I still have a paint jar with a remainder of the dark red I used on my Jasta 18 Albatros, and as I like the mix of reds I made, I thought it would be a good occasion for building Udet's SSW D-III:
I have the Eastern Express kit which is a former Toko issue:
The casts made by EE from this mould are not very clean and the instructions are incomplete, the decal sheet is a shame, but the plastic is smooth with finely engraved or elevated panels and thin details.
The kit contains optional parts for either a D-III or D-IV, with two full sets of wings and struts.
The fuselage and engine cowling match the Windsock plan rather well, but the D-III's upperwing is too long in span (3+mm), and a little too short in chord (1mm). Quite impossible to fix without damaging the ribs, so...doing nothing will surely be less noticeable than the scars the fixing would leave. As for the elevator, the chord is much too short, so I'll rebuild it from scratch with rolling papers as covering fabric. The engine will also require a bit of detailing (adding the rocker rods mainly)
As usually I'll use Eduard PE for detailing the guns and adding belts to the seat and printed lozenges with lozenge rib tapes using the kit parts as a template:
Both Orion figures have been painted, the girl being Lola Zink, Udet's fiancee, photographed in front of the aircraft:
I've started the building with the painting of the wood grain using a Humbrol 93 base and oils:
Detailing the Spandaus with the Eduard PE parts: I keep only the plastic breeches and muzzles.
On the fuselage, a good part of the scribing has been filled up with CA as the panel lines are wrong and will have to be rescribed. Then I've carved the gun locations:
On the lower wing, the aileron balance horns were too short. Their end was cut away and glued back in place after adding plastic strips. The aileron hinges were built from thin Evergreen strips. The shape of the upperwing cutout was wrong and had to be corrected.
to be continued...
