Roland C.II, Airfix 1:72, corrected! (I hope!)

[IanB]

Fresh from the mammoth Short 184 build I decided I wanted something a little more straightforward. My display cabinets are getting full and they include my earliest efforts, built when I got back into modelling 5 years or so ago. Not surprisingly they are not up to the standard I now aim for so I will be remaking at least 4 or 5 of them. I was going to go for the Eduard Fokker E.III Profipack, since the Revell E.III was my first build and definitely needs an improved version, but that has everything in the box, and I need to cut up some plastic! So here it is, the Airfix (actually the Heller boxing) Roland C.II.
 
 I'll be building it in the same scheme as the one I did a few years back, which will hopefully emphasise the differences, and I'll be using a Roden Mercedes engine, and Miniworld Spandau and Parabellum.

 Here's the sprue shot...



 Nothing surprising there, standard Airfix issue!
 The first jobs were to remove the pegs for mounting the crew and engine, open up the front cooling vents, fill a couple of sink marks on the front of the fuselage halves,  remove the overscale "vents" just below the radiators (there were also too many of them!), and remove all the surface detail from the fuselage and wing undersides. The wing upper surfaces were sanded lightly to reduce the ribs, and the rudder was thinned down considerably on its outer surfaces. It's pretty thin now as it is molded in 2 halves so I'll wait until I've got the fuselage halves joined before removing it, thinning it further and repositioning it a little further forward.
 Then I compared the fuselage and wings to the plans:





 The fuselage is not far off lengthwise. When I lined the cockpits up, everything matched perfectly with where it should all be, but it showed the nose as being about 1.5mm too short. The solution to that was to cut off the nose and add a filler piece. The rudder will also be moved forward slightly later on to correct the length.



 The wings are a little worse. Both wings have too much of an angle at the tips, they should be much squarer, and the cutout around the fuselage is too rounded on both wings. The lower wing is not too hard to correct as the span is a little too great, so the tips can be corrected simply by sanding them down to the correct profile.



Job done!

 The upper wing, however, has the correct span meaning that it can't be sanded. I opted to chop the ends off and glue on a piece of plastic card which will be sanded to profile when dry. The centre cutouts were squared off at the front ends and then the sides were sanded back to give a square edge, to which I glued bits of the outer wing I'd just removed! They will also be sanded to profile when dry.



 That's about as far as I've got today. Hopefully the pieces I added will be good and solid tomorrow and I can continue with corrections. I also need to blend in the gun ring a little more as it is way too angular, instead of being faired neatly into the rear fuselage.

Thanks for looking in!

Ian

[ALBATROS1234]

i am sure with your skills it will turn out nice. i will check in from time to time

[RAGIII]

Ian,
Looks like you have another excellent correction of an old kit under way! Your beginning work is eoutstanding. I am looking forward to following this one as always!
RAGIII

[Des]

I'm always keen to see what you do Ian and this is no exceptions, great work so far.

Des.

[lone modeller]

This is an old workhorse fromAirfix and no mistake, but has the potential to build into a good model. With your skill it should turn into an exceptional one!

Stephen.

[IanB]

Thanks gents!
 Today I mostly sanded plastic...... I must admit that when I got to bed last night and started thinking about what I'd done, I was a little worried that I'd overdone it! I had the same corrections to do on the Hannover's wings and just added small slivers - much less work and it worked very well. Not sure why I hacked the whole ends off but as it turned out, it worked just fine - it just took longer!
 The wings' additions were sanded down to match the existing wing section, then cut and sanded to shape. A little filler was required in places, then a little more sanding to finish them off. (It all sounds so easy when you say it quickly!). The upper surface detail was also removed as it turns out the ribs are in the wrong places so I'll add them back with .25 x .5mm strip, then sand them down a little to blend them in - that will be tomorrow's job! After that the ailerons can be removed.





 The fuselage correction worked out better than anticipated and I got that sanded down fairly easily. The opening for the engine was altered slightly by bringing it back through the plastic strip I'd added, so it ends just short of the wing leading edge. The pilot's cockpit was also altered slightly by moving the front of the opening a little further forward and squaring it off slightly. Both of these openings were then thinned around the edges.





 I added a little filler around the front and rear of the observer's cockpit to start to blend it in to the fuselage a little better, that will be continued tomorrow too.



