Steve's Models

[Sailor Steve]

Bodies cut out, sanded and glued.

[Sailor Steve]

HOLY HANNAH! They did it to me again!

One of the problems I'm having is finding proper guns, especially Austrian Schwarzlose guns for the two-seaters I'm building right now. There are photo-etched brass kits to make cool tiny models of British, French and German guns, but none for the Austrians. The one on my Austrian eindekker was one of a pair somebody made in metal many years ago. It's been so long that I don't even remember who made them. A couple of companies used to make them in resin, but both are now out of business and finding them is proving extremely difficult.

I was on line looking at pictures of the real thing, figuring I'm now going to have to make my own. It still looks that way, but while I was looking on Google I looked at the images page for Swarzlose guns. One of the pictures immediately caught my eye, because it was that same eindekker close-up. And it led to that same picture in this very thread! It happened earlier with my Caudron G.IV, and I mentioned it then. It's just really surprising and really cool to come across one of your own models online somewhere you weren't expecting it.

WOOHOO!

[Sailor Steve]

I was uploading some pictures of my older models to my FaceBook photo album to share with my gaming friends, and I found out I didn't have any pictures of my ancient Morane 'L' parasol. I figured I'd steal them back from Subsim, and found that if they aren't in my Photobucket account then they aren't here either. I dug it out and took some pictures.

Another very early attempt at arming a two-seater - the Morane 'L'.




Another one with the 'MS' logo.

[Jimbuna]

Another great example Steve

[Sailor Steve]

Tailplanes.


One of the interesting things about these kits is that they are double-sided. Regular injection-molded kits provide a top and bottom half for the thick wings on newer planes, but the thinner wings on WW1 planes are a single piece. Vac kits are the same way, but this leaves ribs on top of the wings but indentations on the bottom. With the Be.2c I used the same nylon monofilament line I use for rigging to make bottom ribs, gluing them on one at a time. Later I just didn't worry about it, once again telling myself that they're only gaming toys.

These particular kits come with a top and a bottom for each wing. This makes rib bulges on both sides, but it also means twice the sanding and very careful fitting to make them the proper thickness, or thin-ness as the case may be. I've spent several hours sanding and fitting those stabilizers and rudders before I was ready to glue them on. I'm hoping to have the lower wings cut out, sanded, glued together and glued on by the time I'm done tomorrow.

I also got a cool little package in the mail today. Part of the fun of being a serious modeler is collecting interesting decal sheets. I have a sheet for the B-24 'The Dragon and His Tail', should I ever want to build that spectacularly-painted plane. What I ordered last week and recieved today is numbers. Specifically Austro-Hungarian serial numbers. I have a bunch of British and French numbers, and the little numbers for German planes, but the Austrians used special serials for each run of planes. As you can see, the Fokker B-types all started with '03.' and then serial numbers. Every Austro-Hungarian series had a two-or-three letter company code before the period, then a serial number behind. Scraping up numbers from random decal sheets was always a problem. No more. This new sheet from Blue Rider Decals has a pair of series codes for every type build, and a bunch of sets of numbers for the serials following the period. This sheet should number every A/H aircraft I'll ever build, with a lot left over.

[Sailor Steve]

Well, it turns out that this is more work than I thought. Given everything I have going on it took me two days just to do one set of bottom wings. That's one wing per day, and about four hours' work for each wing. I'm thinking about building one of them like a regular vac kit, with ribs only showing from above. I'm thinking about just finishing one of them and putting the other one off. I'm thinking about setting them both aside and working on something else for awhile. I'm thinking about going back to bed.

[Sailor Steve]

Well, after four days of cutting, sanding, scraping and gluing I finally have one set of wings done. ONE! A part of the slowness involves my ongoing fight with an ear infection, which leaves me more interested in sleeping than working, and a part of it is that it's very tedious work. I could save a lot of time by only doing the top half of each wing, like in a regular vac kit, but when done properly these actually look very good. So I'm taking my time and trying to do it right.

Anyway, the lower wings are mounted to the fuselage and the whole thing has a primer coat finally, so setting aside the other one for the time being this one at least is ready to be assembled. I've decided to do one of the early German Hansa-built models, so it won't have the forward-firing gun and part of the tail is cut away because early on they didn't have balanced rudders.

[Sailor Steve]

Landing gear, cabanes and tail supports in place.

[Sailor Steve]

I didn't work on the model at all Thursday, instead preparing myself for game night. After coming home I couldn't sleep, and didn't manage to until about 04:00. I slept pretty well after that, but yesterday I still didn't feel like working at all.

