Huntly's Paper Airplanes 1/46 S.E.5a Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Here's a first for Cybermodeler Online, a paper airplane kit. The folks at Huntly's Paper Airplanes asked if we'd like to see some of their kits and did you know that you can lose these kits in an in-box? Nevertheless, this company has designed some simple, pre-printed, cut-and-fold kits for your enjoyment. This kit is the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a which scales out to roughly 1/46 scale and you can see in the title image how this model looks after assembly.

This kit has four full-color pages of instructions as well as three pages of airplane kit parts. We show two of the three pages here to give you an example of the quality of these kits. You'll see in the notes that construction involves the use of a variety of simple materials to assemble the model including a cutting tool (of course) but also various media to reinforce the paper model. For example, each main wheel is folded over a clothing button to provide weight as well as shape. The landing gear strut is reinforced with folded aluminum extracted from a soda (or beer) can. Wing and tailplane spars are made from lengths of broom straw. In other words, we're not talking about exotic construction materials here...

If you're looking for something different to assemble, this kit is one of their 'beginner' kits and you can see some of their more intricate offerings on their website: http://paperwarplanes.com/. Check them out and have some fun!

My sincere thanks to Huntly's Paper Airplanes for the review sample.