'Flying death notices', that is what they were called. German pilot Kurt Weil recalled many years after the war that, "...The old Aviatik were snow white and so, as i remember were the first Pfalz monoplanes. These aircraft were brilliant white - so white that if you flew into sunlight they looked transparent from the ground..."

The bleached white linen used to cover the Pfalz E types and their black edging tapes were reminiscent of 1915 -16 German newspaper death notices with their black borders. In a time where Gremlins were seen as imps that would hold your ship together or tear it apart, this "death notice" business only added to the pilot’s mistrust of the machine.

If you compare the factory finish of the Fokker and Pfalz single seat monoplanes of 1915 16 you will see that Fokker werke GmbH used unbleached linen and Pfalz Flugzeugwerke GmbH used bleached linen.

Welcome to The Aeroscale build of the Gavia 1/48 Pfalz E.I kit #014/0606. As I mentioned in an earlier post Rowan forwarded this little jewel to me as he was walking out the door on his vacation. I was totally blown away when it arrived today. She is a beauty. Now I am really going to be challenged to duplicate the finish that Lars uses for translucent fabric.

The fine moldings of this kit rivals its cousin Eduard in manufacturing. NOTE!! It is important to familiarize yourself with the instructions and all photoetch before continuing to the main construction steps. The photoetch assembly steps are located at the back of the instruction booklet. I would assemble them and then put these parts in clear plastic zip-lock or re-sealable type bags marked to identify their contents. The instructions refer to these parts a P1 -11 and to continue smoothly through your build these must be assembled first then added as you move through the steps. Pre-drill all strut locator holes and rigging pilot holes. Clean up the parts and remove any seams.

Looking forward to see you doing your work Stephen.
Good luck mate!

Thank You Jan;

For those thinking about following along with this build here are the references I will be drawing on.

References:
Eisernes Kreuz und Balken Kreuz by H. Nowarra, Hoffmann Pub. 1968.
German Army Air Service in WWI by R. Rimell, Vintage Warbirds #2, Arms & Armour Press, 1987.
German Fighter Units 1914- May 1917 by A. Imrie, Osprey Pub. 1978.
‘Kobes in FFA 11' by J. Jacobs, edited by S. Lawson Cross & Cockade Int. Vol. 27, #2, 1996.
‘Kobes in Fosta West’ by J. Jacobs, edited by S. Lawson, Over the Front Vol.9, #4, 1994.
Pfalz Aircraft of World War I by Jack Herris, Flying Machines Press, 2001.
Pfalz E.I - IV Windsock Datafile #59 by R. Rimell,
Pfalz Scout Aces of World War I by Greg VanWyngarden Osprey pub. #71, 2006.
Pictorial History of the German Army Air Service by A.Imrie, Ian Allen Pub., 1971.
‘Sketches and Descriptions’ by J ,Jacobs, edited by S. Lawson, Cross & Cockade Int. Vol.29, #2, 1998.
‘The Flight Log of Ltn. von Hippel’ by J. von Hippel unpublished, 1914-1951.

Well,

It's my next one to be build, so I will follow this thread!

Greetings, Nico Teunissen

Greetings all;
Here is the first step with regard to retrieving the kit parts from the tree. More and more with better molding practices we are getting finer and finer plastic pieces to cut from molds. To avoid damage to the parts it is important to not use snips or cutters that tend to push or pry apart the trees or parts when cutting. For these delicate areas I use a dremel motor tool with a cutting disk. This will cut into the tree sprues quickly without distorting or damaging the parts and won't put anymore stress on the part if attached to the trees in more than one place.

Note the stress points that need to be considered to avoid damaging fine parts.

Cheers Stephen

That's a neat tactic - I've used knives, snips and razor saws (and damaged a fair few parts in the process)... but never thought of using a motor-tool to isolate a delicate part. Once inspred and thinking laterally, I guess a hot-wire cutter could do a decent job too.

All the best

Rowan

Hey Rowan;

Exactly. The motortool cutter tends to cut away what ever the cutter touched without pushing the sprues in a lateral direction.

Soap and water clean up and separation from the tree is completed. So it begins.

the dremel tactic is something i have used too especially on WW1kits that have fine moulded parts, rather than try to get the part off, i try to cut out it and the surrounding sprue, to lessen the lateral strain when i use my no.11 to get the part away as clean as possible, because stuff like this is almost impossible to clean up without destroying it at the same time.
and in your own words stephen - model on!

Now that the parts are prepared I have begin sanding all edges. You might not think this important but one should remember molding ( "moulding" for our Queen's English speaking mates) process will inevitably give us seams where we don't need them. I use a flex file to take away seams but not harm the curviture of a surface. Follow the leading and trailing edges upper and under surfaces. Beveling the trailing edges to a knife edge is always a good goal with WWI era aircraft. Also, roughing up edges that will be bonded to others later is another good goal.

Greetings all;
Predrilling all the rigging holes is my next step. For anything with this many parts or steps in the build I recommend purchacing a set of ‘highlight markers’ used for college text book studies and etc. Use these markers to highlight the portions of the kit instruction’s, dealing with a building step that you intend to alter, complete, delete or replace. My colors are;

green = alter / scratchbuild.
pink = complete.
yellow = delete.
blue = replace with a photoetch or other part from another kit.

