RolandColor by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
0rt-r-low by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Eduard 1/48 Roland C II
Paints: Golden High Flow
Weathering – oils, Iwata Com.Art paints. Rigging – EZ Line “fine”
This kit is my third straight biplane and first in 1/48. I spend a lot of time of painting and weathering – anyone interested can check the “In Construction” forum.
It was one of Eduard's first WWI aircraft – new tool in 2000 and now out of production. I did the “Weekend Edition”, gladly giving up the PE. The kit shows its age. There's a lot of flash and very thick sprue gates. There were two seperate tail sections to chose from, but now clue at all as to what should go with what so I stuck with the parts asked for in the instructions. There were pieces that had holes but no pegs. Most pieces fit well enough, but there was a lot of fiddling involved. Decals were very fragile and some badly cut. There were no predrilled holes for rigging – all of my previous bipes had that – not sure what is the norm. In any case, I did miss them. I'm not accustomed to the biplanes and lack the ability to see down the road several steps to best incorporate rigging into the build process and made some build errors that wasted time. I used EZ line here. I've only used it for antennas before, and chose the “fine” diameter because I feared that the thicker variety might put extra pressure on the very small CA glue points. That was a mistake. Eduard wanted the equivalent of 2lb mono – and the EZ is a long way from that. As noted below, I had pretty good data on the plane and it turnbuckles are not easy to find in photos of real Rolands so the EZ Line might have been good history. In terms of build, I'd much rather use eyelets, sleeves and mono. Things didn't work out exactly as planned and there was some driver error. But, I'm having fun with biplanes (just got the very neat ICM 1/32 Gladiator for my birthday) and look at every build as a learning experience. Hopefully I'll be a little wiser next time out.
I had three sets of instructions – the Weekender set in the kit, a download of the more elaborate Profipack and, best of all, a set from Wingnut Wings. It was WNW that gave me good options for a paint scheme. That was good because I was not going to paint my model purple and I wasn't going to give it a face or scales. (I have an eccentric alergy to shark's teeth on airplanes – so whale faces are out too.) Turns out that there were lots of Roland's without purple or faces and WNW had several examples. The one that was very interesting to me is in the pic above. Apparnetly the crew did not like the national marking, with a white background, placed between the two windows and providing a perfect aim point for enemy aircraft to use to kill crewmen. So they over painted the fuselage to the rear of the cockpit with a glaze and put on a new marking (obscured by a crewman above). WNW doesn't claim certainty on the colors here, but their best guess is that the lower wings were clear linen with matte varnish, a semi-gloss pale blue and a matte glaze of either olive green or a light brown. I chose the light green. Do note that the surface tone on the glaze is clearly quite irregular. One reason that I went with the green is that sometime in the future I want to take a crack on that very neat, but very complex olive green streaking camo seen on some Triplanes.
Actually this was a very interesting subject. Considering the spring 1916 debut for the Roland (I put a front gun on mine – that probably means early 1917) it was a very advanced plane. The thing had a monocoque fuselage – a feature not common in planes built five years after Bleriot flew the English Channel. It was built with plywood natch, and Wikipedia claims the technique was similar to that employed on the formidable WWII Mosquito. The innovative airframe allowed for the absense of cabane struts. It could crack 100 mph and served as reconnaissance plane and fighter. (Apparnetly Richthoven was an observer in one.) It was a big plane for the time (the 1/48 scale worked out okay) and not known for being nimble. It was, however, faster than an Eindecker or Bebe. Like the Mosquito it was a hard plane to build which led to the Roland being a temporary dead end when retired after a year's service. It carried the Benz 6 cylinder inline which pushed out a good 160 hp. (If you want to see this engine up close check out Jay Leono's Garage on YouTube and search “1921 Benz-Mercedes Rabbit-the-First.” The car is a racer based on a prewar Benz roadster powered by a Benz aircraft engine. Leno's engineer goes over the huge engine in detail and shows why a few tons of oil were needed every week or so. Neat sound.)
Pics below:
Eric
1left-r by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
2 left by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
3lft-ft by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
4lft-r-ab by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
5front by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
6underneath by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
8rt-ft-ab by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
9rt-r2 by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
rear by
Eric Bergerud, on Flickr