to give some hint of the structure
below the fabric, followed by coat
after coat of yellow. Once it was
bright enough to require the use
of sunglasses, it was on with some
clear gloss, ready for Pheon’s decals.DECALS, HOW DECALS
SHOULD BE
I’ve used Pheon’s products before,
so I had high hopes for these
decals. They more than met my
expectations, being very thin but
opaque, and conformed well to the
curves of the fuselage etc. They
soaked off the backing paper in
less than ten seconds, and happily
moved around on the model to find
the right position, without cracking
or buckling. They are cookie cut to
fit the fuselage, and this is the only
area where they fall slightly short;
the line-up between the sides and
the other faces is slightly less than
perfect, requiring a small amount
of touching up where they don’t
meet. Despite this, the only word
to describe them is “stunning”.IMPOSSIBLE ARMAMENT
When I came to build the guns, my
initial impression was, “nice PE
jackets and sights, along with a
plastic moulded barrel and breech- all standard stuff”. However,
closer inspection showed that the
quality of moulding on the gun
breeches was not good: very soft
and indistinct, with sink-marks
you could lose a cat in. I persevered,
but having annealed and rolled
the cooling jackets, I discovered
that the end plates were quite
impossible to attach. The holes
for the barrels to pass through
didn’t allow for the diameter of
the nozzles. Not even close.
At this point I gave up and
purchased a set of Master barrels
and cooling jackets, to which
I attached a pair of breeches
from my spares box (Roden’s
Siemens-Schuckert D XII, I seem to
remember). These ended up looking
far superior to the kit items, and
were well worth the extra cost.
GOT A NEW MOTOR?
Mikro Mir’s version of the
Oberursel UR II engine, which
powered the E.V/D.VIII, comprises
13 pieces. It has separate cylinder
heads, intake manifold, and a ring
with all the pushrods. It all looked a
bit of a blob, however, so I invested
in a CMK resin version which, once
appropriately painted, washed, and
highlighted, looks the absolute biz.
The kit offers nothing in theway of air intakes for the rotary up
front, merely a flashed over hole
in either side of the front fuselage.
I experimented with some Albion
Alloys tube but the only two sizes
near to what was needed were
either too big or too small, so I
settled on the hollow shaft of a
cotton bud painted appropriately
metallic. Where there’s a will....
The kit offers a choice of two
airscrews. Both lacked crispness
of detail, but a raid on my spares
box yielded an alternative from
Wingnut Wings. The speculative
nature of the colour scheme
gave me licence to paint it
yellow to match the fuselage.THE WING. JUST THE ONE
The wing, not surprisingly, comes
in two pieces, upper and lower
surfaces. In order to obtain a nice
thin trailing edge, the lower section
stops short about 3mm from the
rear edge, which leaves a join to
fill on the underside. Fortunately,
the plywood construction of
the original means there is no
wing rib detail to worry about, so
filling and smoothing this joint
is a doddle. Ailerons are supplied
separately, which is a nice touch.
The shape of the centre section
cut-out is not quite accurate: the
central piece should be square in
shape (rather than trapezoidal), and
the three edges should terminate
in leather padding for the pilot’s
protection. There should also be
two more chordwise panel lines
on each wing. None of these mods
should present any difficulty; the
real fun comes with the painting.
As mentioned earlier, the wing
was most likely finished in
colourful streaks
of oil paints,
applied at
an angle to
the chord. This
would have been applied
directly to the plywood
wing, so painting needs to begin
by creating a wooden base. This
started with some pre-shading
(using dark brown rather than
black), followed by an overall
coat of Tamiya XF-57 Buff.
Then came four colours of oils
dragged across the wing in the
appropriate places – violet blue
underneath, and brown green on
the top. Once these had dried –
about a year – I applied several thin
coats of gloss seal and smoothed
it all down. It looked awesome!PHEON TO THE RESCUE!
The attachment points for the
struts fixing the undercarriage and
wing to the fuselage are clear but
very shallow, and don’t look like
they will give any sort of positivelocation. This suggested that
attaching said wing, etc, would
be something of a nightmare.
Pheon appear to have spotted
this too, and in addition to their
exquisite decals, the pack includes
self-adhesive components for not
one, but two jigs to support the
model during final construction.I don’t know how I would have
managed without them.
That said, the undercarriage
struts and their attachments are
barely up to the job of supporting
the model. It wobbled on its wheels
even before I had fitted that big
heavy wing, so, in an attempt to
reduce the flex, I used 3 mm rod
for rigging rather than Ezyline.
It doesn’t look pretty, but at least
the undercarriage has a sporting10 • FEBRUARY 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
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