This morning I applied the overall paint scheme of Clear Doped Linen. After a few hours' drying time I went to work on the wood fuselage. I'm not overly happy with the current result. I hand-painted a medium brown overcoat, and liked the result, but I've been thinking that plywood isn't normally that dark. Of course that depends on the varnish used, but still I wanted to try something lighter. I painted on a dark tan color, and to me it looks gloppy.


Tomorrow I'm going to try sanding it a bit to see it that improves the appearance. If not I'm thinking of stripping it completely and starting over. We'll see how it goes.

[Sailor Steve]

I started of the day wondering what to do about the 'plywood' fuselage. I tried just dipping the brush in thinner and painting over what I had done. I was actually pretty happy with the result. The two colors ran together in a much more natural fashion. Next I painted the crew. Then the dual gun-ring, which I had to bend out of brass wire. The supports are steel wire. Then I put the crew in. Next came the gravity-feed fuel tank hanging from the cabane. That was sanded to shape from a piece of sprue (the 'trees' the parts are attached to in a regular kit). Then a little more paint applied and I'm done for the night. Looking at the pictures I'm still not happy with that 'plywood' siding. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

[Buddahaid]

Well I've liked all the plywood I've seen so far. Maybe you're overthinking it?

I really like how you get the feel right like an impressionist artist. The detail may not be photo realistic but the whole effect is marvelous.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I started of the day wondering what to do about the 'plywood' fuselage. I tried just dipping the brush in thinner and painting over what I had done. I was actually pretty happy with the result. The two colors ran together in a much more natural fashion. Next I painted the crew. Then the dual gun-ring, which I had to bend out of brass wire. The supports are steel wire. Then I put the crew in. Next came the gravity-feed fuel tank hanging from the cabane. That was sanded to shape from a piece of sprue (the 'trees' the parts are attached to in a regular kit). Then a little more paint applied and I'm done for the night. Looking at the pictures I'm still not happy with that 'plywood' siding. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

I think your being a tad harsh on yourself...it looks really effective from where I'm standing

[Sailor Steve]

My problem wasn't with the colors so much as the textrure. If scaled up to full size the wood grain would have been 1/2-inch deep, which is as thick as the plywood paneling itself. After my post last night it was bothering me so much that I sanded it down and repainted the fuselage. While I was doing that I reshaped the nose to match a photograph I have of an early one with the 160-hp Benz engine. Over the four years of the war and after the Hansa-Brandenburg was modified with successively larger engines, both more powerful and physically larger. Late models have an entirely different shape to the nose.

Today I got the top wing mounted. I had some plastic strut stock I bought a long time ago, but I've used up everything I had that was the right size, and you just can't find it anymore. I took some of the thicker pieces and sanded them down until I was satisfied they were close. As with the Fokker B.II, the Hansa's struts slope not only forward but inward as well.



Next is the radiator, then the markings, gun and rigging.

[Sailor Steve]

Wing struts and landing gear painted. A little touch-up on the wheels. Radiator and hoses mounted and painted. They put the radiator on top of the wing for this one. Of course that varied a lot, as did the location of the gravity fuel tank.

[Sailor Steve]

A couple weeks ago I ordered a copy of Windsock's Datafile on the H-B C.I. It came literally in the nick of time, as I was putting the decals on today. It cleared up all questions I had about serial numbers and who built what. Part of the problem was that Hansa-Brandenburg themselves only built 80 C.Is, while Phönix built 446 and UFAG built 732 (sources vary, but those are the numbers in the Datafile, and I trust their research). Other sources show Austrian serial numbers for the Phönix and UFAG variants, but none for H-B. I had assumed that this was because the Hansa-built C.Is all went to Germany, but I was wrong. The first UFAG production run was serial 61.1, and nothing else was said about it. The Datafile points out that there were only 24 aircraft in that series, and 61.51-61.72 were assigned to Hansa-built aircraft. Other Hansa planes were assigned numbers in-between other UFAG series: 63.51+ and 64.51+. Though H-B's numbers are higher, they were the first ones built.

It also seems that only the first 10 aircraft - 61.51-61.60 - had the smaller unbalanced rudder, so I had to choose between them. I chose 61.58, mainly because it was just "one of the crowd", and had no particular distinguishing events happen to it. I prefer to model relatively unknown planes, just because they fill in as generic models and get loaned out a lot.

Pictures once it's rigged.