My piano teacher gave me this model either for my birthday, or Christmas 1975 - I can't remember which. It's not that I wasn't appreciative of the gift, but I really didn't care for WWI biplanes, let alone triplanes. It was a plastic model kit at any rate, so I did enjoy building it to some extent.
Model airplanes given to me as gifts were a hit-and-miss affair. Some of them I liked; most of them I disliked. It was a rare occurrence when someone bought me a model kit that I would have picked out myself. Most people probably figured I'd like anything as long as it was a model, but I had pretty specific tastes. No cars, no ships, no tanks, and no biplanes. If there was any pre-war airplane I liked, it had to be a monoplane. Biplanes just all looked the same to me.
I was please to find a sealed one of these on EBay. It's the same one my piano teacher gave me: the 1975 "Collector's Choice" reissue. I had forgotten what a delicate little model this is. I do remember however how much difficulty I had putting the three wings together when I was ten. I experienced almost the same difficulty doing it again thirty-five years later! The wings are definitely a pain to get lined up and glued on right. So is the landing gear. I didn't paint my original, but I chose to paint this rebuild exactly per the directions.
Even though I didn't care much for this airplane when I was a boy, I had fun building it again in middle-age, and it brings back good memories of building up a good size model collection at J-5.
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