I've often toyed with the idea of doing some WW1 airplanes. Does anyone have any suggestions on scale/brand, etc?

1/72 I think would be too small for me. It seems there are lots of 1/32 scale kits. Does 'Hobby Craft' make a good kit? I haven't found much selection locally, will probably have to internet these.

Thanks for any suggestions.

There are a ton of good World War I kits nowdays. Some things to consider though would be your modelling skill, display area, and price.

In 1/72 there are a lot of inexpensive kits, and you can get things like bombers, which are still quite large! If you want a diverse collection, including multi engine types, 1/72 is the way to go. You can get by without rigging them too. And you can do a lot of painting by hand or with decals. Roden and Eduard make a lot of nice 1/72 kits, and the old Airfix and Revell kits are inexpensive and make nice shelf sitters.

There are quite a few good 1/48 kits now. Eduard, Roden, Special Hobby, etc. have a wide variety of kits. Price runs $30-$40 for a lot of them. You really should rig them too. You are still limited to mostly single engine types. And again there are some good old cheap kits like the Revell repops of some of the Aurora kits, and the old Smer/Merit/Artiplast kits. Good for budget modelling and using up extra decals.

For the 1/32 kits, Roden has quite a few kits. But at $75ish they are not cheap. Hobbycraft has a couple of so-so 1/32 World War I kits as well. You definitely want to add rigging and probably some photo-etch to the larger sized kits, as things like solid, clunky machine guns look really out of place.

Revell's old 1/28 SPAD, Sopwith and Triplane are still quite nice. They did a Fokker D-7 that is poor though. If you just want the famous planes, those are good kits.

If you go here:

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/models/

...and browse abit you can see some of the above mentioned kits in finished form. Excellent craftsman there!

My favorite is the Sopwith Camel.I got to see one at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon in 1977.It was beautiful........

I've seen a Camel fly at Olde Rhinebeck Aerodrome (http://www.oldrhinebeck.org/), along with the rest of their WWI collection. It's an awesome sight, sound, and smell (castor oil!).

I think a realtively easy WWI kit, with minimal rigging, would be Eduard's new Dr.1:
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=eu8490&Submit3=Go
The Dr.1 only had brace wires on the cabane struts and landing gear, so there's minimal fuss.