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Takom continues to surprise us with its choice of subjects. 1:350 Zeppelins; the P and Q class becomes half a meter long in that scale - in the same scale as many WW1 ship kits. The Q-class is of interest to me as L-20 drifted ashore in Norway and some bits and pieces are on show in the museum at Stavanger-Sola.

Zeppelin LZ127 1:720 Mark I Models The LX127 Graf Zeppelin was a German passenger airship designed, built and operated in the interwar period. At the time of its completion, it was the longest airship in the world at 236 metres and was surpassed only by the USS Akron in 1931. The Graf Zeppelin enjoyed a relatively successful commercial career, flying over 1 million miles prior to its retirement in 1937. Most of its commercial flights took place between Germany and South America, as the development of fixed wing passenger aircraft made it too slow and small (in terms of passenger carrying capacity) for regular operation between Germany and the USA. The Graf Zeppelin was retired following the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. Attempts were made to secure a supply of Helium - a much safer lifting gas - from the USA, but the annexation of Austria in 1938 put an end to this, and with it the German airship programme. Mark I announced their intention to produce a series of 1:720 scale airships some time ago. They have covered the WWI era P and Q class airships via several different boxings, making this the second all-new kit in the range. Inside the box is a single frame of grey plastic, with the two halves of the hull seperated from the frame, presumably in order to fit them inside the box. The kit is limited run in nature, with the moulds manufactred from hardened resin. The plastic parts are nicely moulded, however, with crisp detail throughout. There is no flash present and the sprue attachment points are reassuringly fine. As you might expect, construction is fairly straightforward. The main structure of the airship is split vertically down the middle, with the gondola moulded in place. The hull measures out at just under 330mm, which is pretty much spot on. Aside from joining the fuselage halves, the only real construction work involved is assembling the flying surfaces and engine pods. There is a choice of two or four-bladed propellers depending on which scheme you want to finish your model in. A stand is included to display the finished model, along with a decal to identify the finished model. The finished kit is an impressive size for the scale, comfortably rivaling or eclipsing most naval warships of the era. Mark I have included decals to finish the Graf Zeppelin at four different points during her career: Zeppelin LZ127 'Graf Zeppelin' First flights, 1928-29. This is the scheme she wore during her first commercial crossing of the Atlantic in October 1928; Zeppelin LZ127 'Graf Zeppelin' Round-the-world flight, 1929; Zeppelin LZ127 'Graf Zeppelin' Propaganda and commercial flights 1933-36. This scheme features painted flying surfaces, with the imperial German flag on the starboard side and the swastika on the port side; and Zeppelin LZ127 'Graf Zeppelin' Last flights, 1936-37. This scheme features the Nazi party flag painted on both sides of the vertical tail. Conclusion Just like their P/Q Class Zeppelin, the LZ127 is a really appealing kit. It should look great on its display stand and will make an ideal companion for Revell's LZ129 Hindenburg in the same scale. Construction is simple and while the level of detail is slightly basic, it is as good as it needs to be in this scale. Recommended. Review sample courtesy of

Now, something a bit different. Finished not long ago as part of our local forum's WWI campaign. This particular Zeppelin flew twice over Serbia in 1915. It was pretty easy build, not to many parts, Gunze and Tamiya colors are sprayed over Black Surfacer. I tried to make patchy look, so I put several in progress pictures as well.

This little model was build by André Schulz and is one of the best I have ever seen: LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was a rigid airship made by Zeppelin, which was put into service on September 18 in 1928 to 21 months of construction. The airship is considered the most successful passenger airship that era. Originally built as an experimental ship, LZ 127 proved so reliable that it soon became famous through numerous spectacular rides. These include the world trip and the polar flight. And scoring records as the longest drive of an airship with 6384.50 km and the longest journey time of an airship in 71 hours. Graf Zeppelin was filed on July 19, 1937 decommissioned. After discharge of the hydrogen gas it served only as a tourist attraction, which could be visited for an entrance fee, the population made use of this good use. With the outbreak of World War II the ship 1940, even though it was still fully operational, scrapped together with LZ 130 in Frankfurt am Main. More pictures in our Blog: http://petesmancave.blogspot.de/2016/03/petes-mancave-news-92016.html

