Gluten free food can be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it's as good* as (or better than) the real thing and sometimes it's an acceptable substitute** that suffices for those desperate for a slice of bread or a bowl of spag bol. Sometimes, however, it just doesn't work at all and this, I'm afraid, is one of those times. Of course it's a matter of taste, opinion and desperation, but neither my daughter (who is gluten intolerant) nor I (who is not) could eat more than a forkfull of this.

Both of us like pasta - in its tinned or fresh forms - and it's quite possible to get acceptable GF dried pasta in the supermarkets. The pasta that comes in this tin is nothing like the real stuff, nor like the GF pasta we are used to. It comes in short, rather stiff lengths which are thick and have the texture and taste of raw dough and a grittiness that makes the "spaghetti" more or less inedible. The tomato sauce bears no resemblance to real tomato sauce (well, it never does in tinned products GF or otherwise) but it had a "funny" taste nevertheless.

As I said, this is very much a matter of opinion, but neither of us would recommend this product and we certainly won't be trying it again.

If you're GI and /really/ want a plate of pasta in tomato sauce, it's easy enough to achieve using dried "Free From" pasta from the supermarket and a jar of pretty much any tomato sauce that you can find on their shelves.

The Fokker Dr1 was fielded by the Luftwaffe in late 1917 in response to the appearance at The Front of the Sopwith triplane. Despite its relatively poor performance (and various other significant structural and technical problems), Fokker's Dreidecker ("triplane") was exceptionally maneouvrable and became a firm favourite of many who flew it. It's greatest claim to fame was that it was piloted by the (in)famous Red Baron, although many other German aces also used the machine - Ernst Udet, Werner Voss and Herman Goring to name but a few.

Unsurprisingly, for such a well-known aeroplane, there are several other renditions of the Dr1 in 1/72, including kits from Revell, Eduard and Airfix. Surprisingly, however, only Revell's seems to be "in-print" at the moment. I have no experience of the Revell kit but, if other biplanes by the company are anything to go by, it is likely to be a perfectly fine representation of the aircraft - a little clunky and crude, but perfectly acceptable to the everyday modeller.

This kit, by Roden, occupies the opposite end of the spectrum. For a 1/72 kit it provides as much accuracy and finesse that any dedicated modeller could wish for (indeed, considerably more; see later comments). Two very well-stocked sprues, providing fine, delicate moldings of the various components, including a fully realised cockpit. This latter is a bit of a rarity in the Airfix and Revell WW1 models that I've built - most have no cockpit detail at all. The Roden kit provides a seat, rudder pedals, joystick and some of the 'pit's internal structure as well. Shame that it becomes almost invisible when the fuselage is closed up...

The real problems come, however, with the wings and undercarriage. The big advantage of Revell's tooling of aircraft of this sort is that the wing and undercarriage struts are generally robustly molded and set up in such a way that the tricky business of getting the wheels and wings on at the right angles (or even getting them on at all!) is relatively simple. True, the accuracy and "look" of the kit suffers somewhat, but the build is achievable and one can expect the model to survive a little after-build handling.

Not so with Roden. The wing and undercarriage struts are perfectly to scale, meaning that they're weaker than a politician's promise, flimsier than a pole-dancer's g-string, as insubstantial as a Premier League footballer's morals. What's more is that each strut must be glued to the wing at precisely the right angle, then held until the glue sets before the next stage is attempted. Get the angles wrong and all hope of salvation is lost. Of particular concern to me is that too much modelling glue is more likely to destroy some of these more delicate components than actually fix them and I suspect that CA glue ("Superglue") will be a better (albeit less mutable) choice.

Roden provide decals for six alternative marking schemes, including 'planes flown by Manfred von R, his brother Lothar, Goring and several others. This wealth of decal alternatives is part justification for the kit's price tag* and it's good to have a choice. Two of the options are relatively simple paint schemes (one is all-black - can't get simpler than that...). The remainder, however, include variations on a very tricky "streaky-olive-green" camoflage pattern. I am actually looking forward to trying this out but if it looks too much, it is likely to be possible to get away with a flat OG paint job.

I haven't finished building this little kit and while I did at one stage wish that I'd bought a Revell Dr1 instead, I am now beginning to enjoy this challenging little kit. Watch this space...

