Any WWI builders out there?

Love WWI aviation and have a good library of books, but am afraid of most of the WWI kits!

Steve

Hi Steve,
I would love to build WWI, but I have just to many WWII that I want to build. I have one, a Dragon Spad 13. What is it that you are afraid of? is it the rigging? Maybe what we need is a WWI group build? :-)
Mal

This WE, I'll be receiving 2 WWI Eduard models !
I haven't built anything WWI yet, and I'm a bit scared too : rigging, aligning more wings, painting... it's certainly going to need a bit more work... but it sure will be fun !

I have an Eduard Pfalz that's been on the shelf for a couple years.

Yeah, I guess what makes me nervous is the rigging, cockpit, etc. Also, I've seen such nice kits build by people online with amazing detail. And, though some of the newer kits are good, they are still not Tamiya (etc) quality.

Steve

I've done the Red Baron Revell Kit and the 1/32 Sopwith Camel and Snipe and the 1/48 Spad of Guynnemere, pardon the spelling, lot's of fun and the larger scale helps in the rigging department. Just use a pair of dividers or a cheap ordinary pencil compass to get the length of your required runs and use stretched sprue. Keep pulling until you have enough of a regular size to do all of the runs of one type. remember, not all the wires were of the same diameter, a good detail often overlooked are the control surface rigging points and tail rigging. Once you have your rigging in place and secured at both ends take an ordinary paper match, light it, blow it out and count one thousand one ,one thousand two then wave it under the rigging bit that has the sags. There will be enough latent heat to tweak a well secured rigging run into lovely straightness but not enough to turn your work into two pieces with cute little hangy down curl ends. As with all new tricks, practice does make perfect and by the end of you first one you will probably be a fair rigger.


The Wings channel regularly runs wings of France's segment on the Spad and several other English WWI shows also find their way on the tube there and the History channel and the Civilization channel. Nothing like shots of realand restored flyable aircraft to give you tips on the real thing, I've worn out the pause and rewind function on several VCR's that way.

Good luck on your WWI efforts, show us pictures, please please.

If you're interested in WWI try www.wwi-models.org or www.theaerodrome.com Glueck Auf! Rob

I have some WWI builds on my site. Click on this text

over the past year i,ve gotten addicted to ww1 aircraft,the biggest being a roden 1/72 gotha g.iv.the smallest being airfix,s fokker triplane.on the subject of rigging, aeroclub do stretch thread which is an absalout doddle to use, the gotha rigging would have been a nightmare without it.the thing about ww1 machines is that once you are happy with rigging your planes thats all it takes to improve a kit.good starter aircraft(not much rigging!) are,fokker triplane,albatros,Dvii. one thing though, my last build,a fokker Eiii monoplane took longer for me to work out the layout of the complex rigging than to actually build it!

I'm starting to get interested in the WW1 stuff as well, but mainly because I'm interested in the between the wars years. There are a number of decal sheets out there that breathe life into the mid-20's deployments of the left-over Fokkers, Spads, Bristols, etc in the air forces of the countries around the world.

For inexpensive kits, I picked up a couple of Roden's Fokkers and Albatrosses from HobbyTerra, at $5.45 each. It's not very expensive way to practice the art of wiring / struts / multiple wings / lozenge.

I'm all for a WW1 plane build (as long as I don't have to do it in WW1 markings).

Mika Harviala

yea, I have been bitten by the WW1 bug just lately, I think it would be kinda fun to do a group build

Bender

I LOVE TO BUILD WW1!!! HECK I"M MINISTER OF WW1 AIRCRAFT!!!I think it has more of a challenge than monoplanes,but all in the eye of the beholder.Mal,the spad is a pretty good kit,but since dragon went overboard with the included p/e,it sacrificed some of the detail,and the outer cabane struts need to be thickend with putty,or ca I herad has been used.AND A WW1 CAMPAIGN WOULD BE GREAT!!! IT WOULD BE A NEW THING FOR SOME PEOPLE TOO anDTHEREFORA PErFECT CAMPAIGN!!!

also o fokker d-viii

yup, WWI is a favorite of mine, a great uncle flew with the Flying Circus and I have some photos and images of his planes- an Albatros DIII and an Albatros D V - both with large swastikas painted on the side. Recently I've done a Smer Albatros D III. Well, lets just say Smer isn't Tamiya, and isn't even Monogram for that. I'm going to try one of those nice (and expensive !) Eduard Albatros DVs next.

WWI group build ? - sure!

Peter

I dig WW I also. I have tons of WIndsocks, datafiles, and FMP books on it. I used to build flying models of WW I planes all the time, and even drew plans, and kitted a few stick and tissue free flight jobs. I haven't built one in plastic though. I geuss the struts and rigging scare me off a bit too. I was almost thinking of doing a peanut scale plane for the campaign, but that's not really what it's intended for. I guess if I can build and rig a flyer, I should be able to do a static.