A bit of a
departure for me, this one. I’ve never made a triplane before, and
I’ve never worked in the decidedly odd scale of 1/28, but with this
Revell kit you get both. That’s about all you do get though – I was
amazed to find that even in this scale, there was hardly any detail at
all! I had a look around the ARC galleries, and most serious builders of
this kit seem to have completely scratchbuilt the cockpit, so I had to
follow suit. I was intrigued as to how the others had built the complex
internal framework of the cockpit, but I finally worked it out from the
skinny raised lines in the cockpit meant to represent this. A few
reference photos from the internet, and lots of hours later I had myself
an all new cockpit structure. The only original parts are the heavily
modified floor, and the rudder bar. Everything else has either been made
from scratch or had details added to it – marvellous stuff, this plastic
card and rod! Over 60 parts have been made and added to it, which is more
than the original parts count for the whole kit!
Not many gauges in
there, but I found a PE fret of WW1 dials was useful here. The problem with
these old planes is that most of the reference photos you find are of
restored or replica airframes, so I have no idea what was original detail
and what wasn’t. I’ve never been too bothered about that sort of thing,
so I just made it look as busy and agricultural in there as I could…
Click on
images below to see larger images
I was decided on doing the Red
Baron colour scheme. Predictable I know, but not so predictable as everyone else
staying away from it for that reason. Have a look around the gallery archives,
and you won’t find many Red Barons. One modeller reasoned that the plane was
probably supplied in camouflage colours before being overpainted red, so did the
same with his model as a sort of preshading, letting the original finish show
through. I decided against this, as with my meagre level of skill it’d just
look like a badly finished modelling job.
Construction on
the rest of the kit showed up the poor quality of the parts, with almost
every piece having a load of flash to remove or prominent ejector pin
marks to fill, and so the preparation time on this was correspondingly
high. I counted 36 ejector pin marks in very visible locations, some
of which simply couldn’t be solved. These parts were replaced with
scratchbuilt items. Lots of parts such as the engine cowling had to be
modified, and the shapeless lumps masquerading as machine guns had to be
completely reworked. I splashed out on a pair of resin/PE Spandaus, but
the instructions were so baffling and incomplete that I couldn’t make
head nor tail of them. Also, the PE parts were so thick and so tiny that I
found it impossible to bend them properly. I resorted to butchering the
kit guns, adding the PE cooling jackets, and scratchbuilding the rest.
Raiding the spares box, I found that the 50 calibre ammunition feeds from
a 1/48 scale F-86 were just the right shape and size for the Spandaus on
this kit! What are the chances?
Once all the parts were cleaned
up, construction was pretty straightforward apart from getting the struts to
line up the wings properly. Lots of gaps to fill, but as these seams fall in
areas where there is very little detail anyway, this didn’t present a problem.
One area of concern was where the front corners of the horizontal stabiliser
meet the sides of the fuselage, but this was overcome with plastic card and
cyano. Then allover grey primer, (I’d read that Richtofen’s plane was
described as being blood red, so the darker primer prevented the red coat from
being too bright and toy-like) allover Tamiya red, and then a few coats of
Johnson’s before the decals. These went on with no fuss, and responded well to
solutions. Probably my quickest ever decaling session – only about a dozen
decals in total!
The propeller presented a challenge, and after a bit of experimenting with
colours, I masked the prop with 1mm wide strips of tape and airbrushed on the
laminated scheme, followed by thick coats of Johnson’s. Then I tried for the
first time replicating the wood grain on the real prop by using burnt umber oil
paint, as described elsewhere on ARC. Personally I think it worked well, but you
be the judge.
After the final assembly, and getting the undercarriage to sit level, grab
handles and foot steps were made from wire and plastic rod, and the whole
airframe was given a coat of matt varnish before the few rigging wires were
added from 0.015” wire. Control cables were added from stretched sprue painted
metallic grey and threaded through the drilled out horns.
This was the first time I made an effort to log the hours spent on the
completion of a model, and was surprised when it came out at 49˝ ! Good job I
don’t charge by the hour…
Dean
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images below to see larger images
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