* Oh and at the moment the kit is listing on Az at more than £300. DON'T pay that! I have no idea why it's showing so expensive, I paid about £8 and you can buy it elsewhere on the web for that price.

================
UPDATE 1: I replaced the kit's undercarriage struts with staple wire which is flat and fine and a reasonable looking alternative but very much stronger.

UPDATE 2: The paint job is now complete in all it's streaky green glory. It was as much fun as I expected and not that hard to achieve. Given that I've seen many different colour renditions on models on the net and given that the only pictures of the authentic finish are in grainy black and white, I'm not too worried as to whether I got it right. It looks good for a first attempt.

Gluten free food can be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it's as good* as (or better than) the real thing and sometimes it's an acceptable substitute** that suffices for those desperate for a slice of bread or a bowl of spag bol. Sometimes, however, it just doesn't work at all and this, I'm afraid, is one of those times. Of course it's a matter of taste, opinion and desperation, but neither my daughter (who is gluten intolerant) nor I (who is not) could eat more than a forkfull of this.

Both of us like pasta - in its tinned or fresh forms - and it's quite possible to get acceptable GF dried pasta in the supermarkets. The pasta that comes in this tin is nothing like the real stuff, nor like the GF pasta we are used to. It comes in short, rather stiff lengths which are thick and have the texture and taste of raw dough and a grittiness that makes the "spaghetti" more or less inedible. The tomato sauce bears no resemblance to real tomato sauce (well, it never does in tinned products GF or otherwise) but it had a "funny" taste nevertheless.

As I said, this is very much a matter of opinion, but neither of us would recommend this product and we certainly won't be trying it again.

If you're GI and /really/ want a plate of pasta in tomato sauce, it's easy enough to achieve using dried "Free From" pasta from the supermarket and a jar of pretty much any tomato sauce that you can find on their shelves.

Photo of the pasta uploaded.

* Biona Organic Gluten Free Breadcrumbs
** Doves Farm Organic Gluten Free Fusilli Pasta

The shaft of each brush is made from a single, highly endangered Australian Yellow Cedar. The tree trunk is gnawed to its heartwood by a team of carefully trained beavers and then taken down to final size by Amazonian Carpenter Ants, whereupon it is rubbed smooth on the inside of a lumberjack's thighs. Because Australian Cedar is highly toxic, the beavers and ants (and occasionally the lumberjack) die in the process, so the breeding and training must begin anew for each brush. It is then painted using the traditional Shawnee Indian technique of "nose-spray-painting" - a truly disgusting spectacle and for the love of god, don't stand too close to the Indian while he's working.

The brush heads are formed from carefully selected pubic hairs from the Belgian Sable - thirteen of these near-extinct creatures are c@strated for each 000 brush. The hairs are then glued to the shaft using the Shawnee Indian brush-shaft-painters' residual nose excretions.

Treasure these brushes for many have suffered to bring them to you...

Seriously. these are beautiful art brushes, with lovely heads that are both stiff enough to hold their shape while painting but soft enough to make paint deposition smooth and streak free. I use them with acrylic paints for my aircraft model building and they work well.

There's a decent range of head sizes provided from the very finest, suitable for painting 1/72 scale pilots' faces all the way up to a large brush head for painting wings and fuselages.

Yes, they're expensive, but well worth it for the great results they give. Just don't hold them in your mouth like real painters do. If you've read this review then you know exactly where they've been...

Look closely at the Hawker Fury and you can see the genesis of Sydney Camm's most famous fighter, the Hawker Hurricane. From THAT point on, Hawker's fighters evolved rather more radically, but evolve they did and it's a nice thought that the Hawker Sea Fury (the company's last prop fighter) could trace it's ancestry back directly to an earlier Fury. It served in the RAF during the 1930's until it was replaced by the Gladiator in 1939. although it never saw combat with the RAF, Furies were used by the South African air force against the Italians and Yugoslav Furies fought a desperately unequal battle against German invaders in 1941.

