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Another shelf of doom project done 😊 Phönix DIIa KuK Kriegsmarine 1918 MAC 1/72 The kit is an interesting build some good bits some not so good - decals which disintegrate on contact with water and the engine with minimal details in particular. Im happy with it in the end though

Being Austrian, the topic of Aviation is something, that you're only involved from a distance, if any. Apart from being famous for the prolongued use of Swedish flying history (we used the Draken until 2005, making it a 50 year old plane in active service) and difficult purchasing processes, there isn't much aviation happening in Austria in the recent years. That wasn't always the case, as in the very early days of aviation, the Royal Austro-Hungarian Aviation Troops (or K.u.K. Luftfahrttruppen) where the seventh-largest airforce in the world, While, to be honest, most of the models where derived from German models, there was a kind of an Aviation industry in Austria. Me definitely not being exposed to patriotic influences in a larger dose, this just being a bit of a historic sideletter to larger chapters in the book of flight. But not too long ago I found out, that one of the larger companies, the Phönix Flugzeugwerke AG, had it's original location close to where I was raised and used to play as a small boy in the 70ies. Even the original factory buildings where partly in use then, in my memory a transport carrier was located there until the early 2000s. So, this has become something a bit personal, and when I discoverd that Special Hobby had a DI in their offering, I had to order one sometimes last year or so. Giving it the usual time to mellow it in the stash, I stated to work on it this summer. Sorry for not involving you in a WIP, it just started as a side project and sort of a late night build, but nevertheless I finished yesterday. About the build; the modell is somekind of basic in some aspects, with only some 30 plastic parts, complemented by some resin- and photoetch parts, Some parts are really beautiful, like the body with nicely molded caps and lids, and some nicely structures for rivets and various structures, and some very parts are so basic, like struts and landing gear, it almost hurts. Also, there is no structure for holding or giving a bit of positioning aid when mounting the upper wings, so from a point in build, about when the lower wings has been mounted, I'd say, you mainly use CA-glue as, plastic cements just doesn't do the job any more. Also, the instructions are somewhat very basic, giving just an rough idea what to do. So there where moments when I sincerely doubted to finish this - but I've went through, but ordered some help in form of a biplane jig from JS models, without I doubt I would have been there. And, yes; I know there are other jigs as well, but this was the only one available late night, when I suffered a moment of deep desparation. For the version I wanted to display; as I didn't like the brown mottle camouflage offered with the decals, I decided to give here a bare livery without any paint, of natural wood and bare linen. I painted the wings in Light Stone Grey from Lifecolor, giving it a quite yellowy linen colour, the body/wood structure with Cold base Wood, also from Livecolor and giving it a cover of Uschi Van Der Rosten wood decals. For the rear struts (after some examination, if these are thin struts, not wires). I used some electric guitar strings. Beware, these are very strong and can easily kill some modelling tools. Caps and hoods were painted with Alclad Semi Matt Aluminium, which maybe turned out a bit to matte, but I think it's okay. Rigging is done with EZ Fine, I decided not to make any turnbuckles, as these are so tiny one would barely see. Maybe I'll change this in future builds of that scale, but I do not miss them overly on this, to be honest. Mayor difficulties where the installation of the upper wing, as stated before, the mounting of the exhaust pipes, which I didn't manage to align properly, due to having installed to upper wing prior, and not having drilled some holes at the very beginning, but according to the manual. While definitely not being perfect and having a lot of flaws, I'm happy so far with the result of this little bit of kind of exotic early aviation. 😉 Here are some impressions, some details look much harsher as on the real model, due to small size: