Steve's Models

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I've probably asked this already, but have you done any Sopwith Pups? My favourite WWI fighter.

I have one I built a long long time ago, but I've never rigged it, and I have a couple more I might build when the time comes.

To be honest, it's been a brief learning experience early in the morning for me, I didn't even know that the Austria-Hungarians had much in the way of an airforce, it's not something that comes up much in the usual WWI air war books that focus on the western front.

That's one of the problem we have with our game. The Austro-Hungarians mostly fought the Italians. The Germans also fought the Russians, and the British fought the Germans in Africa and the Middle East. There are no reliable numbers for the planes on any of those fronts, so we just include them as optional choices for the regular Western Front game.

[Sailor Steve]

First coat of paint on. I need to mark the ribs before I do a second. I was running out of the 'Radome Tan' I used for doped linen, so I added some sand and then some white to mix my own batch. The color is quite a bit different, but then the real ones were too, depending on whether the fabric was bleached or not, how pure the dope was, whether they pigmented it or not. I placed the last one alongside for comparison.


Looking at it in the picture I think I might add a little yellow.

[Jimbuna]

Don't compare, simply soldier on

[Sailor Steve]

Second coat. Maybe a little too yellow.

[Sailor Steve]

Much happier now. It's not exactly the same shade as the last batch, but similar.


[edit] Oh! I almost forgot! My next project came in the mail today! I'm trying to build them in the order they appear in our game generators. The unarmed two-seaters on both sides are the planes that roll up on a 2 in our first period, which covers from July 1915 to June 1916. A roll of 3 gets the first of the armed two-seaters, the Morane L and Be.2c on the Allied side and the Albatros C.I and Hansa C.I on the Central side. I wanted to do the Albatros first, since within a section they are listed in alphabetical order, and I would have switched if the Albatros had come before I started all that sanding. The hard part is done now, and all that remains is the finish work. I should start the Albatros on Friday.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

[edit] Oh! I almost forgot! My next project came in the mail today! .

hardly...you told Jeff and I on Skype last night

[Sailor Steve]

Good news! I'm old, blind and stupid!

Well, that's not good news, but the good news is I figured it out. There is a page in the Hansa C.I booklet that does indeed have pictures of the elevated gun ring experiments. I just figured out a way to miss it the first dozen times I looked.

So here are the different trials.

Steel tube tower.


Tower design apparently used by both UFAG and Phönix.


Tower with faired fabric extension. It turns out the idea was to create better airflow over the rudder. It was actually tried at the front and the book says the results were "unsatisfactory".

[Jimbuna]

Sometimes you can't see the trees for the woods

[Sailor Steve]

They didn't usually bleach the linen they used, so it had a slight tannish tint to it. Afer it was doped the fabric would yellow in the sun. How yellow it got depended on the original color of the linen, how pure the dope was and whether they tinted the dope. New airplanes with bleached lined could appear be a slightly brownish white, while unbleached linen could be almost yellow, almost brown and anywhere in between. Once this batch gets a little low I plan to start adding one color or another so they aren't all the same. I have some older ones that are quite a bit different from these.

I'm also slowly getting to the point where they started adding color to the dope, and then using colored fabrics.

[Sailor Steve]

My friend got sick and couldn't come gaming last night, so I still haven't looked at the Austrian Army Aircraft book. I suspect I'll find that historically my model is totally bogus. The modified tower was likely only on 26.17, and for all I know 27.23 only had the steel tube tower. On the other hand if I'd known about that one I might have done it instead. Whatever the truth is, it's done. Other than the tower it's identical to the last one.

Posing for the camera.


Left quarter.


Right close-up - warts, blemishes and all.


Front close-up showing the crew to effect. There used to be a company called Micro-Scale, who did an outstanding series of decals for planes of all eras, as well as many products to help with detailing. Today they only still make the products: Micro-Set and Micro-Sol setting solutions, Decal Film for saving dried-out old decals and for making your own, and Krystal-Klear, a product for filling in "glass" windows on models. The windows on this model are made of Krystal-Klear.


I had a major boo-boo with this one. I mounted the top wing, put in the struts, did all the rigging and realized I hadn't put the pilot in! I couldn't get the seat and supports in through all the rigging, so I cut them loose and used tweezers to maneuver the pilot into place. There is no real floorboard so I couldn't glue him in by his feet. I finally ended up placing him a scale two feet further back than he should be and gluing his head and shoulders to the tower front behind him. D'OH!

[Jimbuna]

Putting aside whether she existed or not she is certainly different Steve and I should imagine she'll turn a few heads in the games room

[Sailor Steve]

Next project: An Albatros C.I. It was based on, and similar to, the B.II, but with the crew positions reversed so the observer's gun had a clear field of fire to the rear. There is some controversy, but the Albatros may have been the very first of the armed German C-types.

This is another of those lovely resin kits from Chorozsy Modelbud. I'm planning on building it "out of the box", i.e. with little or no modification.

[Sailor Steve]

This one is going like gangbusters! There's an old modelers' saying that some kits are so easy you just pour glue in the box and shake it, and it falls out already assembled. That's how this one is feeling. Despite having to use superglue and misaligning some parts, despite cutting the engine opening too big and still not having it fit because what I needed to do was sand a little off the bottom, and despite gluing myself to several parts, it's coming along quite quickly. Fuselage, lower wings, landing gear, tail section, all assembled and primered. I could have gotten more done today, but I figured why hurry?

[Buddahaid]

Those came out great Steve. Looks like the Albatros just flew out of the bag.

[Sailor Steve]

Thanks, Scott.

And now I run into a spot of trouble. The Albatros C.I was the subject of some of the first German camoflage experiments. They started of with a directive from Idflieg ordering a "sky" camoflage. The first tests were either very light grey or white. Later they settled on a very pale blue, sometimes with a grey upper deck and wing tops. This blue became the underside color for all the later camoflaged planes.

The problem is that the plane that caught my eye is of an unknown darker color overall. The authors of the Datafile on the C.I speculate that it might be "Field Grey". This may be similar to the WW2 German Feldgrau uniform color, but a lineup of uniforms from the era shows that there were a thousand hues of the "same" color. I can probably paint it any grey I want and call it good, or use the blue/grey scheme and no one would be the wiser. But this has me intrigued.

My first color test is of Humbrol 'Khaki'. It is almost a match for Vallejo's 'Feldgrau'. This is how it came out.


One of the rules of scale modelling is that colors look darker on a smaller subject, so I'm thinking of lightening it a couple of shades.

But first, the photo, as photos always do, shows some seams that still need filling.