This is Mirage's petite and capricious Halberstadt CL.II 'early' in the colors of Schlachtstaffel 23b, ca. March 1918. Though lesser known than similar types on the Allied side, the Halberstadt was roughly comparable in many ways to the Bristol F.2B: a two-seater with performance close to that of a fighter, nimble and versatile and with a 'sting in the tail' to surprise the unwary opponent.
Mirage's kit is well-molded and with generally excellent detail and fit...albeit with the company's equally-rather characteristic challenges of awkward-to-clean-up sprue attachments and truly chaotic instructions. In addition to the plastic, there was a so-so sheet of photo-etched goodies, and a clear sheet with instrument gauge faces. Definitely not a 'shake the box' kit, but well-worth the time and effort to show it some TLC.
Please enjoy.
I forgot to do a 'stock' shot of the finished build with a penny for size reference, but here she is before her upper wing went on:
And a few detail shots.
Added an old Copper State resin recon camera from the stash, since the kit floor (like the real thing) had a cutout for same:
And the finished cockpit structure, with camera and wireless mounted:
The kit supplied racks for the grenades often carried on the cockpit sides of these a/c, but Mirage does the grenades only as part of a larger (and more expensive) weapons set. I opted to make my own up from bits of rod, sheet scrap and tubing sections:
And a last shot of a neat detail, the wing-mounted compass.
Rigging was off-the-shelf 'invisible' nylon sewing thread for wing wires, stretched sprue for tail lines, and EZ-Line for the undercarriage. Turnbuckles are tiny sections of polyimide tubing (the same amber-colored stuff seen in the photo above).