Torbjorn

Yes, don’t get me wrong, the kit is excellent. Full marks.

It looks like the finest WWI two-seater kit I’ve come across. Not without its faults though. The box says ”early”, but the fuselage is of the late type, see comparison with the WNW instructions: WNW schemes A,C and D are also represented in the Clear prop kit. The triangular side air vent should apparently be on the circular kind for all except D. If one is a pedant for these things, E8553 (WNW C, Clear prop no 4 and A/3) will require changing the triangular vent to a semi-circular, while A/3 and D/2 will require changing the cloth-covered panel on the aft fuselage (the box art is correct). Otherwise the kit contains three different kinds of exhaust pipes, two propellers, various bombs and alternative wheel covers, enabling a number of different planes to be made straight out of the box. I haven’t yet decided what to do with the anove information, so I just started with the internals, removing pieces and priming. The cockpit floor is simplified: I opened the pilots peeking window since the bottom piece of the fuselage has the corresponding opening already. I decided to leave the rest as is. Compare with the WNW version (I started painting this years ago, but got bored of all the painting. I don’t much like to paint.):

I have exactly two Airco kits in the stash, one Eduard DH.2 and the following, which I did not have to go rummaging on the attic to find and therefore got selected: This is what greets you inside: Several neatly packed sprues with nicely detailed plastic, a small PE fret with Scarff gun ring, bomb fins, control horns etc. The PE prop boss is fine, but so is the plastic (Clear prop used hard and sharp plastic, which makes for good detail). Looks like a treat.

Closed the fuselage, added the taiplane and lower wings. Rudder will be added after painting to ease masking. The cabane struts were added too: this posed a bit of a problem as there are no locators. I took measurements and tried to position them as close to the drawings as possible, praying that the wing struts will be close enough. I’m using Tamiya’s green stuff for glueing, so it’s possible to loosen the wing-fuselage joint and slightly change the angle to make it fit. The plan is to temporarily glue the upper wing to the cabanes and check and adjust the fit with the struts. Then paint. After that I’m stuck as I broke my last 0.4mm drill too and 0.5mm is too large for wire holes in my opinion. Need to order more bits. The bird-like appearance common to many early Austrian types is becoming apparent. I gave been led to beliece its nick-name was ”Cock-a-doodle-doo” (in German).

Thanks, did not know this. That’s a nice list, would love to see especially the Phönix and H-B W.12. The DH5 they have released.

Nice to see two-seaters getting some attention. Odd choice (hinthint DFW C.V), but won’t complain. An AGO C.I next?

Hansa-Brandenburg W.29, German maritime patrol-fighter of the Nordensey station, 1918 Kit is the 1/72 Toko/Eastern Express with lozenge decals from Aviattic. The kit seems to represent a prototype, and some chamges were made, described in the Build thread:

The busiest I’ve built for sure.

Armament waiting for painting: a forward-firing Spandau and a Parabellum for the observer. For the former I used an Eduard spare with a leftover PE jacket and the latter is a spare (Roden?) on which I replaced the barrel and added a gunsight from aluminium tubes. The kit guns are clumsier so I binned them. The background gun is an Austrian Schwarzlose for the Lloyd C.V I’m also building. Decals are in place and assembly has started. Attaching the wings is a bit tricky because there is a dihedral on both wings, and no position locators for the cabane struts: my preferred method if the underwing is not fixated somehow (e.g. as one piece) is to start with the cabane struts and upper wing to determine position. Here that is not possible, and instead I glued to cabane struts to the wing, temporarily fixed the outer struts to the lower wings and made a high-tech jig to wiggle everything in roughly the correct position: Lower wings are being glued: upper is just in place for alignement. The dihedral is slighly too large: they tend to drop just a bit since I’m using green stuff at this stage - will strengthen the bond after all is in place. Once dried I will proceed to add all wires to the upper wing, glue outer struts to lower wing and only then glue the upper in place. Lastly the inner struts should be snapped in place.

You are braver than I to tackle the horrors of vacuum-formed kits, but I’m happy to watch from the sidelines. Coming together nicely - I’m curious to see how that Scarff ring will be mounted on the curved fuselage.

Finished the cockpits and closed the fuselage. Added seat cushions from milliput and some wires, and some frames to the otherwise empty insides. Everything fits nicely and the film+PE instrument panel is a treat, even though the pic doesn’t do it justice. Added a sheet on the floor behind the cockpit to hide the ugly seam.

Nibbled away at the struts, removing most of the overscale reinforcement straps: Painted these graygreen primer: The cabane struts are way too thick, I’m now considering to make new ones. In the meantime I’m plodding away with the wings. The palette of colours look overcrowded, as the lozenge colours seems to differ greatly from the green and purple of the camoflauge. I will try to harmonize them a bit, maybe by overspraying some thinned blending colour. In hindsight maybe I should’ve gone for a wooden fuselage. Next time.

I’ve got 5 SAAB aircraft waiting, in addition to a B-5 licensebuilt by SAAB. Too late for the poll, but if uou let me I’ll sign up for a few.

I’ve already bought decals for the machine I want to build, so by the 3rd law of modelling I can reveal that one of the options will surely be the Swedish no 78001, an ex-UC-64!

