1/48 Eduard Albatros D.Va (Otto Fuchs Jasta 77b)

[Luftace]

Finally, my first build log on this forum. I will be building the 1/48 Albatros D.Va by Eduard and making many improvements to the kit as I go along. I hope to keep it entertaining and informative so that perhaps it can help others in their future builds just as I have learned so much from reading build logs over the years. Here we go!



The kit that I will be using is the Weekend Edition, kit number 8406. I will not be building this specific aircraft though. Instead I will be building Otto Fuchs D.Va of Jasta 77b circa 1917 or so. Here are some pictures I found on the web of his aircraft and a color profile. Also a book I just got on the very subject. It is already proving useful.





And an overall view of the parts out of the box. I had already removed the fuselage halves and landing gear struts before I took the photos.



I started by thinning out the front of the fuselage cowling to give a bit more wiggle room for the replacement engine I intend to use. I will be using the Engines and Things resin Mercedes D.IIIa, but I am still awaiting it to arrive to me in the mail.



Next I thought it would be a good idea to scribe around all the molded on framing in the cockpit to sharpen things up so that things will be tidier later on when a wash is applied after final painting.



After seeing Brad Cancian's current build of Eduard's Albatros D.V kit, I really liked what he had did with adding plastic stock instead to add more definition. Hope you don't mind Brad, your build is very well done and inspiring to say the least, so I may borrow some of your tricks to improve my kit as well.

Here is the basic addition of strip stock to the side walls.



I have more progress to show, but will leave this here for now and make another post shortly.

Thanks for having a look, it is really nice to be here with you all.

Chad

[Luftace]

Next installment.

Looking at pictures of the cockpit on the full sized aircraft, I noticed that the wood frames were cut in such a manner to allow more material where the stringers were notched in, essentially bulging out in what appears to be almost half of a circle. I thought I could replicate it easy enough, so this is what I did.


First I punched 2mm discs from .5mm sheet styrene. .5mm is the same width I used for the smaller framing strips on the side walls. Then I sliced off a segment from the punched disc. Each disc yielded me two usable segments. I just eyeballed the size. I then place the segments on the vertical frames where the longerons intersect. The result looks like this.



It matches my references much closer now and I find the detail and curves it adds rather pleasing.


I then turned my attention to the cockpit floor. Eduard has the floor extending to the rear bulkhead, when in fact it should only span one frame section. The frame that it should stop at is not present in the kit, so i just traced the front frame Eduard does provide onto some styrene of a suitable thickness and cut out a copy of that. I then measured how long the floor should be to span between the two frames and cut it to size accordingly. I also drilled out the compass mount on the floor since I wanted to replace it with something more detailed. I am still doing a bit of research on this, and I am beginning to think I would have been better off just removing it with a blade and sanding the floor flush rather than drilling it all the way out. This I will get back to later as I need to study this a bit more before I make a decision.



I had planned to use the seat and the frame it sits on as provided in the kit. By including the missing frame as previously mentioned, which is directly under the seat and its tube frame, I realized that surgery would be necessary to make either one work with each other and I did not like the prospect of trying to make a clean job of it. Instead I opted to just scratchbuild the seat frame and rails from round styrene stock.


Here are the parts completed. The original kit part shown for comparison.

In case someone wants to do this also, here are the measurements. The four round sleeves on the seat rails are stretched cotton swab tube split on one side so that they can open like a "C" shape when place over the round stock.

Seat rails running fore to aft: .5mm round stock, 16.5mm length, 2ea

Seat mount bars: .5mm round stock, 13mm length, 2ea

Seat mount brackets: Stretched plastic cotton swab tube, cut to 2mm sections, 4ea and split on one side.

Seat mount brackets (attached to the seat bars at the ends in the photo): .05mm thick sheet styrene cut into rectangles, 2mm width x 1.5 mm height. A single hole was drilled in each one centered at 1mm from the top. the top corners were trimmed off as a start to round them off. These were glued with the seat bars passing through the holes leaving .5mm over hang on the outside of each bracket. Once cured, they were rounded off the rest of the way with sanding sticks.

The idea is to glue the seat bars directly to the rails and later slide the 2mm sleeves on the rails underneath each of the brackets to complete those assemblies.

Here is a picture for better clarity of the sleeves cut from stretched cotton swab sticks. It is shown on the end of a pair of tweezers spreading it apart to be able to slide it onto the seat rail.



That is all I have for tonight. I hope that someone will find this information useful. If clarification is needed on anything, please ask, I am more than happy to help. I look forward to hearing what you guys think so far.

