Eduard 1/48th Albatros D.III Weekend Edition
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Write Up
The call went out. Matt was looking for volunteers to give first look
and build reviews to some new kits. Having never done this sort of thing
it appealed to me as a new sort of challenge and the opportunity to give
back something back to Internet Modeler.
I jumped right in and Matt responded that I would get the then new Eduard
Weekend Edition Albatros D.III, Kit 8436.
Great says I and so I started to plan my approach to this new task.
Little did I know just how much of challenge this was to be. To be fair
to the kit I choose to not do any research into either this particular
kit or aircraft until I had the kit in hand; best not to have any pre-conceived
notions that might prejudice my approach I thought.
After I received the kit I must have looked it over a hundred times
and mulled and fussed till I was able to take some pictures, and start
to put words to paper. I began to realize that perhaps what appears to
come quite easily to others will take a bit longer for me. I just wasn’t
content to look and report on what I saw. I also had to study and to actually
start cutting and gluing parts before I could express my “first
look” thoughts on the kit.
I have been a model builder for nearly 40 years having started at very
young age on the likes of purple BF109’s, yellow Zero’s and
Airfix bagged kits. In the ensuing years I dabbled in just about every
possible era and genre. Airplanes, tanks, cars, rockets, you name it I
messed about with it at some point. I also got hit real hard with the
dreaded AMS when I was heavily into armoured vehicles. I spent countless
hours counting rivets, bolt heads, track links, chain links and so forth.
Many additional hours were spent researching colour and became a hard
core follower of colour exactness. After a few years I got burned out;
the harder I worked at something the less I was pleased and the less I
accomplished. I couldn’t find a happy medium between just building
a kit out of box and the need to get lost in the details. As a result
I turned to simpler pleasures primarily building and flying non-scale
model aircraft. I still dabble with the occasional build of a plastic
kit taking great pains to keep AMS at bay which is the road that has brought
me to be reviewing this kit.
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Detail of wing strut location
and wing bracing location |
I have built a number of Eduard kits over the years and still have several
unbuilt examples in my rainy day stash. I have always likes the Eduard
kits, topics not done by anyone else and generally quite well done overall.
The Weekend Edition Albatros D.III does not disappoint. My take on the
concept is to provide a kit with few options and no photo etch details
in an effort to appeal to new modelers or those who might be trying a
WWI type aircraft for the first time. And why not the Albatros, it is
certainly a very nice looking aircraft with lots of appeal. The Albatros
series of fighters and observation planes has always been one of my favourites.
Historically I can’t add to what has already been written about
the aircraft. So, breaking with tradition I will not provide much of an
introduction about the aircraft itself. That said, however, I couldn’t
help but doing a bit of research into the type’s history which in
turn lead to my first detailed observation of the kit.
Before opening the kit’s box I note that the box art indicates
an Albatros D.III that flew with Jasta 5, in 1917. However, the colour
profile shows a D.III with the earlier D.III’s squared off rudder.
1917 would place this aircraft later in the conflict when the predominate
D.III’s were those built by OAW and should have the more rounded
rudder of the later versions. In fact, the sprues contain both rudder
styles and the instructions clearly show to use the later versions rounded
rudder. The box art or the instructions make no reference to the aircraft
being a later OAW built type.
The sprues also contain two upper wings, the earlier version with the
centrally located radiator and the later with the radiator to the right
side of centre. The instructions are very clear on which one to use, the
later version. One item missing from the instructions - and the sprues
- are the feed and return tubes connecting the engine cooling jacket and
the radiator. They are shown on the box art but would be easily missed
by the unknowing.
The kits' instructions are a more simplified version of the instruction
sheets with which I am familiar from earlier Eduard kits, those with much
painting and marking detail. The instruction sheet pretty much deals only
with the construction of the kit and the painting of detail items. The
box art serves as the overall reference for painting the aircraft. The
box art in this respect is well done.
My only complaint of the instruction sheet is its size. A single 8-1/2
x 11 inch (A4) size paper printed double sided and folded in half for
an effective total of 4 pages of instructions. Printing is multi colour
with the isometric drawings in black line and the detail painting guide
in light blue line. Overall a bit small to my old and weary eyes but not
unusable. I did however take advantage of Eduard publishing pictures of
the kit’s contents and the full instructions on their web site and
printed out the instructions to a larger size.
A closer look at the sprues shows very little in the way of ejector
marks, flash or die misalignment during molding. There are some separation
lines but nothing a little bit of light cleaning up won’t take care
of. I have never built any of Eduard’s earlier Albatros kits but
judging from past reviews and pictures of these earlier releases of this
type show that this kit is really nothing more than a repackage of those
earlier efforts. So any faults in those earlier releases will also be
present in this kit. Having no knowledge of any faults in earlier releases
I can’t comment on this aspect of this release.
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Assembled and painted engine.
Painted with Testors metalizers brushed on, lightly drybrushed with
Testor's aluminum metalizer - dip brush let mostly dry so that it
disn't leave a mark on paper towel and then dry brush part. Gives
a nice burnished effect |
I built up and painted the engine as part of my “first look”.
It went together well and is a good representation of the type. 75% or
more will be hidden in the fuselage once the plane is finished, however.
A further bit of clipping and test fitting parts also shows that the fuselage
halves have a bit of a bow and will require some pressure to hold them
together while gluing. Don’t be tempted to sand the pieces flat
for a good fit, if you do the tailplane won’t fit well. The tailplane
as it is has a reasonable fit on the back end of the fuselage but I find
it is a wee bit loose as is. If you remove any material from the seam
area of the fuselage sides, the fit of the tailplane will be even more
problematic.
The decals are up to Eduard’s normal standards and until I actually
go to use them I couldn’t comment further.
All in all, a very nice kit. Containing only one finishing option shouldn’t
deter the more critical modeler. In fact, think of this kit as the raw
material on which to add your own fine details, colour and decals. I wouldn’t
hesitate for a moment to buy another just for that purpose.
As to Eduard’s intention of a weekend build for a new modeler
or new to WWI types; I couldn’t build it a weekend but I am sure
it could be built out of box over the course of a weekend by a new modeler
with every chance of success of creating a presentable replica. In any
respect I think these kits are aptly named. Kudo’s to Eduard for
taking a different approach to marketing good quality kits at a reasonable
cost while appealing to other than the hard core WWI modeling types.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Eduard and Matt Bittner
for providing this review kit.
References
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