Special Hobby Lloyd C.V

[Torbjorn]

I’ll try to manage one more Great war biplane. This time an Austrohungarian contraption - the Lloyd C.V, a highly conventional design, as opposed to other Lloyd types (see for example the Luftkreuzer or FJ 405). The wings are covered with plywood rather than the common linen, which makes for a bit of variation.

 

The kit is the Special Hobby 1/72:

(KuK means Königlich und Keiserlich - Royal and Imperial - in case any, especially Scandinavian, readers wondered)
 

 

 

Upon inspection it looks like a nice kit!

 

Two plastic frets:

 

Once you learn the the wings were plywood they look quite cpnvincing:

Some pieces are rough, requiring cleanup, but nothing big.

Resin engine, radiator and cockpit details:

 

A quite rich PE fret! Includes hatches, IP, gun ring, control horns, cooling jacket for the observer’s MG and even turnbuckles.

 

 

No pic of the decals, but they are in register and contain markings for a few different planes - no fancy schemes here, they are all varnished plywood with light linen control surfaces. One of the machines have the ”surumn leaf” camo applied on the upper surfaces - the one depicted on the box.All in all, looks like excellent value for money.

[Col.]

This does look to be a nice kit of the type. Hope it builds well for you  

[PeterB]

Nice kit. I have often considered trying turnbuckles for rigging but in 1.72 they are likely to be a pain - not too bad in 1/48 though I suspect.

 

Pete

[Torbjorn]

7 hours ago, PeterB said:

Nice kit. I have often considered trying turnbuckles for rigging but in 1.72 they are likely to be a pain - not too bad in 1/48 though I suspect.

 

Pete

It’s a fairly low chance I will use them, since they’re either conspicuously overscale in 1/72 or too small to be handled. These are the smallest I’ve seen, so I might just test one. I’ve only used turnbuckles (1/72) on two early war machines (a Bleriot XI and one more I don’t remember) which had enourmous turnbuckles, big enough to imagine that Mr Bleriot just went down to the harbour and borrowed some from a fullrigger.

 

—

Wonder why they so often put sinkmarks in the cockpit area when there is so much free space inside the fuselage where they can’t be seen?

 

The inside walls need some work as they come entirely barren, bar the sinkholes. The plane was built on a wooden frame, I ’m off to find some i

nfo on how these frames were located.

Edited April 7 by Torbjorn

[Torbjorn]

Finished the cockpits and closed the fuselage. Added seat cushions from milliput and some wires, and some frames to the otherwise empty insides.

 

 

Everything fits nicely and the film+PE instrument panel is a treat, even though the pic doesn’t do it justice.

 

Added a sheet on the floor behind the cockpit to hide the ugly seam.

[Torbjorn]

Closed the fuselage, added the taiplane and lower wings. Rudder will be added after painting to ease masking. The cabane struts were added too: this posed a bit of a problem as there are no locators. I took measurements and tried to position them as close to the drawings as possible, praying that the wing struts will be close enough. I’m using Tamiya’s green stuff for glueing, so it’s possible to loosen the wing-fuselage joint and slightly change the angle to make it fit. The plan is to temporarily glue the upper wing to the cabanes and check and adjust the fit with the struts. Then paint. 

 

 

 

After that I’m stuck as I broke my last 0.4mm drill too and 0.5mm is too large for wire holes in my opinion. Need to order more bits.

 

The bird-like appearance common to many early Austrian types is becoming apparent. I gave been led to beliece its nick-name was ”Cock-a-doodle-doo” (in German).

[Torbjorn]

Finally I got the drill bits. I think I’ll avoid cheapest oriental goods next time though, the bits are extremely dull, almost looks snapped…

 

During the break I lost one of the ubdercarriage legs to the house gnomes.  After wasting way too much time searching for it, I gave in and made a new one by laminating 10 by 60 thou strip, using the remaining leg to get the right angle dsuring glueing:

 

Painting has started. The Austrians seem to have used a grey primer for panels and struts. I picked the first grey I liked in the paint cabinet, which happened to be hataka’s ocean grey.

 

Struts and gravity tank were glued to a sprue for painting:

 

Edited May 18 by Torbjorn

[MickE]

Nice. That's an interesting looking aircraft.

[Torbjorn]

Starting to run out oof time, so forced myself to do more painting. Most of the machine was covered in plywood. Unusually this includes the wings.

 

First it was primed with Vallejo’s tan primer, followed by layers of Wood mixed with tan at different ratios and then oil paint for the grain. 

I’ve seen these finished in shades ranging from what I’ve got now to darker or reddish chestnut. Trying to find out what is correct - all I have is bad BW photos showing rather light colours, but I’m thinking to follow the boxart and apply a dark varnish or two. First off is adding some nailheads with the riveter.

 

 

Here I have started on the oils on one wing:

 

 

I tried a few different tools and methods on different panels and asked the honest family members which looked most like wood and ended up applying paint and rather forcefully rubbing with an old dried brush with bristles all over the place, followed by smoothing with a new, large flat brush as wide as the panels. This will be followed by tinted varnish to smoothen it - the camera significantly enhances contrast compared to what my naked eye shows though.

 

This now has to dry for a few days. I will go through it with a brush tomorrow, when it’s half dried, to improve what I don’t like, and to add more contrast between panels (and ensure ”grain” doesn’t continue over panel edges).

 

Edited June 1 by Torbjorn

[Col.]

Nice paintwork effect 

[Torbjorn]

Getting close. Touch ups and decals going on.

 

 

[Torbjorn]

Hit a bit of a snag: the struts are a good 2-3 mm too short. 

 

The reason can be several:

1) cabane struts sit too high/ are too tall

 

2) too little dihedral

 

3) they really *are* too short

 

For number one, it is certainly easy to do this error since there are no locators whatsoever for the cabane struts. I have however measured several times, both from wing to wing and from top wing to wheel axle, and if anything the cabanes are too *low*.

 

For number 2:

Can not see that there should be much dihedral, certainly no where close what recquired to raise the tips by some 2 mm. It will look wrong.

 

 

 That leaves #3, but I’ve never seen such a big error. Making new struts would prevent damage that would inevitably be inflicted when changing #1 or #2, so I’m tempted to go this route for that reason alone.

 

Otherwise we would be close to finish. I have only the wheels, prop,  gun and radiator to mount (after making new radiator pipes due to not being able to find the resin bit I’m sure I painted already), all of which are painted and awaiting. Apologies for the dirty exhaust pipes: they should prbably be nice and shiny, but the plastic became so rough when trying to clean them I decided to make them gritty rather trying to sand the little things smooth.

 

 

 

 

 

[Torbjorn]

Looks like I shall manage on time after all. Took the easy way out and made new struts - they are about 1 mm longer than the originals, I apparently exaggerated a bit.

 

 

 

Only touchups (amazing how much dust a varnished surface collects!) and mending the holes left from the rigging left. And reattaching the aileron for the n:th time.

 

 

The wooden finish makes hiding the rigging holes easier, since it doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth or single tone. First I blather a dark colour over the holes and their surround. 

 

Edited June 17 by Torbjorn