Chad

[Alexis]

Really nice start so far 


Alexis

[Tim Mixon]

Wonderful scratch work you are doing. I’m following with great interest!

[lcarroll]

   Great "super-detailing" already Chad, and judging from what you've shared of your previous Builds this will be a genuine treat to follow. I can really appreciate what you are doing in 1;48 Scale here as it was my scale of choice for many years until my eyesight, steadiness of hand, and stiff fingers all reached their "Best Before Dates" due to advancing old age!! Never to worry though, I'm still functioning in 1;32 Scale and there's still 1:24! Your extra efforts on the frame/stringer junctions and the seat frame are very impressive, this is already looking like a spectacular model and something we can all learn from, thanks for sharing your skills and ideas here on our Forum.
Cheers,
Lance

[Umlaufmotor]

Very good color scheme!
I really like the detail work inside the cockpit.
Great work.

Servus
Bertl

[Brad Cancian]

I'm loving the work on this one Chad, and i'll be watching along with interest - I might steal a few of your tricks myself 

Cheers,

BC

[Luftace]

@Alexis
Thank you!

@Tim
Thanks!

@Lance
Thanks, much, glad you like the build so far, more detailing to come. Good to hear you are still able to enjoy the hobby even if it now requires building in a larger scale. I would love to build in 1/32 but just don't have the space for it.

@ Bertl
Thank you, cockpit detailing is my favorite part of model aircraft.

@Brad
Thanks much, it would make me more than happy if I could see someone learn something from me as well and apply it to their own builds.

Thank you all, you are very kind and I feel very welcome here. I am making a little more progress, more scratchbuilding to come. I just have to get enough done to have enough to post about. Hopefully more updates by this coming weekend.

Chad

@

[PrzemoL]

Truly great start. I will be watching with interest.

[Luftace]

Thank you  PrzemoL!

So, I've been keeping busy on this since the last posting, making tiny parts and such. Here is some of that progress.

Starting with the flight controls in the cockpit.

The unmodified control stick still on the parts tree. I tried to clean up the mold parting lines on the front and back of the stick but was less than satisfied with it's not-so-round profile, appearing slightly chunky to my eye. Out come the tools.


I measured the main shaft center section before cutting, it is 6mm long.


I will replace the missing section with 1.25mm Evergreen round stock, cut to 8mm length. I drilled the top and bottom pieces out using successively larger drill bits until I had the proper size drilled out to a depth of about 1mm on each piece. The cylindrical walls are now paper thin (even less actually!) and care needed to be taken to not damage or distort them.


New shaft glued in place. The top was filed flat before attaching the upper part.


The completed main stick assembly, with the removed part placed next to it.

Next, I wanted to improve the rudder pedals.


The kit part is a little undersized and leaves much to be desired. I decided to replace it with an Albatros rudder bar from Tom's Model Works.


There it is to the right hand side closer to the fret edge. Looks much better, but what to do about it being so flat and 2-dimensional?


I did some experimenting and found that if I used Mr. Metal Primer on the photoetch parts, "sprue-goo" will bond to it. Without the primer, the rehardened plastic just pops right off with the slightest flex or prod with a blade. Holds very well once primed though.


After letting the plastic cure over night, I was able to trim back any excess from the front and back edges and lightly sanded both sides which had been coated with the sprue goo to make them even. I then drilled out the mounting hole in the center of the bar with a #80 drill bit. Not bad! Should look very nice under some paint, and it has some volume to it now.

I then began improving the rudder bar tube frame itself.


While still on the parts tree, I snipped off the mounting pip for the kit rudder bar and drilled a hole all the way through with a #80 drill bit. Keeping the part on the tree made handling much easier when doing this.


I glued a piece of stretched sprue through the hole to be able to mount the rudder bar.


I scratchbuilt the bar that the rudder cables are attached to. This view is from the front to show that I laminated 3 thin pieces of sheet styrene, the center piece being narrower than the top or bottom one so as to leave a gap at each end to be able to attach the cables later.


All of the rudder bar parts ready to be assembled. I did add a small piece of Evergreen "C" channel stock under the tube frame just forward of the stretched sprue mounting pins. On reference photos it appears to be boxed in a bit here, so I am just trying to replicate what I see.


Finally, one last image showing all of the parts test fitted onto their respective pins. They will be glued later after being painted.

I have a good bit more to show still, but will end this post here for the time being before it gets too long. Hope you guys like it so far, I look forward to hearing what you think.

Chad

[Luftace]

For the next update, I shall continue on with the control stick.


