Hallo friends,
here I am with a new project (a big one seen the dimensions of the plane!).
I have no French plane in my showcase and I decided to build a bomber.
Here is the well known box

And here we go with all the box details:
Instructions:



Very basic, not so easy to understand, but there is a very clear rigging scheme.
Decals:

There are 3 different possibilities:
1. The first is the one provided by the kit: the no.3 plane (B2) of the
Escadrille 117 (s/n 1333).
This plane is documented by the photo which is on the box top and is also shown in the extremely useful webpages by Denis Albin.
This is a typically 5 colours camouflaged plane.
The problem with these decals is that the "LEVER ICI" stencils are black and should go on dark areas (back part of the fuselage)
2. I also have the Blue Rider sheet with the decals of a plane (B2) belonging to
Escadrille 504. The well known "Léon" (the name could be a tribute to Sgt Léon Diéval who died after his wounds in May 1916).
This plane served in Greece on the Serbian border.
Here we have another problem: the s/n on the decals is 1223 while Denis Albin writes it was 2883. Unless there were more than one "Léon" planes... who is right?
The colour scheme of this plane is plain CDL with darker areas I imagine over the metal parts of the fuselage (engine cowling).
3. I also found interesting the
96th Aero Squadron of the USAS, whose nice emblem was the Devil with a bomb in his hand in a triangle.
I have drawn the emblem in vectorial form:
CLICK here to download the SVF file (only for
non commercial purposes)
Again this would be a camouflaged plane and, although I could print myself the devil's decals and the fuselage number, there is the problem to get some white "LEVER ICI" stencils which I am not able to print.
The photos that are found on the web and on other reference books show both A2 (without observer windows) and B2, in this Squadron.
At the moment I prefer version n.1, probably using wing cockades from the Blue Rider sheet.
I would reuse also the stencil on the rudder from the Blue Rider sheet (I prefer to paint the three bands on the rudder), I will need a surgical intervention to replace the s/n.
Any suggestion and advice at this stage is more than welcome!
Antonio