Designed by a madman and
flown by raving lunatics, I think that pretty much sums
up "the flying coffin".
These Toko kits are the greatest thing since Revell's
line up of 1/72 WW1 kits from the 'sixties. The only problem
I had with this was the struts, not surprisingly. The
kit ones didn't fit at all, so I replaced them with Contrail
extruded strut stock. There are no locating holes in the
wings for the struts so I just scraped away a tiny bit
of paint and glued the struts right to the wing surface.
It worked fine, but some sort of jig is a neccesity.
The prop is carved from
wood with a photo etched prop boss, there's a bit of extra
detail in the cockpit and the tail struts are from heat
stretched Contrail strut stock. The undercarriage
rigging, rudder control cables and aileron actuating rods
are stretched sprue. Radiator hoses are brass rod. Decals
are from the kit except the personal marking on the fuselage
which is from an Americal/Gryphon Austro-Hungarian sheet.
I experimented with hand
painting the machined 'sworls' on the cowling with bright
silver over a base of flat aluminum. Worked quite well
but it doesn't show up in the photos so you'll just have
to take my word for it.
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