Back from the (almost) dead...I've moved into the new house, and between moving, work and our almost 1 year old (already?!?!) daughter, I haven't had a chance to completely unpack my painting/work area. I've been itching to paint, but sick of digging through boxes trying to find the remainder of my painting supplies. But most of the modeling stuff is ready. So I've taken a few late night breaks from everything this week, and started putting together a few more planes.
Initially, my thought was to even out the Allies/Central ratio -- so I wanted to put another Central plane together. After far too much deliberation, I decided on a Roden Pfalz D.III, mainly on the weight of it being almost as sexy looking a plane as the Albatross D.V. Unfortunately the Roden kit is not quite up to "the sexy." It's got a ton of flash, is very delicate, and the kit doesn't seem to be broken into components in the most ideal way. The whole back portion of the fusilage actually sheered off at one point. I think I've got that repaired pretty well, but the front portion has horrible seams, even after trying to file, sand and putty it all together.
At some point I just got frustrated and started working on an old Airfix SPAD XIII. What a difference. It's a very nice kit, easilly as detailed as the Roden kit, but without all the flash, fragility, and awkward assembly. The only down side to this particlar kit is that it was an opened second hand kit in a bag, and was missing one of the wheel covers. Not a huge losss, I've left them both off and will just try to fill & sand the wheel where the axle shows through (I already trimmed it back priorto assembly. The other negative -- and this is 99% my fault -- is that the horizontal stabilizer isn't level. I missed this in the dry fit, and even after a bit of knife & solvent work (and thinking I had it fixed!) it rebounded back into its incorrect possition.
One other thing I've done is to assemble a custom kit-bashed resin designer toy combined with some spare plane parts (another SPAD) and other bits. The bonus is that this gave me a chance to try out "music wire" for the rigging, rather than the other types of wire I had been using. I'm completely converted. The music wire has a fine memory and snaps back into place very well. Very easy to work with, too. No more saging or bent lines!
After doing the rigging on this toy and discovering the joy of "music wire" I will be going back and rigging the previously assembled planes that had planned painting while ignoring the rigging as too much fidley detail.
