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Hear ye, hear ye, modelers! Abandon a life of reprehensible modeling sloth! Regain your uselessly spent energy while tempering mind and body! Why build despicable kits that fit with no effort, debilitating spirit, muscles, brain and will? Why just put measly, perfectly formed parts together, with the only help of glue, avoiding the joys of a good challenge, and remaining deaf to the call of the wild modeling nature? Wake up, BM modelers, to a true modeling life! Do as @general melchett did! he eventually developed such eyelid musculature, that he was able to keep his eyes opened for minutes at the time! Imitate @Space Ranger, he once sanded a kit, and now the Space Ladies follow him everywhere! After many years of cracking their respective skulls, sink their economies, and lose a hefty percentage of their citizens -leaving orphans and widows galore as side-effect-, the WWI belligerent countries apparently came to the unexpected conclusion that perhaps using planes as passenger, mail and goods transport was somehow a better idea. Go figure! Thus, many planes were converted to civil use, with greater or lesser success, many times by the simple expedient of slapping a cabin atop the fuselage to give some protection for the no doubt very impressed, but perhaps a bit startled passengers. I have done and posted here quite a few of them, as there is no better use for a weapon than to be at the service of peace, preferably not killing anyone in the process of performing said service. For the purpose, I had acquired yet another vintage 1/72nd vacuformed kit, this time the Sierra Models Friedrichshafen F.F.49c seaplane. It's in line with standard offerings in the same media, also providing a few fairly-cast white metal parts, but no strut material, no decals and an interior that even a Spartan would call Spartan. There are, surprisingly, several options for a civil machine, and I found without much trouble many images on the Net, among them: - Tiedemann's N3 (apparently D-222 F.F.49, Jan. 1920) (I had already built another Tidemann's seaplane, a civil conversion of a Hansa W.33: - T-DABA - DLR W7 And according to the Air History registers: D-41 Friedrichshafen FF.49 DLR D-42 Friedrichshafen FF.49 D-43 Friedrichshafen FF.49 D-44 Friedrichshafen FF.49 DLR Berlin D-45 Friedrichshafen FF.49 DLR >Deutscher Aero Lloyd , Crashed D-49 Friedrichshafen FF.49 1365 Deutscher Aero Lloyd >Severa, Canc 11.33 D-71 Friedrichshafen FF.49 v1 D-85 Friedrichshafen FF.49 1368 Lloyd L.V. Sablatnig >Aero Sport Warnemunde >DVS D-86 Friedrichshafen FF.49 223 Lloyd L.V. Sablatnig >DVS, Destroyed 8.28 D-114 Friedrichshafen FF.49 Sablatnig D-115 Friedrichshafen FF.49 Sablatnig D-132 LFG V.1 'Max' Used by Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft Stralsund as air taxi Rebuilt Friedrichshafen FF 49 D-133 LFG V.2 'Moritz' Used by Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft Stralsund as air taxi Rebuilt Friedrichshafen FF 49 D-134 LFG V.4 'Witwe Bolte' Used by Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft Stralsund as air taxi Rebuilt Friedrichshafen FF 49 D-146 Friedrichshafen FF.49 DLR/Berlin >DVS, Canc 07.28 D-377 Friedrichshafen FF.49 DLR (W8) Canc 28.01.20 D-380 Friedrichshafen FF.49 DLR To Denmark 4.20 D-381 Friedrichshafen FF.49 D-381 DLR To Denmark 4.20 With so much to chose from, of course what is available as original photos should be considered as reference, not to mention the always daunting and sticky task of discerning the colors of the chosen potential subjects. Now, to the molds: Not bad, but not what one would call sharp definition: Restrained rib detail, correct scalloping: The white metal parts (half will go to the bin, as they pertain to the military version): I have to dig deeper into the references, but I think the civil version, especially the conversions by LFG (V.1 to V.4) had an enlarged vertical tail: