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Eduard's Little Whale


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Hiya, all. 

It seems like Casa del Softscience, winter is the season of biplane building (and discontent - there is ALWAYS discontent). I've already pulled all the biplane boxes from the attic (that's a loft to you UKasians) and may or may not have added two new purchases (I did, I totally did) to the multiwinged stash. 

 

I decided to start off with the simplest one in the collection - Eduard's 1/48 Roland C.II. This attractive little two-seater features a cigar-shaped fuselage, with all four wings mounted directly into the fuselage sides. This means simple strut work. And if anyone of you thinks that biplanes are hard because of rigging, then you're 1000% wrong. They're hard because lining up the top wing on the struts is hard. Its what your boys back then would have called "beastly unfortunate" .

 

Anyway, the Roland has two simple wing struts, and no cabane (thats above the fuselage) struts to screw things up. It also has neat little side windows and cute little curtains to put inside them. 

 

The Eduard kit (and its Revell reboxing) is pretty simple. I don't know when it came out, but it has the soft blobby details of Eduard's 1990s-era stuff. This is not the profipack boxing, so I was left to scrounge for details from my spare's box. Luckily I have an almost complete fret of German WW I stuff from i don't know what. :hmmm:

This is the aircraft I'm building. But I haven't settled on a paint scheme yet. 

165-roland-cii-walfisch.jpg?itok=RudNarC

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by SoftScience
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I started the build days before I started the thread. To date, I've finished up the cockpit, which began by giving all the main parts a woody finish. 

 

This was done with a sandy yellow base coat, brushed roughly with raw sienna oil paints to give it that wood grain look. The oils were then sealed with a variety of clear, clear yellow, or clear orange coats, to simulate different woods. As you can see. Some look better than others. 

 

IMG-20181117-000722086-HDR.jpg

 

Later all the different bits were added, and poof, just like magic, a complete cockpit was ready*

 

 

*the magic required about a weeks worth of work, Vallejo and Tamiya paints, some decals, and a bunch of random PE. 

 

IMG-20181124-175736633.jpg

 

IMG-20181124-175811074.jpg

 

Over the days, I also slapped together the engine. I didn't give it too much TLC, as most isn't going to be visible. I may add TLC to the cams and exhausts, once paint is done. Anyway, I threw the engine onto its retainers and glued the fuselage halves together. Fit was less than good. But this being a WW I plane, there won't be too many panel lines to goof around with, so filling and sanding wont be as much of a process. 

 

IMG-20181124-192922722.jpg

 

The sharp eyed will note that I did not add the cute little curtains. The decals supplied, look a little crappy. I couldn't bring myself to cut corners on a detail so central to this craft. I guess not all of these things had the courtesy of a country home decorator. 

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I don’t know whethe the Roland CII ever had the lozenge fabric being from earlier in the war, unless you can find a photo of showing it I wouldn’t go down that route.

 

AW

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12 hours ago, SoftScience said:

Does anybody know if the fishscale patterns worn on some of these planes are available as a decal? 

 

Yes, ironically Eduard did them in one of their boxings...  http://www.hyperscale.com/2009/reviews/kits/eduard8043reviewrb_1.htm

 

Maybe put out a call for surplus decals in the wanted section...?

 

Matt

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14 hours ago, Drift said:

You mean the lozenge effect? Yes, you do get them in decals. 

 

https://www.aviattic.co.uk/132-decals.html

No, not lozenge. 

As @Mattlow pointed out. Eduard used to include them in earlier versions of the kit. 

 

This fish scale camouflage. This decal didn't come with my boxing. I wonder if it is available aftermarket.

eduard_roland-3.jpg

 

tmcrolandc2bt.jpg

 

Edited by SoftScience
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1 minute ago, corsaircorp said:

Oh that's a nice project...

I've been tempted by this kit, and I think that someday, I ll buy one !

Great woodwork on the internals !!

Sincerely.

CC 

If you have not built a biplane before, this is a good first-time around kit. 

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19 minutes ago, Duckwizard said:

I guess Eduard recognized in the meantime that a whale (Wal) is no fish (Fisch). 😛

They seem to follow the doctrine of the medieval Catholic church: anything that swims is considered a fish.

Cod? Fish
Whale? Fish
Dolphin? Fish
Beaver? Fish
Vinnie The Snitch? Swimming with the fish 

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And now I wait for filler to dry.

 

Quite a bit of filler was needed to shape the gunner's opening and the lower wing.

 

Lots sanding and shaping to come. Thourghouly not fun. 

 

IMG-20181125-203332163.jpg

 

IMG-20181125-203346771.jpg

 

I should find something else to work on while this sets and cures.

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First round of sanding done. As always, I ended up sanding a lot of the filler right out of the recesses. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it happens often.

 

Nevertheless, it's coming to shape. Enough filler stayed on, and now I'm augmenting with some Mr. Surfacer.

 

Hope this does the trick.

 

IMG-20181127-214848061.jpg

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7 hours ago, SoftScience said:

As always, I ended up sanding a lot of the filler right out of the recesses. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it happens often.

Happens to me a lot too so I’ll be interested to read any explanations for it.  Maybe using too coarse a grade of sander?

 

AW

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Lovely work, I've built this several times in 1/72 and the eduards kit is definitely on my radar

 

42766256614_97d5f1ee1f.jpg

Guilty little secret, the absolute best way to line up the two wings on a biplane  is to use the kit box as above, works every time.

 

43851699692_e71648022a.jpg

The finsihed article, Airfix Be2C converted to a single seater nightfighter.

Edited by Marklo
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