 Finally I removed the fin and rudder.



It appeared that the elevators' front edges were in the right place, yet I had to remove a couple of mm from the rear of the fuselage which would bring the cut within the mounting slots of the kit items. That was when I noticed that the kit parts are 2mm too deep front-to-back,



 so the slots were filled and I'll scratch all new tail surfaces. Before I close the fuselage I'll add some plastic in the very rear of the tail so that I can sand the fuselage to shape when it's all together - it'll need to be narrowed in both elevation and plan due to losing the last couple of mm from it.



Thanks for looking in!

Ian

[Alexis]

Watching with interest Ian  and you are off to a nice start so far ..




Terri

[Old Man]

Excellent work, Sir!

By the way, thin strips of masking tape make excellent rib tapes in 1/72.

[Nigel Jackson]

Lovely work, Ian. I can remember building this model when it first came out, without it ever occuring to me that there might be significant accuracy errors. What did strike me was how much better the aircrew figures were over previous Airfix offerings.

Best wishes
Nigel

[radio]

Very great work Ian.
Cheers
Martin

[RAGIII]

You are moving along well on the corrections Ian! Looking great!
RAGIII

[IanB]

Thanks for the feedback folks, much appreciated!

Here's today's installment. I was going to add wing ribs, then I realised that the strut locating holes need to be filled as they are over 1 rib space too far outboard - quite a difference! Those have now been filled & sanded a couple of times and the wings are now ready for the 0.5mm masking tape which I will use for the ribs as per Old Mans' suggestion. My only worry is that they may start to lift over time, hopefully the paint and clear coats will stop that!
 I also finished preparing the fuselage - the observer's cockpit has been faired in properly so now I can start on building up the interior.



Whilst waiting for various applications of filler to dry I decided to make up the tail surfaces from plastic card. The horizontal stabilisers/elevators were not even close:



so those were made, as well as a new fin and rudder.





 Finally today, I took a look at the engine. I had a spare Mercedes from a Roden Albatros, but it had the wrong induction manifold and no camshaft assembly. The induction manifold was easy enough to correct, I carefully removed the centre part with a razor saw and cleaned it up to give me the 2-branch manifold I needed. The camshaft assembly was done with a piece of brass rod CA'd to the top of the cylinders and I then sanded down the sides of a piece of 1.5mm plastic channel, cut 1mm slices off it, and CA'd those over the brass rod to form the caps. I'm happy with it...



Once it's all painted it should look fine.

Thanks for looking in.

Ian
 

[IanB]

Today's installment!
 First thing today was to apply some melted sprue to the inner rear fuselage so that I can be sure of having enough there when I come to thin it down later. Whilst doing that I also filled the holes for the landing gear which are, surprise, too far aft! Not by much admittedly, but enough to need correcting.

 I then spent most of today sticking tiny pieces of masking tape on the wings. Using Jammy Dog 0.5mm tape I've applied all the ribs to both wings - one slight mishap, one of the new tips felt a little loose so I ran some glue along the seam and have refilled it, so that will be tidied up and finished off tomorrow.



After that, and while looking throught the pics on WNW site, I noticed that the front of the engine cowling is obviously open, so that was the next job. First I sanded down the forward fuselage to make sure it matched exactly to the spinner, giving me a good reference for fitting the engine. As you can see it needed a little refining...



I then marked the flat face on the fuselage which butts against the spinner with a black sharpie so that I could clearly see the edge, and then removed all the marked area, leaving just a very thin black line.





 I also thinned the upper fuselage a little more, immediately in front of the upper wing, and tried a quick test fit to make sure there would be room for the engine and plumbing.....
 I think it should fit nicely!



 I also started on cleaning up a few (there are only a few!) of the other kit parts that I'll be using and drilled out the top and front of the exhaust, I'll wait on doing the rear until I'm certain it should be done!

Thanks for looking in!

Ian
 

[Des]

You are doing a superb job with all the alterations Ian, the wing and fuselage look excellent with the work you have done, and the engine also looks very good. The tail surfaces look a lot better now, makes you wonder how Airfix got it so wrong. Looking forward to more updates on this impressive build.

Des.

[radio]

Outstanding work for this corrections Ian.
Cheers
Martin