Even by my snail pace standards
this is a personal best - or worst depending on how you
look at it. Believe it or not, I started this kit almost
ten years ago! It was painted, decalled and mostly assembled
before it got put in a box for my move from Canada to
England in 1997. Over the years I'd take it out now and
then to have a look at it and think "Gee, I really
should finish this puppy sometime". And that was
as far as it got until a few weeks ago when, as part of
my "finishing old projects regime", I decided
its time had at last come. The impetus really was the
release of Revell's new tool triplane which has some really
nice bits in it that are far superior to this old 1960s
offering, as you would expect they would be after more
than 40 years.
Though I'm not terribly
happy with the overdone wing and tailplane ribs on the
new Dr. 1, the smaller parts are very nice indeed and
it was these I robbed to finish off this dreidekker.
Interplane struts, wheels, axle wing, ammo chutes,
wingtip skids, tailskid, cowling and that lovely little
engine were all volunteered to help out Revell's venerable
old kit and they seem to do the trick quite nicely.
Cockpit is detailed with
etched parts from a generic Tom's Modelworks German
set and scratchbuilt parts, the propeller is carved from
wood as usual and cabane and landing gear struts are soldered
together from brass Strutz. The kit horizontal
stabiliser is the wrong shape so I made a new one from
sheet plastic with ribs from fine stretched Evergreen
strip. Rigging is stretched sprue and guns are also from
a Tom's etched set with barrels from fine stainless
steel tubing .
Paint is Xtracolour
Clear Doped Linen with thinned Humbrol Olive Drab
66 for the streaky finish. The underside turquoise was
a mix of (I think - it's been ten years since I mixed
it up!) Testors Duck Egg Blue and Humbrol Light Blue with
a touch of green thrown in. Amazingly, this stuff was
still good when I opened the bottle for the first time
in over eight years to paint the interplane struts and
bottom of the axle wing.
Decals for Ltn. Friedrich
Kempf's 493/17 are from a Blue Rider Jasta Boelcke
sheet.
Above:
I had all sorts of brass jokes lined up for
these shots (brass monkeys, brass tacks, brassed
off, etc., etc.) but when it came down to it I just
couldn't lower myself to such depths, in spite of
the fact that Warped Plastic is rampant with abysmal
attempts at humour such as this.
Left: My
handy dandy little soldering jig. I took the cabane
struts from Revell's new tool Dr. 1 and squished
them into a lump of Milliput, which is fairly heat
resistant when set.
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