BuiltWithNOF

MIKE ROACH’S SOPWITH AVIATION COMPANY

Sopwith Tabloid Prototype

Sopwith Tabloid

Sopwith Tabloid production version

Sopwith Tabloid Prototype

Sopwith Churchill (or Sociable, or Tweenie)

Sopwith Triplane

Sopwith Gordon-Bennett racer

Sopwith's first aircraft

Sopwith Bee (version 1)

Sopwith SS3 version 1

Sopwith STLBP

Sopwith Sparrow

Sopwith SS3 (version 2)

Sopwith High Speed

High Speed with Depron wings

Sopwith Bee version 2

For some reason the thumbnails do not click open the main photos and text. Just click on the “Sopwith Zoo” page and they will open sequentially - sorry about that!

How do you differentiate between and obsession and a healthy interest? Answers on a postcard...

My interest in Sopwith aircraft grew out of a friend’s book at school in 1958. The book was “Sopwith, the Man and His Aircraft” published by Harleyford and long out of print. I bought a second-hand copy in 1998 and renewed my love affair with the Sociable, the Tabloid, the Pup and the rest of the Sopwith “Zoo”. But this time I could do something about it!

At about that time Peter Rake had a Sopwith Pup plan published in Flying Scale Models and I immediately produced my own version of his plan: the Tabloid. The plan included details of the Prototype, the landplane production model and the Schneider Trophy winner - all of which were wrong - but they did get me started in the right direction and set the scene for modelling in the future.  The Triplane followed, still to Peter’s basic design and it flew very successfully, but the Gordon-Bennett Racer was completely different. It had never been modelled before and the only data was a couple of photos in “the Book”.  From these I drew up a 3-view and a plan and built the model with a scale wing section and wing warping.  It looked gorgeous but was slightly underpowered with only a SP300 motor and deserved more development. 

Histories of some of Sopwith’s aircraft can be seen here.

The various articles about modelling can be seen as “MORE” on some of the Sopwith Zoo pages. Most of these links are to the Christchurch and District MFC website.and the Newsletter archive.

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