Whenever I start a new build, the journey always begins with the first step. Then two steps back... Followed by a shuffle sideways and a sudden lurch into forward motion. This one wasn't any different!
The Stahltaube was a big beast for its time but the structure is eggshell thin. I shaped and curved a keel plate for the fuselage out of 1mm Evergreen strip and clad the sides with 0.1mm styrene to try and represent the fabric-covered fuselage walls. But even with some discrete bulkheads in place, the whole thing was far too delicate to hang a pair of wings from and I needed to start again.
Below is a picture of the first iteration of the fuselage. The nose is solid block of laminated styrene, and a floor plate of 1mm material extends to the tail to try to give the whole thing some foundation. Unfortunately the sidewalls are much too thin and a better solution needs to be found.
References were a challenge. I had a hard-won copy of the Windsock Datafile Taube at War. However, the variants in the book didn't quite cover the one that I wanted to do. The cowling shapes were different along with some of the wing and rudder profiles. Wingnut Wings does the version that I wanted though, so I downloaded their low-res instruction sheet and squinted at the drawings to try and make the best of it.
Fortunately, a fellow modeller here at ww1aircraftmodels came to the rescue (thanks Davos!) and provided me with a scan from his WNW instruction sheet. Many of the shapes and alignment angles became much more discernable and I could move forward with greater confidence.
I retained the solid nose section and grafted on a new keel plate. Then added slightly thicker fuselage side walls from 0.15mm sheet. The upper decking between the cockpits and to the rear are both temporarily removable to allow the cockpit details to go in. Much better!