This is another ex-Matchbox kit, reboxed by Revell and supplemented with a new decal set. I harbour mixed memories of Matchbox kits, but there is nothing reprehensible about this one. The detailing is surprisingly good for a kit of this era, size and subject and it looks and feels (and builds) like a much more modern kit. True, the wing fabric texturing is a little overdone but the rest of the model is very finely realised.

It goes together beautifully and could be built and painted in a day or two if you work like that. The one fly in the ointment is that the cabane struts (that attach the upper wing to the fuselage) were a little warped, but I've seen other builds where they were fine, so maybe I was unlucky. Nevertheless, they didn't pose any real problems and the build went fine.

The finish is a colourful one - metallic all over with yellow accents and some flashy red squadron markings.

Another blinder from Revell (Matchbox). Well worth a go and easy to build.

Don't forget the paint, glue, filler, masking tape, canopy glue, and some decal setting solution (MicroSol and MicroSet).

Photos uploaded

Look closely at the Hawker Fury and you can see the genesis of Sydney Camm's most famous fighter, the Hawker Hurricane. From THAT point on, Hawker's fighters evolved rather more radically, but it's a nice thought that the Hawker Sea Fury (the company's last prop fighter) could trace it's ancestry back directly to an earlier Fury. It served in the RAF during the 1930's until it was replaced by the Gladiator in 1939. although it never saw combat with the RAF, Furies were used by the South African air force against the Italians and Yugoslav Furies fought a desperately unequal battle against German invaders in 1941.

This is another ex-Matchbox kit, reboxed by Revell and supplemented with a new decal set. I harbour mixed memories of Matchbox kits, but there is nothing reprehensible about this one. The detailing is surprisingly good for a kit of this era, size and subject and it looks and feels (and builds) like a much more modern kit. True, the wing fabric texturing is a little overdone but the rest of the model is very finely realised.

It goes together beautifully and could be built and painted in a day or two if you work like that. The one fly in the ointment is that the cabane struts (that attach the upper wing to the fuselage) were a little warped, but I've seen other builds where they were fine, so maybe I was unlucky. Nevertheless, they didn't pose any real problems and the build went fine.

The finish is a colourful one - metallic all over with yellow accents and some flashy red squadron markings.

Another blinder from Revell (Matchbox). Well worth a go and easy to build.

Don't forget the paint, glue, filler, masking tape, canopy glue, and some decal setting solution (MicroSol and MicroSet).

Photos uploaded

Entering into service in 1917, the SE5a was probably the RFC's most advanced fighters of the Great War and it was flown by many of the service's most well known aces including Billy Bishop, Mick Mannock and James McCudden. Albert Ball disliked the type to begin with but soon warmed to it and scored 11 of his 44 kills in the SE5a.

Revell have produced a long line of 1/72 biplanes; while of a good overall quality (for the price point, that is), some are less good than others. The SE5a is a more recent kit (late 1980's) and it is easily at the better end of the spectrum. The moldings are very fine (the fuselage halves are like eggshells) and mostly free of flash and the detailing is very fine indeed. The fabric sag on the wings is, however, overdone but this seems to be a common sin on all but the best kits so Revell are hardly to be singled out.

The fit is good although the seam along the underside of the fuselage needed a lot of filling and sanding. However, I managed to build, drill for rigging and paint the kit in a day or so, and that included scratching up a pilot seat and instrument panel (the kit lacks any internal detail).

Attaching the upper wing was a bit of a bind - it usually is in biplane kits. The way I did this was to attach the main struts to the lower wing first, making sure they were vertical (left to right) and raked forward a little. I normally let the glue set a little first so that the struts are stable but still a little "adjustable". I then flip the plane over and "sit" it onto the upper wing, gluing the struts to theupper wing with superglue for a quick set. Only when the upper wing is properly attached, and glue cured, did I attach the inner, cabane struts. The rigging will pull the middle of the wing down onto these struts. Other modellers have their own approach and prefer to attach all the rigging and struts to the upper wing, before marrying it to the lower. Horses for courses...

An added bonus is that the kit includes radiator and prop options for the Wolesley Viper or Hispano Suiza versions of the aircraft - a very nice touch indeed.

A highly recommended model.

Don't forget the paint, glue, filler, masking tape, canopy glue, and some decal setting solution (MicroSol and MicroSet).

Photos of the finished model now uploaded.

