Roden 1/32 Spad VIIc.1 w/Russian Skies Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

The Spad VII was sold to the Imperial Russian Air Service and the Russians also acquired a license to build additional numbers for the fledgling Air Service for combat operations during World War I and afterwards. These aircraft would soon be among the first aircraft of the Soviet Air Force after the revolution.

Roden has issued their Spad VII kit set up for cold weather operations. This release has a fully detailed Hispano-Suiza V8 engine, skis, and a choice of two windscreens to reduce that windchill over the nose.

The kit is molded in light gray styrene and presented on eight parts trees plus one tree of clear parts (duplicate parts trees not shown). The kit has most of the parts from previous releases so you will have spares left over after this project. After acquiring the model, you can even build other variants (not covered in the instructions) as you have two types of propeller, two types of main wheels (in addition to the skis), three types of cowl rings, two types of side cowl panels, etc.

You will need to note the instructions warn that several parts should be omitted from the engine should you be displaying your model with the cowl panels installed (just to save you fitting frustrations later). Assembly is straightforward and a basic wing rigging diagram is also provided.

Marking options are provided for one example in Imperial Russian Air Service aircraft circa 1917 and one example from the Finnish Air Force (with the politically correct deconstructed swastikas).

Straight out of the box, this kit will build into a very nice model of the Spad VII, but if you're wanting that AMS touch on this subject, check out this awesome build over on Britmodeller that I've bookmarked for my own attempt at this project.

My sincere thanks to Squadron Mail Order for this review sample!