This is the Roden 1/72nd kit of the Oeffag Albatros DIII, series 153 (late) built 99.9 percent OOB, the only added extras being located inside the cockpit and comprising some switch and instrument panels, as well as an “impressionistic” representation of the gun buts, based on photos on the excellent JAPO book on Oeffag Albatros DII and DIII.
Rigging is “smoke” invisible sewing monofilament.
The fuselage is painted in a mix of Humbrol (63) and watercolour pencil for the “woodwork” and Dyrup silver darkened with a touch of black for the metal areas.
As usual I mixed my own CDL for the flying and control surfaces out of Robbialac flat white with a touch of gloss SMP enamel brown and yellow, and sponged on two greens (both Humbrol) for the “blotted” camouflage.
The trick of the blotting is to use an almost dry sponge so as not to create areas more densely blotted than others.
Weathering was done with watercolour and graphite pencils.
The only problematic area of the kit was the fitting of the fuselage halves, particularly on the ventral seam, and of the nose panel, that had to be faired into the fuselage with milliput. I also found out that the V struts were a tad short, so I’ll increase the dihedral on the lower wing on my next Alb, to compensate for this. On the contrary, the cabane struts seem to be a bit a bit longer than needed. As Shane Weier reported, if you use the kit cabanes the upper wing appears to seat a bit high in relation to the fuselage, and this means that the V struts are probably the right length, the problem being the size of the cabanes.
All in all, I think that with a bit of work you can turn this kit into a very fine model and I was especially pleased to see the wealth of small moulded in details that Roden packed into the kit parts, not to mention the incredible number of painting options provided in the kit’s decal sheet, that is superbly printed.
This is the 1/72nd Toko Kit of the Brandenburg D-1, Starstrutter. Built mostly out of the box, except for the kit struts which as far as I know are impossible to use OOB without having to leghten some of them and having a terrible time aligning the lot. So I did it the easy way and scracthbuilt new ones from bamboo skewers. The wood effect on the fuselage is created by first apllying a base coat of Humbrol 63 and then scribbing with different shades of brown watercolour pencil, buffed with a piece of cotton wool, and fixed with a final varnish coat.
Fuselage markings were painted onto clear decal film and cut to size. The model represents aircraft n. 28.40, flown by FP Oblt. Frank Linke-Crawford.
This is the Mac 1/72 Phönix DI kit in one of the attractive schemes supplied in the kit, that of 328.26, of Flik 14/J, during May 1918, the white skull and crosses on the wheel covers being probably the personal markings of Feldwebel Malz. The kit assembles easily, with the exception of the wing struts: either you use the interplane struts and the cabanes don't fit, or the other way round. I ended up makin new interplanes in bamboo and slightly adapting the kit's cabanes, so they would fit. Other than that and the scribbing of the ribs on the underside of the wings is all straight from the box. I first painted the kit in the "unpainted" scheme, i.e. wood fuselage, CDL flying and control surfaces, metal front fuselage panels, as can be seen in one of the photos, then proceeded to replicating the swirl camouflage with an old brush with most of the bristles cut off lenghtwise, splotching Tamiya matt brown over the upper surfaces of the aircraft.