Knights of the Sky WWI GB The End

mkhoot wrote:

Stephen nice work on the Junker D.I. I have the Roden Nieuport 28 & S.E. 5a in the stash I hope they turn out as good as your D.I

My sincere thanks to everyone for your kindness.  mkhoot;  I have done the Nieuport 28 and its a great kit.  You may want to cut out the insets for the cabane struts bases in the fuselage.  Also the cockpit opening is very small and if you plan on doing any PE you might want to consider a cutaway fuselage display to see it all.  I have two SE 5a  types in 1/48 scale I am working on and now one in 1/32 for a GB over on Aeroscale.  I love that kit's Hispano-Suiza motor! So much you can do with it.  Now if Roden would make one in 1/48 scale too.

Greetings all;

Here is a bit of fun concerning the organization I volunteer for.

Lafayette Foundation

Most of you will be familar with us but if your not we have a whole section online dedicated to our history and beginnings.  If I can help you with any questions feel free to contact me here by PM or on this thread. We have recently purchased a large collection of the second world war materials as well.

We now have three hangars with a fourth being planned.

My congratulations and compliments too for a beautiful build on an unusual subject, Steven! Very nice!

No doubt most of you have had many recent sleepless nights wondering, "I wonder what that crazy ol' ModelNerd's been up to?". (Or not!)

But just to prove that I'm actually working towards a goal, I thought I'd show you this. When my Eagle Strike decalls arrived, I was horrified to discover there were no lozenge decals included. Well what the heck? Certainly they didn't expect me to PAINT each lozenge shape, did they? I ain't THAT crazy! I thought this was gonna be an easy project, fool that I am!

The decals you see here were drawn on my computer. I started by scanning the actual components of the plane, then using them to draw outlines of each shape. I thought this would be a good exercise to get me up to speed on Adobe Illustrator, since Adobe bought Macromedia and have no further plans to develop Freehand, which I prefer greatly because after all, it really IS a better program (no bias there, eh?!). Especially the pen tool. But don't get me started! But the real irony is, I migrated everything back into Freehand, because I did not especially like the way Illustrator handles clipping masks. The best trick was after laying out the lozenge, I imported them into Photoshop. This way, I could easily adjust the lightness and contrast of the lozenge, simulating as much or as little sun fading effect as I pleased, since I don't think it should look factory fresh. I then saved the lozenge as TIFF images, and pasted them into my Freehand outlines. Whew! Simple, eh? So after around two weeks on and off, here's the final decal art, ready to be printed on white decal paper. This plane will be just about completely covered with decal paper. This will be about the grandest homemade decal experiment I have tried thusfar, so everyone keep their fingers crossed! It's either gonna be really cool, or really embarassing!

ModelNerd that is really something that should look great when completed.

I finished my Eduard weekend Pfalz D.IIIa. A much more detailed kit than the Glencoe kit. I only wish they had included the coolant lines from the radiator. I had to make them from brass rod. No fit problems the kit went together quite nicely.

Here it is with the Glecoe kit.

Stephen,

VERY impressive hangar and museum, would love to see that in person someday.

Mark-

Now that is cool!  How much time have you spent working on those drawings?  Now I know who to come to when I need some lozenge decals!

mkhoot-

Excellent work!  I just saw this one over in Aircraft, truly amazing.  I updated page 1 to show it's completion.  Thanks again for sharing!

MK, nice work.  The sheen of the colors looks right to me.  Very neat builds.

Mark, you are the Lozengemeister!  It also helps to have Stephen around, doesn't it.

MK-very nice work.

Mark-good job on the decals. 

MK.... great looking builds and worth repating (since I saw it inteh other forum 1st)

Mark... rememebr when we were by coincedence build the same things?  Well I can tell you for sure, I will NOT be doing that.  Looks good. 

jeaton01 wrote:

Mark, you are the Lozengemeister!  It also helps to have Stephen around, doesn't it.

Indeed it does, John. Without Mr. Lawson's advice, I'd be in the asylum right now!

Of course, my wife thinks I should be there anyway!

Marc, you won't have to worry. If this works as planned, I intend to make the lozenge decal artwork a free PDF download from my website.

