Eduard 1/48 Albatros D.II (L.V.G) By Lance Krieg

Albatros D.II (L.V.G) Eduard provides a detailed and accurate model of this early German fighter, and it should fall together out of the box without undue trauma to the builder. In fact, most anything the modeler chooses to add to the Profipack version can be construed as 'gilding the lily'. So, if you want an enjoyable two-week build, buy the kit and construct it out of the box; you need read no further. However, if you feel the need to correct every inaccuracy, however niggling, and add every detail, however insignificant, grab the gold leaf and let's head to the garden!

If you're still with me, you already know how to build a rigged biplane. Accordingly, I do not propose to present a reprise of the experience; rather, I would like to focus in on specific areas of the project that presented either challenges or opportunities. These I will describe in some detail in the hopes that they will be of help or interest. I will explain the object of an improvement, my selected approach, and whether or not it was successful. I will confess from the outset that I spent way more time on this project than I should have needed (236 hours!), and that there is much about it that is a disappointment to me; some builds seem to go this way.

Kit Corrections

First off, the kit itself, fine as it is, can use a few corrections in the interest of more complete accuracy, though it scales very well to the latest Ian Stair plans. I consulted 13 sets of measurements and 8 different general arrangement drawings, with predictable variations. These corrections I deemed crucial:

The wheels are badly undersized, a fact widely commented upon. Left uncorrected, the plane will not sit properly and always look vaguely 'wrong'. I used Cooper Detail resin replacements, though many options are available.

There was no aileron control mechanism in the top wing, a distinctive feature that is very noticeable. This is a straightforward correction, but to accomplish it the aileron must be completely removed, a slot cut into the main wing, a control arm added, and the aileron replaced. Then the hardware and aileron hinge details can be restored with slivers of plastic. This correction has the additional benefit of enabling the modeler to offset and so animate the control surfaces. Bitter experience has convinced me that whenever an aileron must be completely removed, it should be pinned and epoxied back into place; if one tries to get by with CA glues, he is forever knocking this component back off. Or is it just me?

The engine (like most renditions of the Mercedes D.III that I have encountered) is too small, and sits too low in the fuselage. Like the wheels, this is a correction that I deemed crucial to replicate the look of the original plane. I pilfered an engine from Eduard's original release of the Albatros D.V, a metal version that is closer to the correct overall length of the prototype. Alternatives would include cutting off and replacing the cylinders of the kit engine, and raising its location within the fuselage by shimming up the engine bearer assembly.

On the original machine, the spinner is slightly smaller than the diameter formed by the nose panels, a feature which promoted engine cooling. I could not decide in studying the plans and pictures whether the correct solution to this was diminishing the diameter of the spinner, or beefing up the contours of the nose; I suspected the latter. But the former was infinitely easier, and so I chucked the spinner onto a lathe and sanded it slightly smaller to recreate the prototype's gap.

The roots of the lower wings have been cut back slightly, no doubt to make assembly a little easier. I restored the missing area with slivers of plastic, though this is hardly worth the bother.

The fuselage panel lines do not conform to the latest drawings, and I filled them all. Rather than restore these, I elected to depict them by varying the paint of the 'wood' panels, a technique that worked fine.

The wings and tail surfaces are finely molded and accurately contoured, but they lack any representation of the tapes that should cover the ribs. This omission needs to be corrected, in my opinion, though one could also say that this is merely a detail. My favorite method of 'taping' the rib stations is to slice thin strips of decal film and apply these before painting. As seen through the topcoats of color, this offers very subtle and believable appearance; mighty boring to do, though. I am less pleased with the tapes I created for the undersides, which are drawn on with various markers and pencils. While easy and quick to accomplish, the lack of any dimensional variation 'feels' wrong to me.

Cockpit Details

The cockpit is sufficiently busy to pass muster, but it really could benefit from a compass, a map case, and a fuel contents gauge, all items that can be considered as standard on the D.II. Also standard and deserving inclusion is the control column-mounted throttle assembly. Furthermore, instruments in this scale deserve improvement over the usual kit-supplied items. I'll discuss my approach to these in my treatment of the anemometer. If you really want everything in the cockpit, then better add these as well:

New fuel selector switch plates from black and silver decal layers. Create these circles with a miniature punch set and apply in two stages, centering the slightly smaller black over the larger silver; carefully scratch enough of the black away to reveal a 'word' or two of the underlying silver. As long as you are cutting out decals, may as well add the compass correction card.

Emergency throttle bail by forming a tiny loop at the end of a long, thin wire.

Access door and hinge details on the ammunition boxes.