Started painting the fuselage and wings. For the wings I use aviattic decals. I made the mistake of buying the complete rolls rather than the alternating pattern (German printed fabric was applied in alternating directions, the decals come in the size of a roll). Next time I will do myself a favour and buy the other set with alternating direction on clear backing paper (they only had white in the shop) for pre-shading. Starting with the undersides: It might not look like it, but I first primed and applied gloss varnish. The radiator on the upper wing is german grey-green primer. The fuselage was camoflagued green and mauve. I’m using ”light green” and ”mauve” from the AK German WWI set. This was not the typical look of the LVG C.VI - that would be varnished plywood. However, pilots complained that this finish made them bright and easily spotted, and some were overpainted, either with a darker varnish or some disruptive pattern. I’m done with the camo colours, applying the white and black now.

It’s a fairly low chance I will use them, since they’re either conspicuously overscale in 1/72 or too small to be handled. These are the smallest I’ve seen, so I might just test one. I’ve only used turnbuckles (1/72) on two early war machines (a Bleriot XI and one more I don’t remember) which had enourmous turnbuckles, big enough to imagine that Mr Bleriot just went down to the harbour and borrowed some from a fullrigger. — Wonder why they so often put sinkmarks in the cockpit area when there is so much free space inside the fuselage where they can’t be seen? The inside walls need some work as they come entirely barren, bar the sinkholes. The plane was built on a wooden frame, I ’m off to find some i nfo on how these frames were located.

I’ll try to manage one more Great war biplane. This time an Austrohungarian contraption - the Lloyd C.V, a highly conventional design, as opposed to other Lloyd types (see for example the Luftkreuzer or FJ 405). The wings are covered with plywood rather than the common linen, which makes for a bit of variation. The kit is the Special Hobby 1/72: (KuK means Königlich und Keiserlich - Royal and Imperial - in case any, especially Scandinavian, readers wondered) Upon inspection it looks like a nice kit! Two plastic frets: Once you learn the the wings were plywood they look quite cpnvincing: Some pieces are rough, requiring cleanup, but nothing big. Resin engine, radiator and cockpit details: A quite rich PE fret! Includes hatches, IP, gun ring, control horns, cooling jacket for the observer’s MG and even turnbuckles. No pic of the decals, but they are in register and contain markings for a few different planes - no fancy schemes here, they are all varnished plywood with light linen control surfaces. One of the machines have the ”surumn leaf” camo applied on the upper surfaces - the one depicted on the box.All in all, looks like excellent value for money.

I’m still searching for an early canopy… or maybe I should build a vacuum former.

This will be good, have seldom seen anyone build these, and none as crazy as to build two at once. I guess you have the WNW instructions too? They should be helpful, at least on the IV.

Oy, too bad about the Roland. I have that somewhere too, but I stopped buying the new KP kits after having had a look at its clumsy parts. This kit is fortunately much, much better. Here is one more shot of fine wings, and the finished fuselage, ready for painting: The fuselage too has some nice detail. I added the missing camera hatch from brass sheet and control horns on the rudder (also brass, but they can’t be seen in the photo). I broke my two last .3mm drill bits drilling out the holes for the wire, but I think I’ll have to keep using .4mm anyway - my eyes are getting too old for the smaller holes Now to consider what to do with the dreadful reinforcements on the struts that shouldn’t be there.

Aha, that answers some questions. The wings are indeed great. Some other projects dragged out, but now I’ve started. To the cockpit I added some missing parts: spare drum magazines and PE seatbelts and a quite spartan bench for the observer. The circular hole is for a camera that the observer could be equipped with. I remodelled the engine a bit to look more like a Benz engine.

Floats are on. Wonder what they were thinking when they designed the struts - even if the length had been correct there is no way the plugs would have fitted in the holes due the sharp angle. Not sure what to do here, maybe improvise the missing bit with modelling clay? At the float end you have to remove parts of the float to make it fit too. Also, the centreline, longitudinal spar is not included, and neither are the footsteps on the front struts. Made exhaust pipes of brass tube. Will either paint or chemically blacken in situ (or both). I’m currently looking for the pipe I knocked off. After that only anemometer (borrowed from an Eduard kit) and control horns are missing. Then I thought I’d try some weathering. Here she is with the contemporary marine Fokker E.V:

I haven’t forgotten. Slowly getting there. Will definitely need to do some paintmatching for touch ups.

Applied the decals - they are great: thin, they fit and so not silver. The streaky camoflague was made with brush applied after airbrushing. No idea about colours, I used the blue and lilac from AK’s German set and the closest match to the upper green and brown I had in store.

The decals have arrived, but ran into a booby trap when starting to apply them. I decided to start with the tailplane, but when checking the drawings it was quite obvious I had attached the wrong tailplane. Citing the yellow man, Doh! The kit contains two, but neither is suitable to the plane with the markings I have painted on the model. The kit contains the prototype tailplane (I had used this one) and the late production tailplane - “my” plane had the early production tailplanes… So I took another detour to make a new tailplane. The photo below shows all three versions: the new (attached), late-production and prototype. The elevators are not yet attached - I modified the late-production ones, which is why said tailplane lacks them. . I couldn’t wait with the lozenge, as evident. I need to find paintmatches, because there are plenty of cracks needing touch ups. I also managed to miscalculate the needed material for the leading edge, so I hope patching can be made invisible. The alignement is ok though - the pattern is perpendicular to the centreline, but the leading edge has a wee rake. Following the detailed instructions, now waiting for the decals to dry before trimming further.