LVG C.VI

[Torbjorn]

During the Great war, recon and artillery spotting were the main raison d’etre of the air services of Entente and central powers alike. The fanciful little Dreideckers and Albatri and Nieuports and Camels may have entered lore and legend, yet they were but counter-measures to the main participant in the air war: the two-seater recon. The LVG C.VI was one of the last of these types, entering service in 1918 and remained on and over the front lines until the Armistice, when more than a thousand had been built and delivered.

 

I’m building the quite new KP kit:

 

One sprue and one decal sheet:

 

 

The quality on the pieces varies. For example, the induction pipes (the pair of three-forked tubes supplying fuel and air to the engine) are rough-hewn, square rather than cylindrical, but the fuselage framing and detail in the cockpit are fine and convincingly in scale:

 

 

Of some reason the struts have some thick and crude reinforcements - but the pilot’s chair and stick and pedals are fine and thin. The defensive armament can be seen here - a forward-firing Spandau and the observer’s Parabellum. The former will receive a PE cooling jacket, the latter will be replaced with a Roden spare, which is quite a bit finer. You may notice that the gunpipes are places on the wrong side -upper, they should be on the lower - of the jacket opening…

KP has kindly molded the removable cowlings as separate parts, should one wish to leave these off to show more of the engine.

 

I would have liked a few more details for the oberver’s cockpit: radio and reel for said radio and photo camera especially. I will add these. 

Most importantly however: as opposed to other KP offerings (esp. the Triplane!), the wings are excellent and the ribbed effect neither exaggerated nor understated. In all I am happy with the kit: I can fix or scratch the stuff I’m unhappy with or missing, while the important bits that are difficult to change are good.

 

You may have noticed that the decals are out of register by a wide margin, but to me that doesn‘t matter because I have this from Peddinghaus:

 

Don’t be fooled by that profile - the photo and opposite side of the instructions show typical late-war camoflague - mauve and green with lozenge-covered wings. The black-white stripe decals do not at all correspond to the photo - I guess they will have to be painted. The instrcution text says they may be red and white rather than black or white. The name on the fuselage is either “Lotte” or “Lotta” - decals for both are provided, but only for one side. To sum up, there are some decisions and assumptions to make due to lack of information (stripe colour, rib tape colour, the lady’s name, etc).

 

 

Lastly, the kit comes with the wrong engine, a common theme among WWI kits. Mercedes D.III seems to be the only engine some kit manufacturers care to produce: this one looks like such a Merc with Benz induction pipes 😃 

Edited March 3 by Torbjorn

[Col.]

Something of a mixed bag to those parts but it seems you've a decent starting point and this subject is certainly an example from the early days of fixed wing reconnaissance work.

[GrzeM]

Good luck with this build!

This model kit is in most part based on excellent and very fine masters from now-defunct Polish Ardpol company (resin kits made of hand-scratchbuilt masters). That's why the wings surfaces (and fuselage too) are soooo fine.

On the other hand, some parts were made by AZ from completely different masters (engine?).

Definitely, it is one of the best AZ kits. And a cool aeroplane!

Any progress?

 

[Torbjorn]

On 3/11/2023 at 1:09 AM, GrzeM said:

Good luck with this build!

This model kit is in most part based on excellent and very fine masters from now-defunct Polish Ardpol company (resin kits made of hand-scratchbuilt masters). That's why the wings surfaces (and fuselage too) are soooo fine.

On the other hand, some parts were made by AZ from completely different masters (engine?).

Definitely, it is one of the best AZ kits. And a cool aeroplane!

Any progress?

 

 

 

 

Aha, that answers some questions. The wings are indeed great.

Some other projects dragged out, but now I’ve started. To the cockpit I added some missing parts: spare drum magazines and PE seatbelts and a quite spartan bench for the observer. The circular hole is for a camera that the observer could be equipped with. 

 

I remodelled the engine a bit to look more like a Benz engine. 

 

 

 

 

[Col.]

Lovely work within those cockpits

[DaddyO]

Looking good so far 

These KP kits are definitely a bit of a mixed bunch as you say, but having ploughed through the DH5 (I'd think the defunct Pegasus one is a better starting point) Given up on the Roland DII after much work (Now replaced with a Pegsus version waiting inspiration) I've just started the Sopwith Scooter which is okayish once all the heavy detail has been removed and replaced)

 

Paul

[Torbjorn]

14 hours ago, DaddyO said:

Looking good so far 

These KP kits are definitely a bit of a mixed bunch as you say, but having ploughed through the DH5 (I'd think the defunct Pegasus one is a better starting point) Given up on the Roland DII after much work (Now replaced with a Pegsus version waiting inspiration) I've just started the Sopwith Scooter which is okayish once all the heavy detail has been removed and replaced)

 

Paul

Oy, too bad about the Roland. I have that somewhere too, but I stopped buying the new KP kits after having had a look at its clumsy parts. This kit is fortunately much, much better. Here is one more shot of fine wings,  and the finished fuselage, ready for painting:

 

 

The fuselage too has some nice detail. I added the missing camera hatch from brass sheet and control horns on the rudder (also brass, but they can’t be seen in the photo).

 

I broke my two last .3mm drill bits drilling out the holes for the wire, but I think I’ll have to keep using .4mm anyway - my eyes are getting too old for the smaller holes  

 

Now to consider what to do with the dreadful reinforcements on the struts that shouldn’t be there. 