This helps you keep your ideas in-front of you and your less likely to forget a sub assembly. It helps you see at a glance what you have done or intend to do. (If you go several weeks from one step to another it is a great record to refresh your memory.)

As the build progresses I am to the point of painting and asembling the cockpit interior parts. Looking forward to doing the Oberursel U.0 seven cylinder rotary I have a choice to make. Since the hoseshoe cowling will allow for at least half of the 7 cylinders to be exposed I am wrestling with adding a bit of detail on their engine heads.

I like that idea Stephen.....I have to use it I think.

The engine is supposed to represent a seven cylinder Oberursel U.0 80hp rotary. This is a licence built copy of the Gnome 80hp. To have the kit engine “turn” just add some graphite to the socket on the back side and insert (without glue) the spindle located on the firewall.

The kit instructions tell you to use heat stretched sprue to make the pushrods that are located in the front of the cylinders. Since the horseshoe cowling will leave much of the rotary engine exposed, to complete my engine assembly I added;
a. seven rocker arms from a Part of Poland brass fret,
b. seven cut sections of stainless steel wire for pushrods,
c. seven cut sections of brass wire .008 for sparkplug wires.
d. seven modified Part of Poland turnbuckles to represent sparkplugs,

Images to follow... I had to reshoot the photos. The photolab lost my film.

Pictures, Pitures
I realise that you may not have a digitalcamera mate, but hurry up with the pics,I´m real curious here. That will give this thread the bost that lovly machine needs
Please
Please
Lars

Lars, I have been called a tease before but...usually they were way prettier than you. :-)

Did you also sand of the ribs on the fuselage? On the pictures of the datafile the fuselage appears completely smooth to me. I also wonder if the Pfalz logo on the engine cowling should be sand of....

Greetings, Nico

Greetings Kitboy:

The fuselage ribs are the only questionable part of the kit. You see the wings have wooden battens nailed and screwed over the ribs rather than rib tapes. The fuselage skin was more of an envelope that slipped over the framework an did not have these wooden battens over the rib and longeron locations. With the exception of the fuselage ribbing the kit is nicely subtle. The fuselage can be sanded down and since you will want to rid yourself of the centerline union seams its easy enough.

The Pfalz Logo on the cowling was a metal plate with relief. The background ( between the lettering was red. ) The plate itself was brass. The plate is only slightly out of scale. In my opinion this is an item that would be best served as a photoetch addon.

Greetings all;

I was going to add some images today but the lab lost my film I have to retake the images...as a consolation they gave me a free roll of film.

Wow, that has to be frustrating!!

We'll all just have to be patient and hope they keep better track of the second roll.

Can't wait to see your pictures Stephen.

Cheers!

John

Bad luck Stehpen,I feel for you
Lars

Obviously it was another modeler that "lost" the roll of film, needing the pics for his own build!!

Bad luck matey.....

Ok folks new images shot . If I am lucky I'll get them back today. Now on to the fuselage. Bit of a problem here. When Gavia added the floor plate they made it too thick for the original design. The whole point is to hide the center line union seam in the floor area that results when you put the fuselage halves together. I think it would be best to do one of two things.

1. If you use the kit floor plate you will have to cut the bottom horizontal beam (longeron) away from each fuselage (PP 14 & 32.) Then clip the three vertical members at their base by 3/64. Then rejoin the longeron to the basic kit part (PP 14 & 32.)


2 Use a sheet stock section of plastic at about .005 thou. Add surface details to duplicate the kit item (PP 16a.)

"....but the lab lost my film...."

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

O.K., Okay....I realize you're a tried and true aficionado, and dipped in the deep well of 'old things' my dear friend but if you're going to run the risk of losing mucho importante' photographic evidence of your masterful in-progress shots during a buiid up like this then WAIT a bloody minute fella!!.........
You better consider tradin' in your old Brownie Instamatic for something preferably more 'digital'.........then your fans out here in big 'A' land {me included} can begin to rest easy once again, nestled in the warm and fuzzy knowledge that the pics we all so desire to see are indeed safe and secure in the vise-like grip of protection provided by your wee, small indulgence of the 'digital' age ..........

Tread

Alrighty then, ......{sound of a broom sweeping}.......

Now that I've got that bit of business out of the way { } on to a seperate point I wanted to bring up. This in regards to our good JackFlash's mention of " challenged to duplicate the finish that Lars uses for translucent fabric. "

This is something I was wanting to work on for possible consideration of a Feature Article, but after having moved temporarily to Florida from Colorado, and not bringing any of my modeling stuff along for the trip, has been moved to the backburner for the time being.....

Anyway. The idea I was working on at the time was based on a combination of plastic kit parts and card stock parts.
The basic idea, to use your Pfalz example Stephen, was to experiment using thin card stock as the 'skin' for the aircraft, utilizing the original plastic pieces as the 'skeleton'. The idea being that one could accomplish both a look of 'transparency', and also the 'starved goat' look at the same time.

Whadaya think?

Tread,