Allied Model Images

by David Solosy

Airco DH5

Kit: Czech Master (1:72)

1/72 Airco DH5 by Czech Master Resin. 68 (Australian) Sqdn., France, 1917. A lovely little kit and my first resin. Built a few years ago, and in hindsight there are a few things I would do differently now. Finished with Xtracolour paints.

Airco DH9

Kit: Airfix & Blue Rider (1:72)

1/72nd Blue Rider D.H.9 conversion kit fuselage and white metal details and the Airfix D.H. 4 wings and tail plane.

• Cut-outs for the cockpits and the engine (Blue Rider fuselage came as two solid pieces with no cut-outs).
• cockpit walls were thinned with a Dremel tool and appropriate sidewall features such as fuselage framework, bracing wires, throttle quadrant, greaser pump, dashboard, rudder bar, control column and floor were all scratchbuilt.
• Added Roseparts resin wicker seat.
• Aldis site was created from sprue and mounted through a hole in a clear acetate windscreen.
• The observer's seat was a plastic card box construction. In the observer's cockpit a spare Lewis drum was mounted on a narrow plastic strip bench and other bits and pieces added from scrap.
• Observation cut-outs in the lower port wing were added
• Drilled out ventilation holes in the nose area and exhaust pipe holes in the starboard fuselage.
• Exhaust pipes were later added from copper tubing
• Water header tank was fashioned from aerofoil section plastic strut material
• Water pipe from steel wire
• Generator 'windmills' were made from plastic card and scrap brass for the props
• Undercarriage is from the Airfix kit.
• White stripes on fuselage and tailplane and rudder stripes where hand painted using Gunze Sangyo acrylics.
• Rigging is 15g copper winding wire, rolled and painted.

Private, Essex regiment

54mm figure by New Hope Design. Cat No.MA0070 Figure designed by Malcolm Dawson.

A sore and sorry Private of the First Battalion, Essex Regiment, 1918.

Trench section inspired by a photo I saw on a website. Ground work is mostly brown tiling grout poured over polystyrene packing foam. Shovel and ammo boxes from Scale Link. The duckboards, bench seat and other bits and pieces are scratchbuilt from scrap wood and plastic. Sandbags fashioned from Miliput.

The figure's face and hands are painted in oils; uniform and kit in combination of acrylics and enamels, and weathered with pastel chalk dust.

Reference: Osprey 081 The British Army 1914-1918 by R J Marion and D S V Fosten, artist G A Embleton.

Mark IV Female tank

Kit: Emhar (1:72)

1/72 Emhar Mark IV 'Female' tank. Straight out of the box. Drilled out guns and added a few tiny bits and pieces. Had excellent fun making the base from Spackle filler with buried duckboards, wooden wheel, rusty tin sheet, barbed wire (from copper wire) and lots of churned up earth.