Metal fittings and other details to the rudder bars, including the control run pulleys and their wires.

A false floor to hide the fuselage seam aft of the control column assembly.

Additional control column details include enhancing the triggers, providing the Bowden cables for guns and throttle, and the mounting hardware and control runs for the ailerons and elevators.

Mounting hardware for the seat, its adjustment mechanism, and the attachment points for the pilot's harness. Note that the bulkhead behind the seat was not a solid sheet of wood or ply, but ought to have the center section in fabric.

A better handle for the starting magneto on the port wall, and the retaining chain for the ignition magneto switch key. The spark control assembly can do with some work, too; I think Eduard believes this is the throttle.

All pumps, instruments, and controls need hoses, wires, or actuators, which can usually best be provided with fine solder, wire, or plastic. Don't forget the fuel drain and other petrol connections peeping from behind the fuel selector panel.

Finally, there are a couple of wooden components missing, including the small triangular brace beneath the fuel selector panel and a slat on each side of the seat. These last may have been modifications to help a heavily-bundled pilot heave himself out of the plane.

Engine Details

Once the dimensional anomalies have been sorted out, the modeler can address improvements, and it is immediately evident that nothing need be done below the level of the carburetor, as anything accomplished here will be invisible upon assembly. I chose to supply wire connections to the sparkplugs, though only the front couple are really visible. I added valve springs - fine wire wrapped around a suitable mandrel, and improved the rocker arm covers - slabs of .020 plastic with bolt details. The water connections on the front of the engine are very evident, and I used brass wire, fitted into holes drilled in the cylinders. I also used brass to create the air pump, mounted above the aft cylinders on this particular 160 horsepower engine. Increasingly, I am using prototypical materials for unpainted metal parts, and have a suitable variety of rods, tubes, sheets, and bars in brass, copper, and aluminum available to fabricate these fittings. In the case of the air pump, for instance, it is a very simple matter to insert telescoping brass tubes into each other, and use wire for the smallest top diameter and drain assemblies; this approach eliminates the need for a lathe to turn these items.

I chose to 'wrap' the intake manifold pipes; the Germans used asbestos tape, and I used thinned body putty painted on the plastic parts. I also added the not-uncommon numerals to the front of the engine. Finally, I beefed-up the rather skimpy exhaust pipe by replacing the bell opening with a suitably-crimped section of plastic tube, and used plastic shims and body putty to build the pipes to the proper diameters.

Addressing the gun and fuel tank bays aft of the engine is a waste of time, as these areas are invisible beneath the top wing. Additional work done to the rear of the engine, including the compression release handle, synchronizer fittings and cables are also lost to view.

Wood Fuselage

I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine the proper depth of tone of the plywood fuselage. Conventional wisdom dictates that Albatros models prior to the D.III were often stained dark; and so they often appear in period photos. More recently, Dan San Abbott has postulated that these seemingly dark fuselages are in fact blond, and that orthochromatic film has rendered this yellowish color much darker than it appeared in nature. Opinions differ, but I was eventually persuaded that blond was more likely.

So why is the fuselage so dark? Another mistake! Here are the sad facts of the affair:

I create the 'wood' by spraying a very light tan over the appropriate areas. I follow this by producing grain, using a variety of techniques. By smearing some dark oils across a panel, the underlying tan is stained in a random pattern. From this pattern, I emphasize the grain using well-thinned oils applied with a fine brush; besides a dark color, I also use white and line the undulating lines in bold contrasts. I take care to limit the graining to a single panel at a time by masking off adjacent areas. Once the oils have dried, I apply an overspray using Tamiya clear acryllics; yellow, orange, and green in various combinations can yield a variety of shades. I mixed a lovely brown and sprayed right past blond and found myself with a fuselage much darker than I had envisioned. If I had a lighter touch, I would not now be advocating darker stain as the 'correct' finish for the Albatros D.II!

The tinted clear coats build up to a pretty thick coat, even with restraint. On top of these, I spray multiple coats of Future (Kleer to you Brits) to provide further depth of finish and a basis for decals. A finish of 10 to 15 coats is too thick to apply over molded details and expect them to retain any crispness. Another danger is that the thick finish can craze, or worse, chip off. Crazing can be lightly sanded out without disturbing the color, but when an area chips off, it will leave a crater down to the bare plastic that must be sanded extensively. Both of these misadventures befell me, more than once. The moral is to lightly sand the plastic to create 'tooth' before starting to paint at all, and to wash the bare plastic thoroughly to eliminate any contaminates that might affect the paint's grip. Finally, allow plenty of time between coats to allow each to dry.