Entering into service in 1917, the SE5a was probably the RFC's most advanced fighters of the Great War and it was flown by many of the service's most well known aces including Billy Bishop, Mick Mannock and James McCudden. Albert Ball disliked the type to begin with but soon warmed to it and scored 11 of his 44 kills in the SE5a.

Revell have produced a long line of 1/72 biplanes; while of a good overall quality (for the price point, that is), some are less good than others. The SE5a is a more recent kit (late 1980's) and it is easily at the better end of the spectrum. The moldings are very fine (the fuselage halves are like eggshells) and mostly free of flash and the detailing is very fine indeed. The fabric sag on the wings is, however, overdone but this seems to be a common sin on all but the best kits so Revell are hardly to be singled out.

The fit is good although the seam along the underside of the fuselage needed a lot of filling and sanding. However, I managed to build, drill for rigging and paint the kit in a day or so, and that included scratching up a pilot seat and instrument panel (the kit lacks any internal detail).

Attaching the upper wing was a bit of a bind - it usually is in biplane kits. The way I did this was to attach the main struts to the lower wing first, making sure they were vertical (left to right) and raked forward a little. I normally let the glue set a little first so that the struts are stable but still a little "adjustable". I then flip the plane over and "sit" it onto the upper wing, gluing the struts to theupper wing with superglue for a quick set. Only when the upper wing is properly attached, and glue cured, did I attach the inner, cabane struts. The rigging will pull the middle of the wing down onto these struts. Other modellers have their own approach and prefer to attach all the rigging and struts to the upper wing, before marrying it to the lower. Horses for courses...

An added bonus is that the kit includes radiator and prop options for the Wolesley Viper or Hispano Suiza versions of the aircraft - a very nice touch indeed.

A highly recommended model.

Don't forget the paint, glue, filler, masking tape, canopy glue, and some decal setting solution (MicroSol and MicroSet).

Photos of the finished model now uploaded.

Entering into service in 1917, the SE5a was probably the RFC's most advanced fighters of the Great War and it was flown by many of the service's most well known aces including Billy Bishop, Mick Mannock and James McCudden. Albert Ball disliked the type to begin with but soon warmed to it and scored 11 of his 44 kills in the SE5a.

Revell have produced a long line of 1/72 biplanes. While of a good overalll quality, some are less good than others. The SE5a is a more recent kit (late 1980's) and it is easily at the better end of the spectrum. The moldings are very fine (the fuselage halves are like eggshells) and mostly free of flash and the detailing is very fine indeed. The fabric sag on the wings is, however, overdone but this seems to be a common sin on all but the best kits so Revell are hardly to be singled out.

The fit is good although the seam along the underside of the fuselage needed a lot of filling and sanding. However, I managed to build, drill for rigging and paint the kit in a day or so, and that included scratching up a pilot seat and instrument panel (the kit lacks any internal detail).

Attaching the upper wing may turn out to be a bit of a bind - it usually is in biplane kits. Probably the best way to do this is to attach the main struts to the lower wing first, making sure they're vertical. I normally let the glue set a little first so that the struts are stilittle adtable, then flip the plane over and sit it onto the upper wing. Only when the upper wing is properly attached, glue cured, do I attach the inner, cabane struts.

An added bonus is that the kit includes radiator and prop options for the Wolesley Viper or Hispano Suiza versions of the aircraft - a very nice touch indeed.

A highly recommended model.

Don't forget the paint, glue, filler, masking tape, canopy glue, and some decal setting solution (MicroSol and MicroSet).

This is a nice, decent quality vee pillow. It is well filled and so provides good support when I'm sitting up in bed reading. It's also comfortable if I lie on my side with one shoulder tucked into the vee and my head on the "crook" with my book resting on the arm. Indeed it's so comfortable that I have fallen asleep like this without having managed more than a page or two...

The synthetic filling does indeed feel quite natural. As per the product blurb, it has a resilience that is neither too hard nor too soft and which makes it feel like a down filling.

I bought this pillow case to go with it: 200 Thread Count V Shaped Pillowcase White Premium Super Soft Egyptian cotton. Anti Dust Mite and Anti Allergen Pillow Case - it's a nice pillow case.