Evening All,
Following Stevehed's remarkable scratch build of the DFW giant I too decided that it was time to go big and so I did some research on these early large German machines: the best source is The German Giants by P Grosz and G Haddow, some of which is available of the net. Then I found that DataFile no 89 is about the first of these machines, the Seimens-Schuckert R.1 (Riesenfleugzeug - giant aircraft), which was first flown in May 1915. I decided that here was a project which would be worth following because it is larger than any of my other scratch builds but still small enough to fit into my display cabinet. There will no doubt be some interesting problems to resolve as I proceed but that is part of the fun and challenge of scratch building.
For those like me who are not familiar with this design here is what it looks like (and of course this contains a set of plans in 1/72 scale which might prove to be useful).
I decided to start with the nose which looks like the front of a very large lorry with three radiators - one in the front and one on each side with a bonnet over them all. There were three engines in the front of these machines, two of which were between the side radiators and a third beneath and behind the pilots. I do not intend to make the engines as they cannot be seen on the completed model unless the top of the nose is left off. I cut three pieces of 30 thou card and glued lengths of 10 thou rod onto the faces of the card to represent the radiator pipes.
Strips of stretched sprue represent the steel bands holding the pipes in place.
Then I made a top and bottom plate to which I could attach the three radiators.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