I should address the propeller at this point, an item I usually carve from veneers (it isn't hard, really!) Since I viewed this project as an exercise in painting wood, I opted to use the kit-supplied Axial and tried to simulate the rich contrasts in the same fashion as the rest of the wood. It is a sad irony that, after years of concocting non-Axial propeller logos, I should be presented a subject that clearly calls for this ubiquitous decal at the very time I received Americal Gryphon's spectacular sheet of German propeller transfers.

Fuselage Details

The radiators need drains, and there are a couple of round access doors missing. The undercarriage assembly and tail skid both need the bungee cords, and the undercarriage struts are improved by the addition of some of the hardware. Metal panels require fasteners, which I supplied with tiny slices of stretched sprue. I chose to replace the pilot's mounting step kick plate with a version that features a grid pattern; I embossed the back of aluminum foil to create this effect.

I elected to use the Eduard-provided masks to paint some of the doors and louvers of the fuselage once it had been rendered in the 'wood' tones, and in this I believe I made a major mistake. Because my technique to simulate the plywood necessarily involves multiple coats of paint, the crispness of Eduard's molded details were lost; worse, any mistake in applying the mask creates a glaring anomaly, and I created several.

In future, I will remove all such details with a knife and sandpaper, create the wood surface, and reapply the prepainted details; an approach I followed for most of the other fuselage-mounted details, but, alas, not all. A fine adhesive for adding prepainted details to a painted surface is 5-minute epoxy. A dot of this will provide more than enough holding power, and any smears can be washed away with a brushful of alcohol without effecting the paint. It was with this adhesive that the majority of fuselage details were attached - it is much less prone to problems than cyanoacrylic.

Personal Markings

My chosen subject was Leutnant Robert Dyke's aircraft from Jasta 16b. This was an LVG-built machine in the serial range 1024/16 to 1061/16, operational early in 1917 from Ensisheim north of Mulhouse . It is well documented with photographs showing it from every angle, and Greg Van Wyngarden kindly supplied very clear shots of the distinctive Bavarian personal markings on the fuselage sides. These days, some basic software on the personal computer, coupled with an ALPS or Laser printer, can create the markings in fairly short order. But if you like to do things the hard way, here's how I did it with eight different pieces of various decals:

I cut appropriately sized lozenges from black and white decal stock. The black diamond is fractionally larger than the white to provide the black border when the white decal is overlaid upon the black. I added a second white diamond to ensure a bright white shade.

Delving into the decal stash, I came up with a number of suitably sized Austrian crests as used on the tails of KuK naval planes. I carefully cut the red/white/red bars from within the shield, and removed the crowns for later use.

A lengthy browse through the decals at the local hobby shop produced a strip of what we would call Bavarian Wappenschild, though I suspect the Oregon Air National Guard calls it something else; the decals were meant for 1/72 scale jets. This bit of serendipity may strain credulity, but I was prepared to cut my own tiny blue diamonds and apply them. As it was, all was not perfect as the diamonds were only three wide and so multiple tiny slivers were required.

Placing the first of two gold shields enabled me to locate the area in which I needed to assemble the Wappenschild; once the field of diamonds was laid down, the second shield hid the ragged edges.

I modified the Austrian crown to more closely resemble the one on the Bavarian arms with a few strokes of gold paint, and placed it to finish Dycke's marking.

I realize that no one is likely to want to repeat this exercise, but it is worth considering as a means of producing an unusual subject. By regarding a particular marking as an assembly of simpler elements, the field of possibilities widens considerably, and the vast numbers of decals available for other areas of interest is a potential resource for the World War One enthusiast.

Struts

I was determined to improve upon the usual presentation of interplane struts, and the very fine illustrations from Flight showed precisely how these components were attached on the original. I began by shortening the kit struts by a couple of millimeters and inserted wire pins into both ends. I erred here, being too cautious, and would have been well advised to remove twice as much plastic and use longer pins. I glued small plastic polygons on the wings at the strut locations, and drilled a deeper mounting hole to accept the pins. After the top wing had been erected in the assembly process, I added the 'ears' to the strut plates, and simulated the through-bolt by gluing plastic bolt heads on both sides.

Did it work? Well, yes, but I should have used thin brass, and bent the ears from the mounting brackets instead of relying on plastic additions. A more ambitious approach would have been to bore through the strut pin and actually use a tiny metal 'bolt', which would have contributed to the finesse of the finished product as well as simulate exactly the original mount.

I found some LVG decals on one of Americal/Gryphon's many sheets (everyone should stock a large variety of these, as there is always some delightful treasure to be found on every one), and dressed up the strut itself.

