Manfred von Richthoffens epic bird with Which he led his Jasta 11 during the 'bloody Appril' in 1917. The build was actually a rather silly project. I used fuselage from Eduard's Albatros D.II kit, flying surfaces and struts from an Albatros D.III OEF kit and Karaya's resin Mercedes engine. Rather silly project actually!
With Roden's 1/32 Albatros D.III kit everything would have been much simpler! But now I've got, at least, spare parts for an Oef D.II project. The Karaya Mercedes is somewhat bigger than the original kit part, but still a bit short. The fuel tank part I scrached is also a bit too flat. These two things cause the ridiculous wide gap between the engine and the tank.
Eduard's old Albatros D.II Profipack kit with Karaya D.I conversion set. I especially tried to model the humps and bumps caused by moisture on the fuselage plywood. I used heat, files, putty and sanding and I'm pretty happy with the results, tho they are not too easy to capture on a photo
This is my second effort on the same subject, Jasta 5 Albatros D.III 2225/16. The first one, which I build with my son some 14 years ago, is in the 7th photo. I've got an inspiration to try this subject again, when I found a nice in flight photo of this Jasta 5 Albatros D.III on the Internet (see the 8th photo!).
I also used Windsock Datafile Special Jasta 5, vol. 1 by G.K. Merrill as a reference. The in flight photo shows clearly the extra cooling holes on the nose typical to Jasta 5 D.III:s, so I scrathed those to my model. G.K. Merrill
seems to be convinced, that the plane had Jasta 5 markings, red nose and green tail, painted on, though no photo I've seen confirms that. The kit is old Eduard Profipack and the decal sheet is from a Weekend edition of the same kit. The wheels are resin copies of Eduard D.V
wheels casted by Viktor Krogius. The elevator is a surplus part from an Eduard Albatros D.III Oeffag kit. The shape of part is more accurate. I had to sand the horizontal tail a bit thinner, though, to make the new part fit.
The turnbuckles are GasPatch parts.
Eduard Albatros D.III OEF 153 boxing with decals from Pheon Models sheet 48016. The little yellow swirls of the camo are also Pheon Models decal. Turnbuckles are by GasPatch Models. There was some alternative saxophone shaped exhaust especially in series 53 OEF Alabatros scouts, but I'm not actually sure that 53.60 had one. The plane was flown by Kurt Gruber, a 10 victory ace of Flik 41J, in September 1917.
Done mostly with Lifelike decals. The cote of arms both size of the fuselage are from a PrintScale sheet, however, since I wanted to do the model as Doctor Merrill has interpreted this scheme in the Windsock Datafile Special Jasta 5, vol. 1. On the Lifelike sheet the animals are somewhat different. The propeller logos are from a sheet made by Heikki Lappalainen. I used Brian Fawcett's resin parts for the landing gear. Hope they won't bend!
One of the best kits Eduard has made so far. Wing rib detail is, perhaps, a bit excessive, but otherwise I've found nothing to complain about. The sworl camo decal by Mirage Hobby gave me some trouble, tho. The stuff was thin and fragile. It also tented to shrink while drying and it ended up to form v-shaped 'tents' over the wing ribs. I had to cut it and tap it down again with some Sol. After all this I had to do some patching with small pieces of decal and some paint. Luckily enough, you can't see the patches easily in the sworl pattern. In the close up photo of the cockpit you'll find some, however.
Pre-historic Eduard kit with a lot of PE parts. A good rehearsal to improve my very limited skills with photo etch. The wings of this kit curve up in a funny way, but otherwise it's quite nice. I took this painting scheme from the cover art of Windsock Datafile 13 - Albatros C.III. There were 'sky camo' C.III:s, but I'm not sure, if there were any exactly like this. I think German 'sky camo' 2-seaters are cool and I'm planning to build more of them. I used Citadel 'Space Wolves Grey' for the main colour. Despite of its name it is quite bluish. Too bluish?
