A variation of colour schemes:

http://www.wwi-models.org/1/Images/T...ros/index.html

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww1/o/18/59/

Thanks. I've already looked at those and a great many others. The top picture on the second link is the one from the box top of the kit I'm using. It's supposed to represent that plane, but it's just that particular artist's interpretation. The picture from the Datafile is different still. The photographs of the actual plane seem to be dark, but sometimes the film used can make things seem to be what they aren't. I'll get it the way I want it soon enough. :sunny:

Second color test: 1 part Khaki, 3 parts Lichtgrau (RLM 63).

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps5788b072.jpg

Much better looking mix :yep:

Third test is a 50/50 mix.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps7f802901.jpg

With Flash:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...pse0655661.jpg

I'm thinking I'll go with this one.

One of the reasons I'm doing this particular aircraft is because of its quirks, which I'll explain later, and the fact that the kit came with those particular markings. One of the things that puzzles me is that while they went out of their way to do the decals for a single plane, they got some of them wrong. They have all the crosses, but the ones for the wings don't have the white background, which is readily apparent in the photographs. This left me having to mask and spray them before applying the decals. It also leaves me sitting for several hours, because gloss white paint dries slower than anything else imaginable.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps226ea467.jpg

I started off Saturday reporting that this was going smoothly and quickly. Then I had to decide on a paint color. Done.

Monday I applied the decals prior to assembly, because there are markings on the insides of the wings and the holes for the struts have to be drilled after decals are on. Done. Then I put the wings on. The angle of incidence for the top wing was wrong. This is the angle at which the wing sits. The top and bottom wings have to look the same. The top wing was sitting tail-high compared to the bottom. I attempted a fix by cutting the rear struts a little shorter and using superglue to hold them. Superglue holds anything, right? I was also a little annoyed that the left wing was just a little higher on the cabane than the right. I had decided I could live with it.

I spent most of Tuesday (still today for me) sick. Early in the evening I was feeling better, so I started putting the little pieces on the engine. I drilled out holes and ran a thin brass wire from the gravity tank to the engine. While I was manhandling the plane one of the left wing struts popped loose. Since the tension was pulling all the time I figured it might happen. I was hoping that rigging it would add more glue and thus more support. Then while I was drilling and mounting the upper radiator line (thick brass wire) two more struts popped loose. While I was regluing them one of them popped off the other end and fell on the floor. Swearing at how life hates me (it's not my fault I sit back from the table so everything I drop ends up on the floor) I went over and turned on the ceiling light and found the strut. Then I went over and turned the ceiling light back off. Then I glued the exhaust stack on. While I was fiddling with it another strut escaped and jumped down to the floor. Cursing whatever fates made me this way (it's not my fault I'm stupid) I turned on the light and found that strut.

After the fiddly little engine bits were glued on I decided to paint the engine. Copper for the fuel line. Steel for the exhaust and the radiator tube. Then a thin black wash over the cylinders and the aluminum radiators. The struts all behaved this time. Then I painted the propeller and mounted it. Then I put on the propeller logo decals. Then I decided I had done enough and got back online, where I was helping a fellow modeler in Columbus, Ohio when I found a decal company that makes decal logos for every propeller manufacturer in WW1 Germany. Four sheets, plus a fifth for Austro-Hungarian prop makers. Now I have to wait until I get my pension so I can spend more money I don't have. Hey, the government gets away with it. Of course the government doesn't go hungry when they do it.

I finally went to bed around 23:30 and started reading. About midnight I turned out the light. I didn't have insomnia. I didn't even try to sleep. I lay there thinking about those wings. I finally decided that it had to be fixed, and I wasn't going to be able to wait until morning. I got up at about 00:40 and went to work. I tore off the upper wings and sanded the glue and paint off the cabanes and wing roots. Then I used the slow-drying gap-filling superglue and kept fiddling with the starboard wing until it was lined up with the lower wing. A shot of accelerator and it was dry. Then the port wing. Now they both lined up with the lower wings, and they matched each other on the cabane. Then I started cutting new struts from brass rod, carefully trimming each one until the dihedral matched and the pressure was slightly inward, so the wings are pushing on the struts rather than pulling on them. All is now reassembled and tomorrow (later today) the rigging can start.

Saturday I thought it would be finished Monday at the latest. Now I'll be happy if it's done Wednesday. Now maybe I can sleep.

On Saturday I thought it would be done Monday, maybe even Sunday. On Sunday I was sure it would be done Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. On Monday I thought it might be done Tuesday. On Tuesday I was so sick I didn't bother to think at all. On Wednesday I was recovering, and did nothing until evening, when I got busy. Yesterday I was so close. I went to bed at 22:00 and woke up again at midnight, and decided I'd rather build than sleep. At 03:30 it was finally finished.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psdcc3da14.jpg

I said before I chose this version partly because the markings came with the kit, but mainly for it's singularity. The first interesting point is the crosses on the top and bottom of both wings.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps456b236e.jpg

Second is the crosses on the fuselage. They are different from the others, in having straight inside edges instead of curving. Also you can barely make out the tiny serial number - C.117/15 - above the cross on the tail. Idflieg absolutely required that all aircraft be delivered with appropriate numbering, but somehow Albatros managed to get away with often having no numbers at all!
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psf96994a5.jpg

