Hi folks, I saw a lack of airships on the forum here and decided to do something about that, so, as far as I can tell, let me be the 1st to start a hopeful trend of building early Zeppelins on this site.
The kit on the table here is the not so modestly sized Hawk LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin...this is not the old vacuum formed kit, but rather the newer injected styrene bodied version. The decals supplied are the regularly seen version without the german flag and othersided swastikas that were shown on the left and right hand sides of the verticle tails...I will be making the later version with said flag on the RH tailside and swastikas on the LH tail side....I do hope this doesn't offend anyone{and yes, I'm part german}...this is just a model, not a way of life so to speak.
If you haven't ever seen this kit, it's huge - coming in at 38 1/2" inches long @ 1/245 scale, so clear a space for it if you get one. The kit comes with a small base with which to sit the model on or two small tabs on the top to hang it from. I will look into either using the supplied base stand or making my own stand with clear rods and a wooden base.
Let's start with the gondola assembly...the kit gives you 3 LEDs to light up the inner gonola but the execution is lacking in my opinion so I'll be modifying this for a cleaner/better build.
Here you see the inner floor pan - the 3 red circles are where the LEDs are supposed to go...they stick up thru the floor.


Note the rectangle that is over the light's on/off switch...the switch leads "just" come into the floor area so they left it open...not good.{imho}...so I'll look for a micro switch or something smaller to toggle the lights on and off. I will also fill in the 3 holes for the LEDs and use fiber optic strands from "above" to light the whole area and rooms - I will still use the supplied LEDs but just make it cleaner.
Right off the bat there's a fit issue with the floor to the gondola and the red marked tab that holds the battery lead in{watch cell-gotta love LEDs} is too long and will need to either be trimmed or just removed for a better fit.

I can honestly say that this is really more of a snap kit the way she sits...the tail fins and main body have a rather big "pin to hole" indexing system. I do see the need for filler in some places but I won't be able to say for sure till I can button up the whole thing after the fiber optics are ran...and she's not exactly lite since there's alot of plastic here.
I just popped a quickie pic of the main kit for your refereces-

..not a whole lot to her.
Here you see the area marked off where the gondola sits and this will be the area where I mark off and install the fiber optic strands uniformily over the floor and room areas.

This puppy was just too big for my usual photo booth...sorry.
The gondola windows are wrong, but I will stick to simple mods to get them better...anyone wanting a correct version will be making a new gondola for the most part. Too bad no one ever made a gondola PE kit for the control room!
More to follow as it happens - ask any questions as we go along.

Here's a nice pic of the Graf's front end and gondola showing "some" of the odd vents and doors that I need to find reference to for painting.
Graf front
Graf tail swastikas
Wrong build and time frame for this particular forum, but here's a comparison between the Graf{II} and the Hindenburg...one could go either way. ...thought I'd toss this in since if your looking you'd possibly be a fan of the early airships and might appreciate it.....
hindenburg to graf II comparison

I'm really looking forward to seeing this built , never seen an airship built on line .....this is going to be cool !


Terri

Thanks Terri...too many car and semi truck builds for me lately...I need something different!

Maybe WNW will bring out a WW1 version in 1/32...

..awh shoot man, if they did that thing would be HUGE!..got a spare "room" for it?!

Hi Bob

Nice to see an airship build – I have often thought about doing one myself – will follow your build closely.

Best Regards

Mikael

I'll be watching closely, taking notes for my build! Thanks for being the kit's guinea pig!

Well, actually, I have got a 9m x 6m shed crying out to be filled up with a Zeppelin.. If I was rich I could probably get the engines from WNW for it. It would not be that hard to do using formers and stringers. All I need are some plans...

You know, plans for these behemoths are not as hard to come by as one might think...looking forward to your build, Warren!!

Been alittle busy lately but here's some recent progress-
Got the gondola floor done and smoothed, then added the interior walls. Next I marked the wall locations so that I can tranfer those to the underside of the main body to locate the fiber optic stands from the 3 supplied LEDs. I took 3 tubes where the LEDs nicely fit in and cut them an inch long for the fiber optic strands to fit in and will cut the next size up as a shroud to help encapsulate the ends fully...don't want them falling out once the whole thing is done now do we?!

The supplied LEDs are ran off of a 3v watch battery that is hidden under a round cover under the gondola...one could toss that idea and fill said cap area and put a twin battery holder in the base or another base to house a longer lasting battery assembly, or find a 3v plug in power supply to use instead...plan now for what you'd like to do and follow thru. To use the 2 tabs on the main body to hang the airship would require an "on board" power source and the gondola idea would be best suited for that, but installing two steel dressmakers pins in an area where the base sits on the bottom of the main body would be an inconspicuious way of handling power attachment too. You have quite a few ways to go here depending on how you wish to do it...I'm mearly trying to give you options here. This is just like trying to light a Sci-Fi star wars or Star Trek piece...alittle bit of work can yield a nicely finished model.
Oh, the supplied LEDs are of the bright white, but highly focased variety...just so you know. They actually make a pin point light, of sorts, and don't light up too much width wise...a good thing I guess.

Yeah, but from what I've seen so far any plans seem to heavily favor the Hindy and not this one.......what I mostly need is an underside shot of the whole thing where I can locate and transfer to my model all the ballast vent doors, ballast intake doors, cargo hatches and tied down rope doors...and the like.
The AMT Hindy has those molded in, but the Hawk kit doesn't...as always things in life are a trade off of sorts.......

Hey, while I'm here I'll show the other mods I made - I opened up and thined out the frames on the front window assembly and added a side door that wasn't there but needed to be...how did they miss that one? Now this framework better matches the side window frames and doesn't look so thick.

When doing this, if you do, please install the provided glass and mark the top end where it stops at so you don't open up the windows too high past the glass...no, that didn't happen to me! One could use thin acetate for the glass too if you don't like the provided clear piece, but it's really not bad.

Above pic - you'll see the round area for the battery to be installed as well as the little slot for the on/off switch.....just so you know what to expect.

My intent for this build was to keep it as OOB as possible...it's a challenge!

Tell you what, you get me some plans of a WW1 Zepplin and I will give it a go!

Nice work and even at OOB the detail seems to be above average for such an older molding. I think Brad K. Hansen had a rather lengthy history of this kit in his book.

Warren, this is the best I can do for ya....
hindy and graf II

Actually a very nice 1/32 control car, and/or power car, from a "R" or "P" class Zep. would be nice. We could scratch the rest of the Bag, if we wanted to. figures too if possible.

There are Card Models of WWI Zepps.

Captn Tommy

Dan San Abbott used to tell of the time he was doing some scrounging, ( we call it "yard sale-ing" today) years ago. He went to a fellow's home in So. Calif. (1950's) and the man opened his garage and inside was a six foot Zeppelin prop from one of the 1930's movies.