Rigging

I am a confirmed monofilament user, these days employing DaiRiki fishing line of .003 and .005 diameters and pre-coloring it with a permanent marker. I used to drill holes completely through wing surfaces and secure the lines with knots and globs of CA glue. But I have determined that there is ample strength in the glue itself, and now only drill holes completely through the lower wing; the upper wing is partially drilled from the underside, and the thread embedded in glue. This saves a lot of time in repairing topside holes, and limits the cleanup to the underside of the lower wing, where any flaws in the finish are far less noticeable.

I am, however, seeking improvements in turnbuckles, and have tried a number of approaches without hitting upon a method that I will use to the exclusion of all others. Photoetched parts, while promising, have hitherto presented too much additional work and their two-dimensional nature leaves me cold. On this model, I used pairs of white glue spots, painted on the rigging line about 2 millimeters apart. The slight bulges so created were emphasized with a spot of dark paint, and the intervening space painted brass to simulate a turnbuckle of that material. This works okay for an early machine like the D.II, as the different colors help create an impression that looks more complicated than it really is. The results would be less effective on a model whose turnbuckles would not be quite so colorful - like late war RAF aircraft. The search goes on.

Anemometer

The attached sketch illustrates the rather elaborate lengths to which I went to recreate this wing-mounted instrument. While a lathe and drill press make the creation of a brass version easier, these same steps can be accomplished using plastic and a pin vice drill to make the body; the PE bits provide the intricate details. As with the decals, a willingness to look beyond a part's original purpose will yield dividends. In this case, a photoetched 1/72 control wheel and spoked main wheel were pressed into service after the rims were removed. I removed all but four of the main wheel's spokes, and bent these into the protective cage that surrounds the instrument's spinning cups. The control wheel's arms were twisted 90 degrees to become the mounts for the cups. The hole in each part's central hub makes construction easy; the parts stack up on the mounting rod, and are secured with the merest touch of CA glue. I used a punch to create tiny brass disks, and then pressed them into a cup shape by placing them on a mat and bearing down with a rounded stylus.

In 1/48, the dial face of an instrument needs to be readable to create any illusion of reality. I happen to care that the gauge face also be accurate, but this is less important than its clarity. Fortunately, a number of companies cater to this need, Eduard and Copper State offering accurate instrument faces, and Reheat, Waldron, and a host of car model makers offering alternatives not specific to World War One. Too, it is a relatively simple matter to draw an accurate face in larger scale, and reduce this on a copier to the size needed.

Once the face is obtained, it needs to be attached to a suitably sized instrument case. I take utmost care to make sure the adhesive in this step does not distort the clarity, a danger when one is using a clear film face as provided by Copper State. I usually accomplish this by placing tiny dots of a clear varnish around the very edges of the dial face where the glue will be ultimately hidden by the bezel. 'Glass' in the form of clear acetate or plastic is attached next, with the same care to ensure nothing gets on the face. Finally, one or more PE bezels surmount the glass. I select the bezel based on its accurate configuration, of course, but also on its color; these come in natural brass or aluminum, or dark gray. Again, different manufacturers make this easy, Fotocut, Part, and Reheat providing brass, Copper State and the model car industry aluminum, and Eduard a darkened version. And, it is also possible to chemically darken brass ñ I want to avoid obscuring any details with paint.

Once this sandwich of parts is united, the raw edges these different layers can be smoothed and painted in the body color of the instrument. Finally, a suitable wire is attached if applicable. As with most detail creation, the possession of a miniature punch set to create tiny disks of different materials is absolutely vital.

Besides the anemometer, the fuel pressure and contents gauges, tachometer, and compass were treated in this fashion.

Conclusion

For what was to be an easy and relaxing diversion from more complicated projects, I managed to spend a lot of effort. And, since I was trying to perfect my technique for painting wood, I felt I botched the job, or at least missed my aiming point. Still, hope springs eternal!

References:

• Windsock Datafile (Albatros D.II) and Datafile Special of Albatros Fighters

• Ian Stairs' Albatros Fighters of WWI

• Squadron/Signal's Albatros Fighters in Action

• Rudolf Hofling's Albatros D.II

• Robert Mikesh and the Smithsonians's Albatros D.Va

• Osprey's Albatros Aces of WWI

Periodicals:

• Cross and Cockade Great Britain/International 5/3 and 26/3

• World War One Aeroplane 103, 112, 123, 150

• Over the Front 5/1, 7/4 15/2

Editor's Note: This article originally ran in Windsock 19/4. Thanks to Ray Rimell and Albatros Productions Ltd. for allowing its use here - RNP