Edited April 3 by Torbjorn

[Torbjorn]

Started painting the fuselage and wings. For the wings I use aviattic decals. I made the mistake of buying the complete rolls rather than the alternating pattern (German printed fabric was applied in alternating directions, the decals come in the size of a roll). Next time I will do myself a favour and buy the other set with alternating direction on clear backing paper (they only had white in the shop) for pre-shading.

 

Starting with the undersides:

 

It might not look like it, but I first primed and applied gloss varnish. The radiator on the upper wing is german grey-green primer.

 

The fuselage was camoflagued green and mauve. I’m using ”light green” and ”mauve” from the AK German WWI set. This was not the typical look of the LVG C.VI - that would be varnished plywood. However, pilots complained that this finish made them bright and easily spotted, and some were overpainted, either with a darker varnish or some disruptive pattern. 

 

I’m done with the camo colours, applying the white and black now.

 

Edited April 7 by Torbjorn

[Torbjorn]

Nibbled away at the struts, removing most of the overscale reinforcement straps:

 

Painted these graygreen primer:

 

 

The cabane struts are way too thick, I’m now considering to make new ones. In the meantime I’m plodding away with the wings. The palette of colours look overcrowded, as the lozenge colours seems to differ greatly from the green and purple of the camoflauge. I will try to harmonize them a bit, maybe by overspraying some thinned blending colour. In hindsight maybe I should’ve gone for a wooden fuselage. Next time.

[Col.]

That is going to be a busy colour-scheme but at the same time will give your finished model its own special character.

[Torbjorn]

 

 

Armament waiting for painting: a forward-firing Spandau and a Parabellum for the observer. For the former I used an Eduard spare with a leftover PE jacket and the latter is a spare (Roden?) on which I replaced the barrel and added a gunsight from aluminium tubes. The kit guns are clumsier so I binned them. 

 

The background gun is an Austrian Schwarzlose for the Lloyd C.V I’m also building.

 

 

Decals are in place and assembly has started.  

 

Attaching the wings is a bit tricky because there is a dihedral on both wings, and no position locators for the cabane struts: my preferred method if the underwing is not fixated somehow (e.g. as one piece) is to start with the cabane struts and upper wing  to determine position. Here that is not possible, and instead I glued to cabane struts to the wing, temporarily fixed the outer struts to the lower wings and made a high-tech jig to wiggle everything in roughly the correct position:

 

 

 

Lower wings are being glued: upper is just in place for alignement. The dihedral is slighly too large: they tend to drop just a bit since I’m using green stuff at this stage - will strengthen the bond after all is in place. Once dried I will proceed to add all wires to the upper wing, glue outer struts to lower wing and only then glue the upper in place. Lastly the inner struts should be snapped in place. 

[Torbjorn]

On 4/12/2023 at 10:51 PM, Col. said:

That is going to be a busy colour-scheme but at the same time will give your finished model its own special character.

The busiest I’ve built for sure. 

[Torbjorn]

Almost done. Have some rigging repairs to perform, and need to find or remake the little tank-thingie on top of the radiator. The radiator pipe I remade from styrene rod - the kit version wasn’t what I’d call round in cross section. The bracket holding the gun is way too large: I cut it down cobsiderable.

 

I took the propeller looking most like that on the photo. I have bought several decal sheets with prop logos but of course none had ”Astra” decals (how many prop manufacturer were there!?) so I added some paint blobs.

 

Currently in the process of painting the exhaust pipe. Can’t seem to get that gritty matt finish people get, mine is satin at best. Trying to improve my painting, but it’s not my forte.

 

 

This is easily the best KP kit I’ve built by the way, highly recommended.

Edited May 1 by Torbjorn

[PeterB]

As you may have noticed, over in the "Not My Comfort Zone" GB I was bemoaning the lack of German WWI C types - seems I have missed these KP kits! I also was unaware of the AK WWI paints which look pretty good. I hate lozenge decs but you seem to be doing a good job with yours. I like the jig - pity we sold the big storage boxes full of my kid's Lego years ago!

 

Pete

[Torbjorn]

28 minutes ago, PeterB said:

As you may have noticed, over in the "Not My Comfort Zone" GB I was bemoaning the lack of German WWI C types - seems I have missed these KP kits! I also was unaware of the AK WWI paints which look pretty good. I hate lozenge decs but you seem to be doing a good job with yours. I like the jig - pity we sold the big storage boxes full of my kid's Lego years ago!

 

Pete

The paints are great, nice hues and easy to spray (though do mark the bottles with the paint name with some trustwprthy ink - the printed text on the labels seems to be water soluble and disappear quickly, and if the paints are left unmixed for a while the colours tur  completely random…).

 

Agree that German two seaters - and two-seaters in general! - are sorely missing. Other than this one I have only ancient Airfixes and a Pegasus Rumpler that I stumbled upon in an online auction.

 

KP also does the Albatros C.III. The decals in my box are terrible though, just as for this kit: completely out of register. 

 

 

[Col.]

Fine work again.

Not sure what technique folks use to create the patina of colours on an exhaust in use but perhaps a dig around in the car and AFV modelling sections of the forum will enlighten us?

[John Masters]

Lovely work.  Nice to see this one built up.