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.