Eduard's new Albatros 1/48 Albatros D.V is a lovely kit and easy to build. Generally it is also accurate (except that the undercarriage legs seems to be still a bit short, as Diego Fernetti kindly pointed out, referring to the well known mistake of Eduard's previous 1/48 Alb. D.V release) though there is some mistakes in smaller details. I put the pilot's stepladder in the right place and also added the second round hatch under the fuselage. I was too lazy to do anything for the cooling hole and round hatch details both sides of the nose, even though they are a bit too much back. This "normal" version lacks the D.V -type aileron control levers. (the Profipack offers them as PE parts). As a matter of fact, if you follow the instructions, you'll make D.Va rather than D.V. So I scratched the aileron controls, too. I added also Eduard PE seat belts and scratched the windshield. Otherwise this is OOB. For the turnbuckles of the rigging I tried Eduard's PE parts for the first time. Not very convincing yet, but maybe more practice will give better results in the future. This is supposed to be the crane of Manfred Stimmel of Jasta 32. Armand de Turenne and J G F Matton shot the plane down in July 1917. The personal markings are from FCM sheet 48-17 (conventional decals, not wet transfers) and the quality of the decals were quite poor. The meters and compass for the cockpit were nice though.
My first Eduard D.III in 1/48 seemed to be a real dream kit. I build it after trying to put together Glencoe's messy Albatros D. III Oeffag kit. This second one I build after putting together Eduard's newer Albatros D.II kit and all of a sudden there seemed to be all kinds of little details to correct! I changed the wheels to bigger ones, made new plywood details both sides of the nose and scratched the aileron levers and the holes in the upper wings for them. I also scratched the water pipes between the engine and the upper wing radiator and the windshield. Next to these general Albatros D. III features Eduard's kit lacks most of the special features distinctive to the OAW build machines. The kit only has the round rudder. You have to add the Albatros D.V style "little wing" between the wheels and rectangular carriage-step as well as the rectangular acces panel on the left side of the nose and the curved, rectangular machine gun discharge chute on the left side to replace the big round bowl typical to the machines build in Johannisthal.
This is supposed to be the machine 5127/17 flown by Hermann Habich of Jasta 49. You'll find a very good photo as well as Bob Pearson's color profile of this plane in the new Albatros D.III Windsock Datafile Special. The photo's so clear, that you can really see the serial numbers on the wheels being 5129 and the smaller ones all over the struts 5127! I made the serial numbers myself on Bare Metal Foil ink jet printable decal paper. The lozenge is Pegasus', the bottom wing crosses Eagle Strike's and the rest of the decals the kit's own.
Many WW1 modelers have praised this model and it certainly deserves all the acclaiming! It's probably the best of all Eduard's second generation WW1 models in this scale (I reckon that you can consider Eduard's new Sopwith Camel to be the first of their third generation models). The only important details missing are the aileron levers and the holes in the upper wings for them. All the Eduard Albatros models are lacking these (D. V had different kind of levers, but the new 'non profipack' D.V kit does not include them either). I detailed the levers as if they're filling the whole rectangular holes in the wings. That was not the case in reality. The levers were thinner and sun shone trough the holes. The windshield is missing too, but I don't really know if there even was such a thing as a standart D.II windshield. A great kit, but I really did not treat it in a way it deserves. But - hey! - this is my first serious effort to paint a model with an airbrush. So, please have mercy! On the camouflage the lighter tint of green is too dark, at least if it's compared to the other colours. In these LVG build machines the narrow lighter stripes really shine out in the few old photos I've seen. Let's see if I can build something better out of the profipack version of the kit!
Usually conversions mean more work and challenge, but I made this one to avoid those! This project began, you see, from Glencoe's Austro-Hungarian Albatros D III kit. It ended up to be the first kit I never finished. I do not mind to scratch a detail or two for my models. But all of them?! Having several beautifully detailed Eduard kits around I simply thought that making a conversion would be much easier and the result would look better. It was and it does! I used the radiator and under tail fin of the Glencoe kit as well as the Schwarzlose mgs, thought they were quite ridiculous lumps of plastic. You don't see them much anyway. For the Austro-Daimler engine I rather modified the Eduard kit's Mercedes than used the Glencoe's chunky part. The propeller is an Aeroclub white metal part. A millimeter or two too short I'm afraid. I scratched the rest of the little details it takes to convert a German D III to Oeffag 153 series plane. This is supposed to be Godwin Brunowsky's all red 153.45. The decals are Glencoe's.