Third is the white fields on the wing crosses. On both sides of the lower wing and the bottom of the upper wing the fields are full-chord, running from leading to trailing edge. On top of the upper wing they stop short of the trailing edge. There is no explanation for why this was so, nor is there likely to ever be, but the two photographs of the plane are quite clear about it.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps71813a20.jpg

Finally a close-up of the nose, showing the copper fuel line from the gravity tank and the radiator line atop the engine, as well as the side-mounted radiators. I tried a thin black wash on the cylinders and I'm very happy with the result.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps57e05ea7.jpg

[edit] Oh, I almost forgot: The kit came with two different and very finely modeled engines. This one is the 150-horsepower Benz Bz.III. The other option is a 160-hp Mercedes D.III. That one has the exhaust on the opposite side. Also optional is a wing leading-edge radiator.

Your best one yet! :woot:

Thank you! Of course as usual I see all the flaws and imperfections. One of these days we'll do the right scenario and I'll have pictures of one or more of them in action. :sunny:

[edit] If you look at the close up picture of the cross you can see a couple of places where I touched up a couple of scrapes and the colors don't match. The more I look at it the happier I am, because I realized that on painted aircraft that sort of thing actually happens. I might go back and weather it a bit.

Now that is really cool looking Steve :cool:

Now back to bed with you :03:

Haven't made it to bed yet. Sometime today, I'm sure.

My next kit is all set up and ready to go. It's the single-seat version of the Morane 'L' parasol, the world's first successful fighter.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps4312698c.jpg

The 'L' was designed in August 1913 and first shown in Paris on December 5 of that year. The French Army didn't seem interested, but the Morane company recieved an order from Turkey for 50 machines. When war began to look more and more likely the French government took over the Turkish order and formed two Escadrilles. Observers carried a carbine, and later a few parasols were fitted with a Lewis gun. One of those was the subject of my earlier two-seat 'L'.

In 1913 Franz Schneider, a Swiss engineer working for L.V.G. in Germany, patented the first interrupter gear, designed to let a machine gun fire through the spinning propeller. With the start of the Great War Raymond Saulnier attempted to make a working synchronizer for his aeroplanes, but was frustrated by the Hotchkiss gun's erratic rate of fire. He attempted to rig metal plates to deflect bullets that would otherwise shatter the propeller, but the government then took their gun back. Pre-war flying star Roland Garros, who in 1913 was the first man to fly across the Mediterranean Sea, managed to get hold of a machine gun and work with Saulnier and his mechanic Jules Hue created a set of deflectors that worked as hoped.

Armed with a gun firing forward through the propeller, aimed by pointing the nose of the plane at the target, Roland Garros became the world's first fighter pilot on April 1, 1915. He shot down a second German plane on April 15 and a third on the 18th, but landed behind German lines later that same day. Garros was captured and his plane shown to representatives from various manufacturers, but that is a story for another day and another model. A handful of 'L's were fitted with deflector plates and other pilots were successful, though by and large the Morane parasol was operated as a two-seat reconnaissance aircraft.

The kit has decals for the plane flown by Sub-Lieutenant Reginald Alexander John Warneford when he successfully bombed German Zeppelin LZ37, the machine of Roland Garros and two others. I dislike doing famous aircraft because others might also use the same markings. I considered changing that for this aircraft and doing Warneford's plane anyway. The first batch of planes delivered to the Royal Naval Air Service came with French cockades on the wings. They couldn't scrape the paint off, so to remove the markings the entire wing would have to be recovered. The RNAS's solution was to leave them as they were and just put British roundels on the fuselage.

I'm going to do one of the others in any case, because I like the fancy script numbers someone painted on the sides. But that's later. Right now I need some sleep!

Oh, yeah. The green-yellow-black roundels are Brazilian.

The Morane is started...sort of. Last night I painted the inside of the fuselage halves and the seat and floorboard. I left out the instrument panel because there is no way to see it with the pilot in there. Today I spent a long time talking to Jim on skype, then had a bunch of erands to run, so I did nothing until about an hour ago. Tonight I glued the fuselage halves together and assembled the engine. It's funny. On most of the resin kits I just glue the propellor in and don't worry about it. Sometimes, however, they make me do it. This plastic kit has a dimple that the propeller back glues into. That annoyed me. I drilled out the back of the propeller and drilled a hole in the firewall. The propeller recieved a short length of brass wire. A piece of the correct-size tube went over that. Another very short piece of tube was super-glued to the end of the wire, behind the longer piece. The front end of the longe piece of tube was superglued to the hole in the firewall. When ready the firewall will be glued to the front of the fuselage, through a small hole drilled for that purpose. When the propeller is mounted the whole assembly should spin.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps322856bf.jpg

In the background is the fuselage, clamped together with tweezers until it's dry.

Did I ever tell you the wise words offered to me by an old sage when I was a lot younger?

"A poor modeller always blames somebody else for his inability to make progress"




http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8...occhioij91.gif



:O:

Oh, I know it's my own fault I like to talk to people. :dead: