Lloyd 40.15 Triplane
by James Dickie

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Kit: Scratch (1:72)

Last year I came across the Meikraft kit of the Lloyd 40.15 at a swap meet…what a cool triplane! But they wanted $30 for it (!), which made my Scottish genes balk. So instead I got out my beloved copy of "Austro Hungarian Army Aircraft of WWI" by Peter Grosz and decided to scratch-build one. The book has an “artists impression” of the plane, which looks oddly like the Meikraft kit (clearly one was inspired by the other), both having a very strange 3-sided rear fuselage. But looking at the extant scale plans I’m convinced that’s not right, the plans to my eyes show a regular 4-sided wooden fuselage, which was standard in all Lloyd fuselage designs (the sole exception of the turtle-decked Lloyd LS1 does not really count, since it was neither designed nor built by Lloyd, but rather by DFW in Germany). I made the wings and fuselage from Evergreen plastic sheets, radiator grill is some fine wire mesh that I dry-brushed and wheels and prop are surplus parts from some Roden kits. All struts are made from brass Strutz, which was not easy, since getting the bottom wing set at the right spacing was a headache. No surviving photo’s exist of the 40.15, but luckily there are photo’s of the Lloyd 40.16 which was designed, built and test flown at the same time, both planes sharing common features such as being powered by the 185hp Daimler and both having upper fuselage longerons conforming to the upper wing sections. So while building this model I took the idea that both would share some common design details (access panels, etc). Markings are also based on photo’s of the 40.16 (I’m assuming the same workers painted them more or less at the same time). The engine cowl gave me trouble in capturing the exact look from the 3-view extant drawings, but lots of plastic, putty and sanding finally won the day. So is my interpretation accurate? Well, until Allan builds a time machine for us, then who knows? And despite some references calling the 40.15 “ungainly” and “ugly”, I think this plane is rather beautiful and sleek…but I admit I may be looking at it with the eyes of a loving parent.


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