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Kit: DML (1:48)
Don't know much about this pilot other than 1) highest score in this aircraft 2) hung on to his long after his peers abandoned theirs for DVII, etc. Quite a guy, by that measure. Pitch-black and three wings plus mythological creatures cavorting on the side. What's not to like? Crosses on top the bottom wing. After-the-fact of this model, come to find Jacobs nicked a Clerget from a Camel hump and strapped it on. Let's hope he got more than 10 hours between overhauls...depending on one's point of view. The DML kit is self-sufficient in everything but the swapped engine. The single plane struts need fussing but that's about it. Black paint is a challenge, believe it or not. It shows everything, every tiny error one has made, including brush marks. The kit instructions call for a matte-finished cowl, which I did, tho' confess complete ignorance. A black aircraft will never look better than the day you finish it. . .
My favorite triplane pilot, Werner Voss. DML makes this lovely kit and it just about falls out of the box. It's up to we bratty types to make it truly frustrating...The Kempf DML DR1 has everything you need to do a basic Voss F1. Barry at Rosemont has an aftermarket resin and decal addition that would be damned helpful, but not when I made this kit. So I kept the cowl, lost the wing skids and painted Werner's funny face. The single wing struts fit a bit cranky and are a tad too long. Everything else is wonderful. The tiniest seat supports molded in plastic. An 'experience' with PE machine guns. DML provides a jig to roll them with. The base color is a mixed turquoise as close as I can infer from text and black & white period photos. The cowl is something I found the true color of with exclusive access to Werner's diary. Honest. The fokker streak is applied with a splayed #5 brush using a fairly straight olive mix, thinned. Practice until you like what you see and then don't think about screwing up and just do it. It's a beautiful aircraft and I like the original prototype look.
Kit: Roden (1:48)
These shots are taken from a build article in Internet Modeler, February 2004
Thanks to Sanjeev Hirve, Robert Baumgartner, Pedro Soares, Shane Weier, Fraser May for necessary assistance and consul in this build. Special thanks to Matt Bittner for the kit.
The article tells the rest.