The French-Czech company has become the first in the industry to produce a styrene SPAD 510 biplane… and it’s a pleasing effort, says CHRIS CLIFFORD
Just 61 SPAD 510s were built and this is arguably the reason why the type has been largely ignored by kit manufacturers. Dujin produced a 1/72 version, while AJP Maquettes created a 1/48 kit… but both were in resin. Thankfully, though, Azur-FRROM has a long-standing affection for niche subjects and has thus produced a new styrene tooling of the attractive SPAD 510, with two separate boxings offering different sets of markings… all for French Air Force machines.
Above and below: Fine panel line engraving is evident, as well as a modicum of cockpit sidewall detail.
If you are unfamiliar with the type, it was a contemporary of the Gloster Gladiator in the so-called Silver Period. The all-metal-structure 510 was tested at the Centre d’expériences aériennes militaires (CEAM – the French military flight test establishment) in 1935, and satisfied a fighter requirement for the French Air Force. It had fabric-covered wings and tail but, like the British Gladiator, quickly became obsolete and outclassed by monoplanes, chiefly those of the Luftwaffe. After the outbreak of World War Two the 5…
