serious putty and sanding on wings and the floats. Getting everything lined up and assembled took a bit of doing, and I managed to snap the struts a couple of times in the attempt. I also sanded down the raised panel lines on the wings and replaced them with some subtle scribed ones, with a few rivets rolled on for good measure.

As always with these kinds of planes, the part that gave me the most nightmares was the rigging. I’m never quite sure at what point I should start the rigging, and I usually end up trying several methods/mediums before I settle on something I can live with. In this case I started with some small steel wire, but that proved to be a bit too big, so then I redid all the rigging with some stretched sprue instead.

I’m happy enough with the outcome, but feel free to tell me what you think: