Hi all,
Here is my latest completion, the 1/72 scale Albatros D.Va from Airfix. This kit’s moulds date from 1957, making the mould around 63 years old! (that's 24 years older than I am...). This is the boxing from the early 2000s, picked up for $4 at a swap and sell.
The WiP is here -
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=11345.0With this build, I wanted to re-kindle that child like feeling of building something for fun, with minimal modifications, and not a care for accuracy. To correct the ancient Airfix kit's flaws would be to scratch build an entire model. So, in the spirit of fun, this one was largely out of the box.
Well, I say out of box, but I couldn't help myself. I made a couple of changes, but these were very basic, limited only to things I just couldn't live with. I added a rudimentary cockpit, replaced the engine and guns (both from Roden), heavily modified the spinner and replaced the spindly kit propeller, sanded and refined the flying surfaces, refined the detail on the wheels, sanded down the raised fuselage panels and re-scribed them (though I did keep the characteristic louvers and rivets on the nose – these are a prominent feature of the old mould, even if not entirely accurate).
The model was painted with acrylics, with oil paints used for the ‘wood’ fuselage. The model was painted to represent the markings of a machine from Jasta 4, late 1917. Rigging is from elastic.
I also had a little bit of a play with the display base, with a rough attempt to set the model on one of the old early 80’s release boxes (from the era where Palitoy owned Airfix… Palitoy released a number of Airfix kits with box art of the built model on a blueprint, for those that remember – of note, Airfix never re-boxed the Albatros in one of these boxings, so this makes it a little more quirky and unique as a base).
As a final bit of fun, I also created a ‘box top’ for what may have been, had Airfix released this one during the Palitoy era in the early / mid 1980s:
😊
It was a fun little build, and definitely took me back to the earlier days of my modelling, with a slightly ‘modern’ twist.
Feedback, comments and criticisms all welcomed.
Cheers,
BC