I made the arm that the aileron cables are connected to by laminating 3 thin pieces of sheet styrene together, cutting the middle piece and spacing it so that it would leave a gap for the cable to pass through.


Here I am trying to show the small gap in the arm as described above.


The arm test fitted to the control stick.

I don't know the nomenclature for all of the extra pieces to the control stick, so I will describe it as best I can and hopefully the pictures will help here too.


The slanted bar going from the horizontal part of the stick connects to the vertical control stick just under the hand grip in what looks like a "U" shaped flat metal bracket. i eyeballed the size of rod to use and cut a thin strip from styrene sheet. The strip I held with tweezers in the middle and bent the overhanging ends up to form a "U" shape. I measured the total length of this secondary bar to be 10mm, and going by pictures, decided that the rod part should be 7mm and the "U" part making up the remaining 3mm, leaving it longer than needed for now. I glued the two pieces together and set them aside to set up. Next I drilled a hole all the way through the top of the control stick from the side where the "U" would attach to. I pushed a piece of stretched sprue through the drilled hole and snipped it off leaving two bumps on either side of the stick to serve as the attachment points. Next I glued the bar assembly to the stick and trimmed off the excess styrene from the "U" at their attachment points.


I made the control lock lever from scrap styrene trimmings laying on my bench. Basically just a sliver bent into an inverted "L" shape, trimmed to size and glued in place. Sorry that these are difficult to see with everything being white styrene right now. Hopefully I can get some better pictures later once I start getting a coat of primer on everything.



I wanted to improve the rather plain kit seat, and after seeing how @Servus Bertl's improved his on his 1/32 WNW Albatros build I decided to give it a try myself. I don't have any in progress shots of this, but if you would like to see how it was done please go check out his fantastic build here: https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=13288.15


Improved kit seat with scratchbuilt cushion.


The cushion was carved from sheet styrene, with further contours added with some sprue goo dabbed on and smoothed over with more extra thin liquid cement. The buttons are punched styrene discs pressed into drilled out recesses.

I improved the rear bulkhead by making a cut-out where the control wires will pass through. Also, since it will be fabric covered, I cut out some thin sheet styrene to represent this panel.




Last thing for tonight will be the scratchbuilt pulleys for the aileron control cables.


Here are the pieces ready for assembly. I initially made one bracket then used it as a master to cut out the other three. I lost two to the carpet monster along the way so had to make more than I had originally intended. Discs were punched using my punch and die set, that part was pretty easy. What wasn't so easy was getting the hole drilled into them as centered as possible. There were a few rejects of these too until I had four I was happy with. The discs are 1.8mm drilled through with a #80 drill bit. This was tedious, but patience paid off.


The discs were doubled up and threaded onto a piece of stretched sprue, held in place with extra thin styrene cement.


The pulley discs were given a coat of Model Master Acryl Rust. Not shown, but the inside of the pulley brackets were simultaneously painted with grey-green from Lifecolors' WWI German Aircraft acrylic paint set.


The pulley brackets had a triangular stiffening flange on the outside of each part. I replicated this by gluing rectangles of sheet styrene in place then using my side cutters to trim them to shape once the glue had set.


Now the assemblies were brought together, the brackets placed over the stretched sprue axles and glued in place, the excess sprue being nipped off afterwards.


Here are the pulley assemblies after they were given a coat of the grey-green to the remaining unpainted areas.

That is all for now. The fun part will be doing all the rigging later with a partially closed interior, but I have some ideas of how to tackle that and will share with you all in due time. Thanks for having a look and as always, feedback is always welcomed.

Chad

[Radarman]

Chad,
That's some "first class" work there. Thanks for the tutorial.

                                                            Kevin

[Luftace]

Thanks much Kevin! Thanks for having a look and hopefully you and others may find some of this useful.

Chad

[Umlaufmotor]

Beautiful.
@Luftace

I love this little datail work.
Superbly done.

It is relatively (!) easy to install the aileron control cable in the correct scheme and lead it outside the fuselage.
If you drill a small hole on the left and right side below the pulley, you can lead the cables outside the fuselage before joining the fuselage halves.
Then glue the fuselage halves together, stretch the cables and glue them with a drop of super glue in the hole.
Then smooth out the glued area. The wing connectors cover the glue joints.
This is how I did it on the 1/32 models - unfortunately I don't know the Eduard model well enough if these steps would be feasible there.

Greetings
Bertl

[Luftace]

Thank you much Bertl, I am very humbled by your kind words. Also, thanks for the tip about rigging the pulleys, I will certainly take a look and see if what you described will work for this kit, much appreciated.

Chad