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Kit: Pegasus (1:72)
This was my first ever build of a Pegasus kit...and after building it I was hooked on their kits. Being a short run kit it requires more work and a deal of scratch-building, but the kit is remarkably accurate in outline and detail. I substituted all the kit strut material with brass Strutz, decals are homemade on Testors decal sheets using my HP inkjet printer (my kit was missing the decals). The "stained woodgrain" effect was done by first painting a base coat of Testors acrylic radome tan, then scuffing it up with some sandpaper to simulate wood, and finally painting a wash of Citadel brand "Flesh Wash" over that. I was pretty happy with the look of the wood effect, and its quick and easy to do!
Kit: Roden (1:72)
Built many years ago, this was my first Roden kit that I ever did. The parts are molded with fine detail, but also suffer from excessive flash and sink marks. But after cleaning up all the parts it really fell together quite easily and builds into a beautiful model. I decided to build Hermann Frommherz's "Blaue Maus" (Blue Mouse) mainly because it gave me practice in painting all the panel lines on a otherwise plain paint scheme. Yep, I hand paint all the panel lines on my models with a very thin brush, because I'm too lazy to use a scribing tool. All national markings were from an Eduard kit.
Kit: Eduard (1:72)
This is probably my favorite kit to build, the non-profipack version of the Albatros D.V...a wonderful kit that falls together with no real vices. Cockpit interior, all control surface hinges and rear rudder are scratch-built from Evergreen styrene. As with all of my models, everything is completely hand painted with Polly Scale, Testors and MisterKit acrylics. Since I could never find a decent 1/72 decal to represent the skull motif used by ace Kurt Monnington, I just made my own decals with a HP inkjet printer. The upper wing radiator was put together from odds and ends from a HO scale train grill (I love to dig through the local model train store for various fiddly bits!).
Kit: Scratch (1:72)
I love Austro-Hungarian two-seaters...even though many were far from successful designs they still have an elegant look to them (in my opinion of course). Built pretty much entirely from Evergreen brand plastic sheets, strips and tubing. All struts and undercarriage were made from brass Strutz. The entire engine cowling was made from Sculpey oven-bake clay. I love that stuff, you can mold and smooth it out it to any shape, and once baked in the oven it's rock hard but easily filed and drilled. As I always do, everything is hand painted in Testors and MisterKit acrylics. Decals are Americal with Blue Rider serial numbers. The prop was hand-carved from plastic...just for the simple reason that I was curious if I could do it. I think next time I'll stick to grabbing a spare from the parts box!
Inspired by the color profile in the Osprey book "Fokker D.VII Aces of WWI", I hunted down photo's of Lindenberger's Fokker, and quickly realized the color profile was quite wrong. Oh well, even the experts make mistakes, right? After I built it in what I felt was the correct color scheme, I was happy (and humbly relieved) to see that Osprey corrected the profile later in their "Jagdstaffel 2 Boelcke" book. The point I'm trying to make is to go with what you want to build, trust your own intuition and have some fun. As for the Roden kit itself, the fuselage halves were horribly warped and badly molded. It took a good deal of work (and even more cursing) to correct all the molding flaws, but it came out well in the end. Lozenge, rib tapes and all national markings are from Americal. In fact the decals were the biggest challenge, since there are 189 of them. The nicely molded resin figures are CMK's "Richtofen's Circus".
I had always wanted to make this plane, which is easily one of the most flamboyant aircraft of WWI. The holdup was that there are no 1/72 decals to model this plane...and I am not fond of making decals. I finally bit the bullet and it was surprisingly not as bad as I though it would be, even though there are 262 decals on it! I painted a white background and then cut out individual black decal checks. Studying photo's, it's clear that only about half of them are true squares, the others are various odd shapes. And beware of the color profile in the Osprey book, they mistakenly swapped the port vs.starboard pattern on the rudder (the two sides of this aircraft are mirrored opposites). The "Mimmi" was cut out from white decal paper, and then I hand painted the black borders to the letters. Allied intelligence reports simply recorded this Jasta with 'blue" cowlings (and naturally they don't say what shade of blue), so I opted for a medium shade of Prussian blue. Some sources also say the wheels were possibly decorated with four small markings, but to my poor old eyes the photo's only show 2-3 splotches of what appears to be mud or oil...so I left the wheels plain.
Honestly, in all my years of building models I never built the Fokker D.VII because I thought it was such an ugly aircraft compared to the sleek Albatros series of fighters. But Roden proved me wrong, their Fokker kit really somehow brings out the subtle beauty of this classic plane. Typical of most of Roden's early kits, the parts need lots of cleaning up and test fitting...but it has wonderful detail and comes with two superbly molded engines. I decided to build this particular aircraft because I liked the idea of an all lozenge fighter. The four color lozenge is from Eagle Strike, very high quality decals that were a joy to work with. Rudolf Windisch used an all white stag emblem similar to the silver one Carl Degelow used (in fact both pilots copied the same stag emblem of the Sanitorium at Weisser Hirsch). The stag emblem was a decal from FCM, all national markings were made from white decal paper with black decal strips...and yes, the serial number is wrong but it was the only white lettered Fokker serial number I could come up with. Oh well, it still works for me.
Kit: Eastern Express (1:72)
An ex-Toko kit, it's molded as a bit of a fusion of the three different series 28 variants, to build an accurate airframe I suggest you examine photo's. I decided to build 28.02, the personal mount of Frank Linke-Crawford. Being an early Phonix built series 28, I repositioned all the engine access panels and scratch-built an all new tail unit and rudder (what were the Hansa Brandenburg engineers thinking when they designed that rudder?). Toss out all the struts, they don't fit nor are all the cabane struts even provided. Despite these minor points it was a fun build and I really have to give thanks to any manufacturer that produces injection molded Austro Hungarian subjects.
Kit: MAC (1:72)
I love this kit, it has extremely clean moldings and beautiful decals. But it has alot of inaccuracies as well. The upper wing cut-out is too deep, but easily fixed with scrap plastic to fill it in, and for some odd reason there are footsteps molded on both sides of the fuselage, even though photo evidence shows there was not. The prop is wrong as well, since photo's of this particular aircraft show it having the sharp angled Oeffag "scimitar" style, but fortunately Roden AH Albatros kits have spares to substitute. MAC has kindly supplied both types of tailskids that the D.I's used, a very nice attention to detail on their part. I scratch-built a new engine, exhaust manifolds and struts, and painted the "mottled cloud" camo with a sponge dipped in thinned acrylic paints, then dabbed over the kit after first dipping the kit entirely in water (to get a "saturated paint" look).
This was my first WWI aircraft I ever built, and my first aircraft scratch build as well. In fact I built it back in the dark ages before I even knew of the Windsock Datafiles, so I based it on a couple of old photo's and some plans from the Gray/Thetford book "German Aircraft of the First World War". The body is a fishing lure that I bought years ago in Japan (I never caught anything with it, so I decided to put it to better use). I filed and sanded the body to closer match the plans in the book, then I sawed it in half, built an interior, and made the wings from Evergreen brand plastic sheets. The wheels, prop and guns came from my parts box...the engine was made from plastic odds and ends and brass detail parts. Decals were homemade on my HP inkjet printer.