spark plug leads is also included.
Although the main resin
crankcase is sturdy enough to
survive some rough handling,
the manifold section, with its
fan of eleven manifold pipes, is
more fragile, and much care is
needed when removing this resin
component from its substantial
moulding block. The individual
etched parts are also tiny and
very iddly, and much time and
patience was required to assemble
this Siemens-Halske replica.
Compared with that included
in the kit, however, it is a vast
improvement, but I would
recommend its use only to those
experienced modellers familiar
with the peculiarities of resin and
etched sets (though I am certain
that the kit-supplied engine will
be adequate for most tastes).
Having assembled the resin
engine and degreased it with
a white spirit wash, I applied a
base coat of Alclad Grey Primer,
followed by a coat of Alclad Polished
Aluminium. To this I added a blue
enamel wash to the base of thecylinders, and several black and
red-brown washes overall. The
exhaust manifolds were painted
in a rust-brown enamel and aged
using a dark, almost black wash.
Once assembled and painted
the engine was slotted onto the
front of the fuselage and the pre-
painted cowling frame cemented
in place over it. When the cement
had hardened, the single-piece
cowling, the interior of which had
been inished in Alclad burnt metal,
was cemented over the framework
and the fuselage was complete
and ready for exterior paint.BLUE BIRD
The colour in which this aircraft
was actually painted is a matter of
some conjecture, and the very good
monochrome photographs available
of it are of little help in determining
the exact inish. On examining the
evidence, though, there seems little
doubt that the aircraft was painted
in a single overall shade that
encompassed the wooden fuselage
as well as the metal engine cowling,spinner, and possibly the wheels
too. With nothing else to go on,
there seemed no reason not to stick
with the dark blue inish suggested
in the instructions and in other
colour proiles in my references.
One notable discrepancy in
the Eduard instructions is the
colour of the elevator. Lozenge
decals are provided for the
one-piece elevator, whereas the
period photographs clearly show
that the tail unit, including the
elevator, was inished in a black
and white chevron pattern.
I began the painting process by
airbrushing the entire airframe
in black enamel. Once this dark
base coat had dried, I began slowly
building the blue topcoat using
Colourcoats ACRN31 Oxford Blue,
illing in the individual panels one
at a time and allowing a subtle hint
of the base coat to remain visible
at the panel edges. I proceeded
to lighten the Oxford Blue using
Colourcoats ACUS28 True Blue,
and used this mix to add initial
highlights to the fuselage.
Having allowed the blue to dry
for a couple of days, I masked of the
tail section using narrow, pliable
UPVC tape, which conformed well to
the extreme curves of the fuselage.
I then re-sprayed those black
painted areas of the tail that had
been tainted with blue oversprayto re-establish a solid base coat.
Using a set of vernier callipers,
I then measured and cut strips of
masking tape to the width required
to form the chevron pattern on
the tailplane. These strips were
laid across the surfaces of the
tailplane, tail in, and aileron
until those items were completely
covered with tape. The strips
covering those areas to be painted
white were then removed.
White enamel was lightly
sprayed over the entire tail area,
slowly building the density so
as to minimise the chance of
bleeding. When the remaining tape
had been removed, the resultant
chevron pattern was perfectly
formed and looks very efective.LOZENGE PATTERN
If any one item lets this lovely little
kit down, it is the lozenge decal
sheet. Impressively large, this
Eduard-produced sheet contains
ive-colour lozenge-pattern decals
for the upper and lower wings and
the tailplane. Also featured are
individual rib tape decals for the
upper and lower wing surfaces.
My immediate concern was with
the accuracy of the colours in which
the upper surface lozenge had been
printed, which appeared overly
dark and very brown in shade.72 • DECEMBER 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL