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Kit: 12 Squared (1:72)
This is the 12 Squared 1/72nd scale kit of the DFW T28 "Floh" or Flea, an apt name for a strange looking aircraft. The model was built out-of-the-box, with a joystick and control panel added to hide the empty interior. The rigging is nylon monofilament coloured with indelible pen. The decals were cut down from a modern luftwaffe sheet, using a coin as a guide. The prop stripes were done with thin strips of masking tape cut using two knife blades taped together.
Kit: Pegasus (1:72)
This is the 1:72nd scale Pegasus kit. The tailplane is scratchbuilt, as I thought the original was far too thick. I made a tool from a filed-downscrew to cut the corrugated surfaces.
The colours are my interpretation of the description in the datafile. I started out by painting wings, fuselage and tailplane in Misterkit Albatros Pale Green with Gotha/LVG Dark Violet patches, and pale blue underneath. I then applied a thin chocolate brown over the fuselage, and a white coat underneath and over the whole tail, so that the camouflage pattern just shows through. After the decals were applied I painted another thin coat of chocolate over the serial numbers.
The undercarriage and roll frame are made from Strutz brass and guitarstring, with copper wire for the suspension bungee cord. The prop is from the kit, and matches the Ian Stair drawings in Aircraft Archive Vol 3, but from looking at pictures and the Junkers drawings in "Vom Lilienthalgleiter zur fliegenden Annelise" the prop should be much larger, about 9ft 6inches diameter.
The exhaust is an Xtra Parts resin, cut down, painted in gunmetal with awash of matt rust. After I closed up the fuselage the seat supports came adrift from the wire bearers I had made. After a lot of shaking and prodding I finally managed toget it back nearly into the right place, and glue it down.
Kit: Phonix (1:72)
This kit was finished in 2001. It's the Phoenix vacform, with a few scratchbuilt items in the cockpit, and a partial engine filling the space that shows in the cockpit. There's a build review in Internet Modeller for June 2001.
Kit: Eduard (1:72)
This is the1/72nd scale Eduard kit, mostly out of the box. The radiator pipes, pilots step, and gun mounting pole were made of wire. The lozenge fuselage is taken from a picture of 852/17 in the book "Vom Lilienthalgleiter zur fliegenden Annelise". The picture appears to show a pale stripe along the bottom of the lozenge and no pattern under the fuselage, so I have interpreted this as being finished in pale blue underneath, rather then lozenge. 852/17 has no wings or tail in the picture so the rest of the colour scheme is taken from the kit instructions for 822/17.
The original aircraft may have been very strong, but the kit isn't, and I live in fear that the top wing will come off at the slightest provocation, there are already two snapped struts from the two wing installations done so far.
A reasonably simple build, except for getting the top wing on straight. It makes a monster of a two-seater, that looks huge amongst the rest of the collection.
Kit: Phoenix (1:72)
The V19 was designed to meet a requirement for an aircraft that could be carried on a submarine as a spotter. Constructed entirely of duralumin it could be taken apart for stowage in 15 minutes and erected in 30. Volker Haeusler surmised that it was "maybe the most advanced all metal aircraft build during the war - seemingly, it used a stresssed skin concept that in that completeness was not used by Dornier and Zeppelin, let alone the Junkers designs." V19 and 'Putbus' were post-war designations.
I started this model on 18 May 2002, according to a post to the list on that date, but most of the work was done in the last couple of months of 2007. The kit went together reasonably well, though I had to fill out the front of the fuselage to match the cowling. Instructions are patchy, and studying the two photos I have I think I have positioned the control panel too far aft. One photo shows the V19 sitting on trolleys and trestles, so I scratched some of these, and made my first attempt at a concrete hardstanding for the base. The third picture shows the notch in the rear struts that made a step.
Kit: Scratch (1:600)
After the end of the war some project drawings of R Class aircraft, (the German giants), were found amongst material that came from the Zeppelin works at Staaken. This model is of the smallest of the monoplane designs. This had six 500hp engines buried in the wings, driving four propellers. The wings are made from foamboard, cut and filed to shape, then skinned with plasticard on the underneath to get the correct thickness. The fuselage is made of balsa, again with a skin of plasticard on the top surface. The tail is plasticard, as are the undercarriage frames. The eight wheels are shaped from plastic rod in groups of four. The top cabin is made from shaped plastic sheet, with the windows notched out at the sides. This was then covered top and bottom with plasticard and the whole assembly sanded to the shape you see. The props are shaped from strip, and the guns are bent wire with tiny discs superglued to the side to represent Parabellum. The colour scheme is based on the surmise that the structure was all metal, and for trials would not have been camouflaged. The serial is based on what I could find in the spares box, but follows on from numbers allocated to Zeppelin for all-metal designs such as the R.VIII, which started at 201.The last picture also shows a Handley Page O/400 and a Bessaneau hangar to give an idea of the size of this machine. Reference: The German Giants, by Haddow and Grosz