Mark, that is some very impressive work on those decals! I especially like the way you incorporated the rib tapes into your pattern. Super job!

mk, great side-by-side builds of one of my favorite WWI aircraft!

I can't say enough about the quality of the work on display on this GB. Truly inspiring stuff!

mkhoot wrote:

Thanks I'm really getting into these W.W.I builds I've got 15 more in the stash.

Pop me a list of 'em mk, and I'll add them to page one!

Over 1000 posts, unbelievable!  Thanks to everyone here for making this GB a success.  It really wouldn't be what it is without you guys- well done!

MK,

 Could you post a close up of the engine area please?  I'd like to see how you did your coolant lines!

Ben

Thanks Stehen!  I've been a little down in the dumps lately and that was well spoken.

chef_ben wrote:

MK, Could you post a close up of the engine area please?  I'd like to see how you did your coolant lines! Ben

Here is a bit of fun from my  Roden 1/32 scale Pfalz D.III (discussed here back on page 24 and previous.) The build can be seen Click here.

Hi all,

wow, that is a great group build. I didn't have much time these last couple of weeks to work on my SPAD or to comment on anyone's efforts and results, but I hope this will change soon. Great models and pictures. Congrats to everyone here! This is impressive work.

So far I haven't done much more than a bit of cleaning and sanding anway tons of flash, and some half-completed sub-assemblies. What is mostly done is the engine and propeller:

Not sure if I should add some more detail to the engine - There won't be much to see of it in the end, and I'm not too much of a detailer... Haven't done many ww1 kits yet, and those I've done were 1/72. It's amazing how much more space there is for details when scale changes to 1/28!

The propeller is my first attempt to 'paint like wood'. A base layer of light brown was followed by a streaky layer of dark brown artist's oil color, and finally a light layer of thinned clear red. It ended up quite dark, but I'm happy with the result.

More soon - fuselage interior is progressing...

SD

Looking real nice SD!  Your prop really has a nice woodgrain affect to it.

...and here's some more

Everything oob, except the little seat cushion and the seat belt. Obviously the seat belt is a bit out of proportion but, hey, what the heck. It's made from wine bottle lead foil, and the triangular buckle-thing is just a piece of old wire. Maybe I give the instruments a little drop of white glue to simulate glass, but have to try that out first. Don't want it to look too thick or opaque. I like the wood-look of the instrument panel - really looks a bit worn out and scratchy, doesn't it?

Now fuselage is closing, and soon it's time for paint!

sirdrake

MK, thanks for the picture!!

Daywalker I take it you really like that car eh?  A little Mad Max?

 Ben

Very nice work SD!  Looks like you packed a lot of detail into that lil' office.

Ben-

I LOVE that car, and the photo in my avatar is one of my favorites of it!  I have a couple of the Aoshima kits of it, though the front valance is not included to make an accurate first movie car.

Very impressive stuff, sd!

I'm curious. The SPAD has a ton of rigging, and I was wondering what material(s) you plan on using on your build.

chef_ben wrote:

MK,  Could you post a close up of the engine area please?  I'd like to see how you did your coolant lines! Ben

Ben Here's some close ups of the coolant lines. There are two small circles on the underside of the Rad. I drilled these deeper and ran a lines from the aft hole to rear of the engine and from the forward hole to the front of the engine.

I'm actually making some progress!!!  No pictures tonight, but I promise that I've actually been building a little bit.

Seeing everyone else's awesome work has inspired me!!

Frank, where you at, buddy!? :)

Thanks everybody for the kind words! 

ruddratt wrote:

Very impressive stuff, sd! I'm curious. The SPAD has a ton of rigging, and I was wondering what material(s) you plan on using on your build.

As for the rigging, I haven't made up my mind entirely yet. Probably I go for straight wire - that's how I always did with 1/72 biplanes. I still have some 0.008" straight wire which is too thick for smaller scales, but should look about nice in 1:28. I have to measure first if I have enough of it left - still didn't find a good source for that stuff here in Germany (or Europe).

Otherwise I might just use nylon thread. Never did it that way before, but I heard just putting it in place and applying a bit of heat to straighten it should be the easiest way. The technique of drilling holes all through the wings, fiddling the wire through and then sanding it again doesn't really appeal to me.

sirdrake