Supermarine Sea Lion Schneider Trophy - Karaya 1/72 resin kit

 

Racers in general are well-liked by the modeling and aviation community and Schneider participants constitute a chapter of special interest for many.

I am very glad that some manufacturers (KP, Karaya, Avis, SBS, among others) started to pay attention to this not really well covered area of the hobby, releasing very interesting types with greater level of detail and better accuracy than earlier industry attempts of times past.

Karaya must be thanked for bringing these charming and significant types to light.

Some of you may know that I recently built the manufacturer's Savoia S.65, a very nice kit, but unfortunately riddled with inaccuracies and impaired by some questionable engineering.

This offer by Karaya is much, much better, and certainly deserves praise, if requiring some little revisions and the addition of missing decals. To be fair, not much is around regarding this specific machine, so sources are limited. Still, some little inaccuracies, and photos showing additional marks were easily found on the Net after a brief search.

I enjoyed building this kit, and the couple of challenges it presented were overcome with just a bit of effort and the experience of many years, something we older modelers are blessed with (together with failing eyesight and shakier hands).

 The build of this kit erased the bad taste left by the previous S.65 (even if the results after much time and energy spent were worth it) and I would gladly build another Karaya kit - but doing some research on the type to complement the build.

Karaya offers a nice array of civil types and many racers among them, some are superbly attractive.

You can tell that the kit displays a high degree of finesse in details and surfaces, care has been poured into the making of the masters, yet I still have my nitpickings with certain aspects of the engineering, an area where Karaya could certainly improve and that has been pointed out in builds by other modelers of their Schneider types.

My deepest thanks to Arctic Decals from whom I commissioned and acquired the corrective set.

For some additional notes and a step-by-step account of the building process, please check here:

 https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/02/karaya-supermarine-sea-lion-ii-1922.html

My 1/72 pilot, Washington Chimichurri, committed the mistake of taking off with the beaching wheels attached!