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1/72 Encore Albatros D.III Oeffag


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Hello everyone,


This is my latest build – the Encore Albatros D.III (Oeffag Series 153) in 1/72 scale. The Encore kit uses the Roden plastic with some resin and etched extras thrown in. The kit is designed by Roden for maximum sales flexibility in that the upper forward decking and cowls are all separate, as well as the upper wing being split into three sections, all to facilitate the different German and Austrian models of the Albatros. Whilst great, this makes construction a little trickier. The plastic is soft and has a rough texture to it, as well as a bit of flash, so some care is needed in the clean up. I found ut the hard way that the kit interplane struts were too long, and when the wing was mounted to the cabane struts, the interplane struts ended up bowing and pushing the bottom wings downwards…. so I ended up having to trim the struts and re-mount the wing. Sigh. The lower wings still don’t have quite enough dihedral even now, but I’m not mounting that wing for a third time….


Otherwise, this build was straight out of the box, painted in the marking of a Polish D.III of the 7 Eskadra "Kosciuszko" flown by American volunteers during the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920. The decals were a mixture of Techmod (for the Austrian ‘sworl’ printed fabric), the kit decals and some from the spares box. I found out the hard way that the Techmod decals don't stick too well and are brittle when dry - I found it very difficult to remove the rib tape masking without pulling up the decal, and the top wing needed to have sections re-decalled and re-weathered. Very frustrating.



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The kit is not for beginners, but still builds up nicely in the end. Feedback, comments and criticisms always welcome!


Cheers,


BC


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Wow. What a beautiful little model. Captures the fragility of these early air raft very well.

Nice to see a polish example rather than the standard german too.

Very well done indeed. Love the rigging.

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That is a thing of great beauty and elegance! The Oeffag Albatri are amongst my favourites. It's always interested me how they took the design and made it into an even better aeroplane. And apparently they were beautifully built too, proper highly skilled woodworking craftsmen on the job!

I take my hat off to you, that is a difficult kit with difficult decals, yet you have obtained a flawless result.

Cheers

John

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Great job on this little guy!

I think this is the first time I've seen the art nouveau sworl pattern being an effective camou when compared to the grass lying underneath the aircraft - interesting!

regards,

Jack

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Hi Brad

When I started looking at the pictures I thought, that's really good.

Then you get to the last photo with the tin of paint and you think, blooming Nora it's only tiny !

Simply stunning, amazing details, I mean the wheels alone with the spokes....... I'm going to have to have a lie down just thinking about it !

Cheers Pat

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Thanks folks, you are all too kind! To answer the questions - the wheels actually come with the kit - they are etched spokes with resin tires, so I can't take credit for them. The rigging was done with fine elastic (the elastic core of a product called 'knitting in elastic'), painted black with a felt tip pen.

Cheers again!

BC

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