Thanks so much everyone, your comments are much appreciated. It's part of the enjoyment of model building for me, being able to share the results of a build with a like-minded group of WWI modellers. I'd like to give a shout out as well to Mike Norris, because his build log was incredibly helpful in me achieving these results.
I have to admit I?ve never been fond of any French (or American) aircraft of WW1, but your model has such a nice appeal and the Aviattic additions certainly helped make it so in my opinion.
I'm with you Gary. For some reason the Nie28 never held much appeal for me, so when Aviattic announced this kit I wasn't that excited. But when I saw the decals and 3D parts in development I was blown away and just had to get one. I'm really glad I did. As for Telford, oh boy I can't wait! I am like a 12-year old kid again.
Zac and Matt - I can't really take that much credit for the camo finish, because it's all achieved by using Aviattic decals. The team at Aviattic did a fantastic job with these.
For Przemo and Dave, here's how I did the streamlined wires. I attached the pairs of flying wires first - I had the Part PE set which helped me set the spacing (the set has plates that attach to the fuselage with holes for the rigging). I then used Evergreen plastic strip to fill the gaps. They do various sizes, I had several packs and found the .28mm x 1.09mm strip (product 8104) seemed to fit. I cut the strips to length and prepainted them a suitable camo brown colour. If you look at photos of the rebuilt original Nieuport 28 (by Mikael Carlson), the wood infill strips are held in place by thin metal bands. Mike Norris replicated this in his build by using thin strips of metal foil to hold the infills in place. I tried this, but I was too hamfisted to get this method to work. So I decided to glue the plastic strips directly to the rigging wires. After a bit of experimenting, this was the method that worked best for me:
- Apply lightly thinned PVA glue to about 1cm of one wire where the end of the infill strip goes.
- Attach the plastic strip to the glue. It has enough grip to allow you to gently get the rigging wire aligned with the edge of the strip. You can rest the unglued part of the strip on the rest of the rigging run.
- Use a finger of one hand to support the plastic strip in position and apply thinned PVA glue to both rigging wires for about 1/3 of the length of the strip (starting from the end you glued).
- Position the plastic strip so the rigging wires run along its edge. Again, the PVA glue gives you plenty of working time but has enough grip to hold the plastic in place.
- Once you have this in place, run a damp brush over the part you have glued so far to even out any lumps and bumps in the glue.
- Now repeat this process at the opposite end of the flying wires, again gluing about 1/3 of the strip in place. Smooth out any glue bumps with a damp brush.
- Then glue the remainder of the wires in place with thinned PVA glue working on one side at a time.
- You can run highly thinned PVA glue over any gaps once it's all dry.
The trick to this is thinning the PVA glue so that it doesn't dry too quickly but you don't want it too thin otherwise it won't hold the plastic strip in place. Also, prepaint the plastic strips a brown colour. Although this will get damaged in the process, it gives a good base for overpainting at the end.
I overpainted the whole assembly in a camo brown colour. The metal strips aren't evident to my eyes in period photos, so these must have been overpainted in the field, or maybe there was a covering over the whole assembly.
I hope that's clear!
