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Showing results for tags 'Rohrbach Roland'.
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Oh, The HorRohrbach! I was truly captivated by the mastodontic demeanor of the Zeppelin-Staaken E.4/20 that I built some time ago, and it was only logical to follow suit with another of Rohrbach's creations, the Rohrbach Roland. Rohrbach is mostly known for his flying boats, the Romar, Rocco, Rodra, etc., and all share with the Zeppelin Staaken E4/20 and the Roland many constructional features and design solutions. The Roland was the most notable of the land-based members of that family, and had extensive service with Lufthansa and, of all companies, the then recently-formed Iberia of -naturally- Spain. Iberia, according to contemporary narratives, was formed in 1927 by a 3/4 of capital coming from Horacio Echebarrieta and 1/4 from Lufthansa. The line, that had several Rolands, covered the Madrid-Barcelona route. These aircraft belonged to the earlier series of Rolands, with shoulder wings and open cockpits. Later versions will have the wing lifted up to the fuselage top and fully canopied cockpits in redesigned noses, plus changes in the power plant. One of these machines (all came from Lufhtansa stock) was re-registered in Spain -in a surprising choice of letters- M-CACA, an oddly perfumed combination in Spanish. In any case, this registration was in place for only one week, and was hastily substituted by the neutral M-CAAC. And who could resist the temptation? A lot of inaccurate information was found in gathering references for this project. Just one example: an article on the subject on World Aviation magazine (Autumn 2013) has a photo of the "Roland interior" that is, you guessed, anything but, and depicts instead perhaps a Fokker F.VII. The interior of the Roland had a faint resemblance with that of the Staaken E.4/20, in the sense that diagonal structural members invaded the cabin space, and in this case the spar box too. Making plans and 3-views is not easy at all, and I do appreciate them when available, as well as information, but, all plans I found were inaccurate in some obvious respect, all color profiles and 3 views had issues in several regards. Again: do your own homework, it ads time to the build, and you learn a lot, but, as much as you are grateful for the data made available, very soon develop a healthy skepticism about what is around in terms of information in the aviation world. Welcome to another beautiful ugly duckling, this time a slightly smelly one 🙂
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