Thank you very much Fredrik!
I went on to work on the cockpit and reconstructed the posts for the Schwarzlose machine guns from evergreen profiles which are thinner and sturdier than the kit‘s resin parts. Andi Szekeres published some very helpful photos of 101.37 on
www.idflieg.com, one of these showed two things:
At first I wasn‘t completely right when rigging the foot bar. The control wires were led through return pulleys. And secondly despite there is a nice wooden ammunition box in the kit, there’s nothing that would have fed the ammunition belts to the machine guns or collect the empty shells. I will have to scratch build such a device. But before detailing this area I need to build the engine. The machine guns‘ barrels were lengthened on the original plane and left the fuselage through two rectangular holes in the front radiator. These barrels need to be depicted by something like surgery needles. And I‘d like to have my machine guns firing straight and not interfering with the engine. So i think I‘ll have to rise them some quarters of a millimeter as soon as the engine got in its place.
When the machine guns and the seat including seat belts are on their place, one can hardly see the foot bar, so I‘ll leave this area like it is.
I must say I don’t have a clue what happened to the seat of 101.37. There’s a grey green seat showing heavy signs of flaked or chipped paint and under it a dark brown color. The only explanation I have for this is, that the leather was painted like most of the metal parts on the interior in a grey green color. This paint could have chipped heavily as it wasn’t originally intended for coloring leather. I tried to simulate this on my kit‘s seat, too.
While the paint dries, it is time for some thoughts on the paint scheme i chose. Sticking so strictly to the interior of 101.37 might probabely not be entirely correct.
The Berg fighter was build by many subcontractors:
Aviatik built the 38, 138.238 and 338 series
Lohner built the 115 and 315 series
LLoyd manufactured the 48, 248 and 348 series.
MAG built the 84 and 92 series
Thone & Fiala manufactured the 101 and 201 series
WKF built the 184, 284 and 384 series.
Many minor and maior differences showed up between these different series and manufacturers. Even within a series there were differences as especially Austro-Hungarian aircraft manufacturing processes were far from being standardized.
HPH offers markings for only one machine, 138.120 from Flik 63J. It is a machine built by Aviatik while 101.37 was built by Thone & Fiala. So there might have been differences also in the cockpit aera, although HPH obviously also examined 101.37 when prepairing their kit. At least they offer some photos of this machine in their instructions.
Although 138.120 is a nice scheme, I want to do another one. But how to avoid the danger to build something that differs in too many details from 138.120 like it is done by HPH? I am by no means an expert on Aviatik Bergs and I cannot tell a Lloyd apart from a Lohner built machine.
By browsing through my literature I came across a photo of 138.119, which is close enough for me to 138.120 for not to asume too many differences between these two machines. 138.119, of course also built by Aviatik, served with Flik 74J in 1918 from San Fior di Sopra, about 15 km north of the Piave River.
It is known that it was flown by Oblt. Franz Cserich, the squadron commander, by Oblt. Arpad Pindter von Pindtershofen and at least once by Kpl. Adolf Wissinger.
Given the huge amount of accidents in which machines were destroyed — especially in 1918 when workmanship and quality of manufacturing seems to have deteriorated significantly — 138.119 was a long lasting machine. It is reported that it was flown in action regularly at least from May 20 till September 19, when Kpl. Adolf Wissinger almost fell victim to the Bergs tendency to break wing ribs and to loose the wing‘s fabric in flight. Wissinger survived this attempted murder by 138.119 making a forced landing. This seems to have been the last flight of 138.119. But Wissinger failed to return to his airfield on October 27 of 1918. A picture of the plucked bird was also published in Windsock Datafile 45 on page 7 and is repeated on page 50 of Zoltán Cziróks book on Fliks 68J, 72J and 74J. Before this, 138.119 had been reportedly frown in combat on May 20 (Cserich), June 6 (Cserich), twice on June 15 (Cserich), twice on June 22 (Pindter), June 23 (Pindter), June 28 (Cserich), July 2 (Cserich), July 8 (Cserich), July 13 (Pindter), July 15 (Pindter), July 16 (Pindter), July 28 (Pindter), July 29 (Pindter), August 25 (Pindter), August 26 (Pindter) and August 31 (Pindter). It’s not known if any enemy airplane was shot down by 138.119 during these flights. So 138.119 fits the story of the typical Aviatik Berg D. I fighter quite well: fast and agile, but lightly build and from time to time more dangerous for its own pilot than for the enemy.
Best regards,
Andreas