I've been posting this on ARC, but figured I might as well cross-post over here since the Britmodeller crowd is a little less jet-centric. Okay, so yes, I am scratchbuilding a 1/144 Zeppelin. LZ66/L 23 - a Q-Class Zepp - to be specific. Why this particular airframe? Because it was shot down by Lt. Bernard A Smart flying a Sopwith Pup, which I also intend to model. It should add an interesting story to the model and give a better sense of scale - you don't really realize just how massive the Zeppelins were until you see that iiiiiitty-bitty airplane beside it. In 1/144, it's about 4' long, 20" around. More than six square FEET of filling and sanding. Ask me how I know. I had briefly considered doing them both in 1/72, but the Zepp would have been 8' long, almost a foot in diameter, and I'm not quite that insane. (but, ohmygod would it would be sooooo awesome!) The build has its roots in a paper model designed by Thorsten Brand. http://jleslie48.com/zep/model_parts/Pclass_description.pdf http://jleslie48.com/zep/model_parts/ His model is a P-Class; the Q-class was a revised design that added an extra cell to the balloon for an increased payload and ceiling. My primary reference is actually just his P Class Description PDF. I ended up re-drawing everything in CAD for my plastic version. My basic game plan was fairly simple: Make a bunch of bulkhead sections (ribs) along the appropriate station numbers. Align these along a central spine, with reinforcing spars closer to the surface, then skin the whole shebang with styrene sheet. Step 1 in this whole process was to draw the balloon's profile in Solidworks. Thorsten's profiles list the station numbers (in metres), and the cross section shows the basic proportions. Dividing the profile into individual stations gave me the cross section at each location. I sketched out the cross section in CAD, then re-sized it to fit the height of the envelope at each station. For most of the balloon, this was a simple copy/paste/resize; at the back, I had to make some tweaks to match the tailplane geometry, where some facets blended out. The final step for the bulkheads was to add my spine and spar markings. A suitably sized layout was sketched (1/8" spar holes, 5/8" square spine), then copy/pasted in the middle of each bulkhead. I also took the time to make a sort of 'ruler' - a big ol' rectangle with the bulkhead stations marked off, eliminating the need for fiddly measuring come assembly time. With my 36 bulkheads sketched out, I now had exact widths of each skin panel at each station. By lining these up with the correct station spacing and going back to my profile, I was able to chop the profile into individual station sections and measure the exact length of the full skin panel, accounting for the projection - one of the handy features of Solidworks. This allowed me to set the bulkhead spacing accurately for the skin; it might be 5 scale metres between station 1 and 2, but because of the curvature it's 7 linear metres of skin (for instance). By plotting the width at each bulkhead, and the (actual) distance between each bulkhead, I had a guide for the skin outline. Then it was a simple matter of connecting the dots; using Soliworks' 'snap spline to points' feature gave me the exact curvature needed. This provided a 'master' skin panel, which was copied, pasted, and then it too was tweaked to match the tail geometry. It also gave me exact locations for each bulkhead, allowing precise location on the model. The last step was to trim off the tips of each skin panel. Aligning these perfectly would be a hassle, and I had other plans. Now, line up all 19 skin panels (in the correct order!), and the covering template is done. (profile for deriving all those measurements at top, finished skin below. The rectangle just above the skin segments is my spine template - just line the bulkheads up with the lines around the spine. The vertical lines on the skin sections again show the bulkhead locations.) The final step for the envelope was to make tailplane templates. This was a simple matter of tracing over Thorsten's drawings in CAD, then ensuring they were the correct scale dimensions. Templates finished. I also duplicated each bulkhead - I was using .020" styrene sheet - good for the flexible skin (and easy to cut), but a little flimsy for the skeleton. Doubling it up to .040" would give more rigidity. Next came print prep. The CAD templates were laid out and saved as .DWG files, then opened up in Illustrator (Illustrator won't open CAD files directly). My first step here was to offset the edges of the bulkheads, to account for the thickness of the skin. Next, I filled in the skin, bulkheads and tailplanes to give me precise cutting lines: cut right along the edge of the part (rather than somewhere in the middle of each line). Finally, the layout was tweaked to fit on 4 x 3' sheets and saved as PDF files, ready for printing. TL;DR: Math. Just lots of math.

On display at the Spielwarenmesse Nürnberg 2014 two future 1/72nd Brengun's kits. But what's that? A German glider and a piloted bomb. Types? Help. Sources: http://www.modellversium.de/galerie/2-ausstellungen/11039-spielwarenmesse-nuernberg-2014-teil-1-verschiedene-hersteller.html http://www.ipmsdeutschland.de/Ausstellungen/Nuernberg2014/Bilder_AT/Brengun_Hauler_13.htm V.P.

OK, so for my second build post something small. This is Brenguns tiny Rammer, so small I thought they'd made a mistake and it was 1/144 but no, it is actually 1/72. The fit was pretty good for a short run style kit but the photo etch is a real pain as there's no indentation for the parts to attach to so you only have the tiny contact patch of the part itself making them very fragile. Still, I managed to get through the painting with only a couple of repairs needed. The scheme is hypothetical as the kit schemes were a little dull. The mottle is there mainly to disguise a rather poor masking job on the demarcation line. The base is just a plasticard circle mounted on a wooden drinks coaster. Hope you enjoy the shots And finally, a couple of shots to show the size better Thanks for looking Andy