This model represents Ltn. Walter Böning's mount, Jasta 76b, early 1918. He had a total of 17 kills but was wounded on May 30th, 1918 while recovering from having had a minor collision in the middle of a dogfight. He was able to recover and land at his airfield but did not survive the injuries.
I grow weary of mistakes, accidents, and just plain sloppy work. I wish I could say that I have hope that I'll become better at being neat - unfortunately, no way.
I started out OK - my usual build skills as meager as they are were serving me well until I misread the instructions and cut a square hole in the port side ... LOL! The instructions show the square in a salmon color with the symbol of a knife. Back on page two the symbols are represented and defined. The knife symbol says: "Remove". Of course what the instructions mean is to remove the "lip" around that square, NOT cut out the square ... duh. I must have been off on one of my Walter Mitty daydreams at the time. C'est la vie. So I put a patch in its place and I figured I'd call it battle damage.
Then, after having come along toward the finish with all the rigging done, I dropped the model from the work table I use to work on my models. I do have carpet in my hobby room but, as luck would have it, the top wing came off, one of the interplane struts broke in half and one of the cabane struts had a spar broken off toward the bottom wing. Also the foot lever (not sure what it did) fell out. I just couldn't find a way to put it back in. At that point I'd already broken off the tail skid a couple of times and had begun to get too much glue every where I'd broken something and had to reglue it. I was frustrated so I put the remains in the box and figured I'd throw the box in the trash. Then I thought how I'd learned a thing or two on this model and had put in some time so, even with all the flaws, I rescued it from the box of death (trash).
It's not pretty folks but I like the looks of the aircraft and it may inspire me to build my Wingnut Wings Baron von Richthofen D.V sooner rather than later.
