Author Topic: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's  (Read 1994 times)

Offline lone modeller

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Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« on: March 31, 2019, 09:02:42 PM »
Evening All,

I was looking on another website earlier today where a modelller presented a beautiful conversion of the Airfix Hannover to a post war HaWa F3 cabin which had lozenge fabric wings. It reminded me of the model below which I made a long time ago, before lozenge transfers were available, and I had to mix many of the colours. I also used stretched sprue to rig it. By today's standards this is not up to much but some of you might like to see where some of us were in the years before WNW and other modern kits.

The model represents the D V of Lt von Hippel of Jasta 5 who was killed when he entered a steep dive and his wings fell off: a weakness of this aircraft which was caused by the sesquiplane wing structure. Under the high stress of a steep dive the lower wing spar twisted and failed with catastrophic consequences. The designers tried to rectify the problem by adding a small stiffner strut from the leading edge of the wing to the base of the V strut, but most pilots refused to go into a steep dive in persuit of an opponent. Lt von Hippel was an early victim of this problem. I have also painted the distinctive fuselage marking in red: some sources give it as black. There are also differences of opinion as to the shape of the arrow but as I had not seen any photos of the machine when i made this model, I used the only published source available to me. The lozenge markings were painted by hand, but I did not attempt the rib tapes as I did not have a suitable pen. I am also aware of the shortcomings of the Airfix kit, (one of thier earliest relaeses, from I think, 1958). In any event here is the model - about 45 years after I painted it.....











Thanks for looking.

Stephen.

Offline RAGIII

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2019, 09:55:32 PM »
That is an Awesome build, especially considering the kit used and the timeframe in which it was built! Thanks for sharing Stephen !!
RAGIII
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Offline Juan

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2019, 10:51:08 PM »
Great build Stephen, amazing it has survived so many years.

Online lcarroll

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2019, 12:15:09 AM »
Stephen,
    Some great memories kindled here for me as well. I did this Kit in the mid 60's as Goering's black and white Jasta 27 bird with the headrest. I wish I still had it, it was my pride and joy and my first attempt at "invisible thread" rigging. I had the newly published "Aircraft in Profile" booklet by Peter Gray and I was very proud of the "detailed research" I had done on my subject! It also started my fascination with WW.I Aircraft which has been my recreation ever since.
   Thanks for posting this little gem!
Cheers,
Lance

Offline IanB

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2019, 01:44:40 AM »
Beautiful! I built that one as a kid but it was nowhere near that good!

Ian

Offline lone modeller

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2019, 04:37:57 AM »
Thank you for commenting gentlemen and thank you for the kind remarks.

Ian: I also built one of these when I was younger in the 1960's and it too was not as good as this - hence it has not survived!

Lance: I too remember the Profile, (I still have a copy in the roof, together with many others), - I got this scheme from a Purnell publication on WW1.

I have also been informed by another WW1 fan that von Hippel survived the crash and indeed service in WW2 too. He was a very fortunate man.

Stephen.

Offline IanB

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #6 on: April 03, 2019, 02:41:04 AM »
By the way Stephen, congrats on the the upcoming SAM article, very well deserved!

Ian

Offline cduckworth

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #7 on: May 16, 2019, 03:52:07 AM »
Stephen
What a nice job on an old kit and as others said brings back some stored up memories.   I remember buying the Airfix single seaters for .30 cents in the early 1960’s and checking out the Profile series from the library to find a suitable color scheme.  I still can recall watching the RE8 top wing collapse in slow motion while the tube glue dried.  Lots of patience being built up for a 12 year old.   :-\

Charlie

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Offline G. Chapuis

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2019, 04:01:28 PM »
Hello
It's impressive!!! The model is beautiful. It does not look like she's this age.

Gérard

Offline Trackpad

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2019, 12:22:08 AM »
Hi, All,

Not to hijack Stephen's thread (a lovely build, Stephen!), but I built the same kit in the 1970's and thought that it might be of interest here: hand-painted lozenge (templates from the IPMS UK magazine of the day), mixed colours using the references of the day (such as I could find!), stretched sprue for rigging...great fun!



Quaintly, the subject is D4545/17, the WNW !/32nd scale captured Albatros DV that I did on the Forum a while ago. What's the old saying? "What goes around, comes around"?

Best to All!  8)
Cheers!
Gary

"It was an adventure, a great adventure. And, like all great adventures, we never knew where it would lead or how it would end."

Offline lone modeller

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #10 on: May 17, 2019, 03:29:48 AM »
I really like that Gary: I got my information for the lozenge pattern from Airfix Magazine and the colours probably from the same source. Information was much more difficult to find then, (as Lance has already indicated!), so it is interesting to see how we interpreted the lozenge colours differently. Hand painting them was a bit of a challenge but worth the effort at the time - I doubt whether I could do it now.

Your model has also survived the years in excellent condition and it shows that you could make very good models a long time ago. It makes a nice contrats with your recent WNW build - another first class presentation.

Stephen.

Offline lone modeller

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2019, 03:32:58 AM »
Thanks Charlie and Gerard for passing by and leaving positive comments - I really appreciate them. I suspect that many other modellers also have memories of this kit Charlie - after all this and the Revell DIII were the only True Scale offerings of the types for a very long time.

Stephen.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2019, 04:42:42 AM by lone modeller »

Offline pepperman42

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #12 on: May 17, 2019, 11:51:11 PM »
Neat build of a classic!!

Steve

Offline dr 1 ace

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Re: Blast from the Past: Airfix Albatros D V from mid 1970's
« Reply #13 on: May 21, 2019, 10:48:03 AM »
Good work never goes stale !

Ed
Life is short, enjoy it, nobody gets out alive.