The Little World

I had been watching reports of the Roden scale models for some time and had not been able to come to a conclusion – some lauded and some condemned them for poor moulding and impossible parts.

A birthday gift meant I could go to the hobby shop and bring back an armload of inexpensive kits – and I decided to risk part of the dough on a Roden WW1 subject. If there were to be any flaws, it would show up in such a delicate subject.

First glance at the sprue trees was reassuring – they are no worse for flash than some of the other short-run kits, and decidedly better than the early French and Polish dump kits. Basic moulded surfaces may not be as smooth as Asian kits, but are better than the old PM moulds from Turkey. Essentially this is a reasonable kit.

The subject itself is somewhat delicate, but Roden have chosen sensible designs to render the engine and landing gear – and I note that the sprue trees have two variants for the wing and tailplane. And thankfully a good enough part diagram to make the rejects obvious.

There are even three colour schemes possible from the small decal sheet – One is from a jasta that already has a Fokker representative in the collection so it is out – the other two are basically a light grey or a semi-matt black and grey – the latter with a silver personal insignia on the fuselage. It is much the greatest temptation…