Roundel locations on Russian Imperial N.11?

abufletcher · 6 June 2005, 08:48 AM

I read on the following site that the roundels appeared in 14 locations. I can imagine 12 of them (2 top wing, 2 bottom wing, 2 sides, 2 top of elevator, 2 bottom of elevator, 2 rudder) but am wondering about the other two. Would these have been on the underside of the top wing or maybe top of the bottom wing. Or would it be top AND bottom of BOTH wings with no roundels on the bottom of the elevator?

http://mars.ark.com/~mdf/N_11.html

No matter what, it sounds like an awful lot of handpainting to me!

JohnMacG · 6 June 2005, 08:54 AM

The two you missed are under the top wing. Same size & position as the ones above.

EricGoedkoop · 6 June 2005, 09:08 AM

Abufletcher -

I don't know how much of a purist you are in such things, but the fourteen-roundel scheme appears to me to apply to Dux-built machines, as does the five-ring roundel seen on Mike's profile. I believe that French-built Nieuports had three-ring roundels on the wings and carried rudder stripes in (from the leading edge) white-blue-red - basically just altered French markings. I might be wrong, but that's what the photographs of IRAS aircraft I've seen indicate.

The Dux-built, of course, looks way cooler

abufletcher · 6 June 2005, 10:44 AM

I'm going with the following color scheme which was a Nieuport 11 (16?) (modified? Note headrest.) that was flown by Alexandr Kazakov Russia's leading WWI ace (up to his suspicious "accident" while performing a loop over the airfield).

In this case the skull and crossbones on the rudder is a squadron marking ("Death Squadron"). But I only have a side view of this aircraft. If anyone has any further photos of either this plane or aircraft belonging to the same squadron I'd love to see them.

So do these aircraft carry roundels on all four sides of the wings? Are the elevators marked top AND bottom?

EricGoedkoop · 6 June 2005, 11:02 AM

Good choice!

That machine most probably had roundels on top and bottom of the top wing and the bottom of the bottom wing (6), one on each side of the fuse, two on the top of the tailplane and two on the bottom - 12 total.

abufletcher · 16 June 2005, 08:07 AM

Does this look about right for the roundels of a Duks produced Nieuport 11? The dimensions were taken from an old B/W photo of the Duks roundel on a wing and then fleshed out in Photoshop. The colors are just from the internet image above so I don't really have any confidence it the accuracies of the hues. Does anyone have any references or Munsell numbers for the Russian Imperial roundels?

Also in the photos it appears to me as if the center circle is not white but light grey with a white circle. Is this correct?

EricGoedkoop · 16 June 2005, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abufletcher

Does this look about right for the roundels of a Duks produced Nieuport 11? The dimensions were taken from an old B/W photo of the Duks roundel on a wing and then fleshed out in Photoshop.

I measured the porportions of a few dozen different Russian roundels and while there seems to be an appreciable amount of variability, most are around 3:4:5 or, somewhat more rarely, 4:5:6. It looks to me like the additional white rings of the Dux markings each had a width somwhere around 3% - 5% of the roundel diameter.

Quote:

The colors are just from the internet image above so I don't really have any confidence it the accuracies of the hues. Does anyone have any references or Munsell numbers for the Russian Imperial roundels?

I believe the blue was a brighter color than what you have - I can't say this conclusively but if it were me I'd go closer to the colors of the contemporary Russian flag:

Quote:

Also in the photos it appears to me as if the center circle is not white but light grey with a white circle. Is this correct?

That's very interesting. I've never heard of it before, but then again until a few months ago I thought Fokker D.VIII wings were olive green

Are there some specific photos you're looking at that you could post or direct me to?

abufletcher · 16 June 2005, 10:45 PM

Eric,

Thanks for the imput. I'll upload the photos I was using later. BTW, I'm not sure I understand your ratio system. What do you mean by 3:4:5 vs. 4:5:6?

In terms of color brightness, I tend to go for somewhat tamer colors on my scale RC models. In this I follow Dave Platt's advice to never use pure white or pure black -- or for that matter pure anything. I usually add a bit of sienna to all my colors to tone them down a bit which helps make the model a bit more real seeming.

EricGoedkoop · 17 June 2005, 03:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abufletcher

BTW, I'm not sure I understand your ratio system. What do you mean by 3:4:5 vs. 4:5:6?

Sorry - that's the diameters of the roundel's rings. The French roundel, for example, is 1:2:3 - the diameter of the second ring (white) is twice that of the center ring (blue), and the diamter of the outer ring (red) is three times that of the center. The Russian roundels have that big center and comparatively thin outer rings. By my reckoning the white portion was between 3/5 and 2/3 the diameter of the whole, with the remainder split evenly between blue and red.