Luedemann 1/72 resin Curtiss-Paulhan

History

Before Austro-Hungarian industry started producing excellent Lohner flying boats, some foreign types had been bought, mostly in France, for tests and evaluation. One of that types was popular American Curtiss F flying boat, license produced by Paulhan/Paris workshops. King's and Emperor's (KuK) Navy purchased two Curtisses in 1913 numbered 9 and 15 in early AH Naval designation system. One of the Austro-Hungarian Curtiss' pilots was the famous Gottfried Banfield, later the highest-scoring Austro-Hungarian naval ace.

The Kit

It's a typical Luedemann kit - no box, no decals, no detailed instructions, just resin parts and xeroxed drawings of the airplane, packed in the plastic bag.

The resin parts are very nice. Moulded in cream-coloured resin, big parts like fuselage and wings have very nice external surfaces, especially imitation of the rivets and inspection panels on the hull. Wings and control surfaces have well-rendered rib details and are nicely thin. Both wings are slightly warped, but I think that there is nothing difficult in straightening them - with a little help of the hot water. Smaller parts are a bit worse, as there are some small air bubbles in them. Kit includes a beaching trolley with the spoked wheels. Resin struts are provided, some of them even joined with the imitation of the fabric covered stabilizers, and are usable, but many modelers don't like resin struts and will probably want to make new ones of bamboo, metal or plastic.

The kit allows the modeller to build two versions of this interesting airplane, an Austro-Hungarian one with ailerons between the wings (very cool thing) and Russian with normal ailerons attached to the top wing. To make the Russian version, the modeller will have to cut the tips of the top wing and replace them with provided alternative parts. Side floats provided with this kit are correct only for the Russian version. The Austrian one had cigar-shaped floats, which should be very easy to scratchbuild.

Conclusion

This is nice kit of interesting airplane, and it is very high on my "to-build" list. It will look very cool with dark varnished wooden fuselage and clear doped linen wings, with red-white-red rudder and Austrian crest on it.

But building of the kit will take a lot of effort, as this is a kit definitely for advanced, experienced modeller, who can manage to deal with resin parts without locating pins and holes, and the fiddly structure of the biplane with many struts and complex rigging.

Thanks to Mr. Thomas Luedemann for the review sample!