Online Build - Roden 1/32 Albatros D.III

JohnReid · 22 May 2007, 03:18 AM

Wow!!!!!!!

John Masters · 22 May 2007, 08:13 AM

Wow! That's something else, Brad. Amazing!

From the Factory on the hill,
currently on Anek Lines car ferry between
Patras, Greece and Ancona, Italy.

John

ManfredL · 23 May 2007, 05:12 AM

Excellent workmanship Brad. Love the wood colour.

Patrick · 23 May 2007, 12:54 PM

Amazing, beautiful detail work Brad! Good to hear you'll show it engine covers off -- it'd be a shame to hide all that fine modeling.

Quote:

The engine shown in Patrick's link has its air pump at the back end,which is how I've built mine. What's the chronology?

Alan, there are so many air pump variations for the Mercedes series that you almost need a photo of the plane you're modeling to be certain how this part was mounted, and which pump version was used. In general, I've found that only the very early D.III-model engines have the pump mounted at the rear of the camshaft tube -- it's a feature I associate with Mercedes engines circa 1915-16. IIRC, that link shows an early D.III because it has the early-style water feed manifold. I think Mercedes moved pretty quickly past this configuration and went to the front-mounted pumps on a redesigned camshaft housing, but kept the rocker arms center-mounted -- the center-mounted rocker arms leaked and sprayed oil, and it appears that they tried several things to solve this problem before redesigning the tube and rocker box assembly so the rocker arms were front-mounted. This applies only to the 160-175 hp D.III version, not the D.IIIa where the airpump (and the rocker arms) were always mounted to the front. Dave Watts or Franzkait can provide the definitive chronology but it's going to be convoluted -- I think I recall Dave saying that there were 5 different versions of the camshaft tube and Franzkait told me that he had seen close to a dozen versions of the pump itself from various manufacturers.

alan giles · 24 May 2007, 01:03 PM

Nice reply,Patrick. Thanks for your time.

sram · 3 July 2007, 07:43 AM

Very good work Brad, please, carry on!

StephenLawson · 3 July 2007, 11:43 AM

Brad you never cease getting better. Most impressive !

Yeoman · 4 July 2007, 04:17 PM

Excellent clear photos!
I am not really a modeller but I have to admit that I am enjoying watching your online progress. Marvelous work ! Thanks for posting.

Nils · 5 July 2007, 02:47 AM

Very impessive!
Are you going to fly by the model?
Realistic, It must fly.
Best regards.

Brad Cancian · 21 July 2007, 01:50 AM

Hi all - its been a while since my last update on this project!

The lower wings and fusealge are now together. The lower wings come as a single piece which includes the centre section of the fuselage belly and a short amount of the fusealge sides above the lower wing. The upper decking that sits around the cockpit is also a separate part. I found that the fusealge and wings did not line up and required alot of pressure and superglue to get everything to fit. Most noticable was that if I got the fit of the belly right that there was a large and noticable step at the fuselage side - if I fixed the step in the fusealge side, the belly did not line up. Sigh. So I picked the lesser of two evils and lef the step on the fuselage sides. This whoel process meant a fair amount of clean up was required. I suspect that some of these issues was due to the soft plastic roden use and the size of the parts.

All of the "persuasion" I used to get it all to fit had the converse effect for narrowing the upper decking opening. Using all three of my hands, I managed to spread open the fuselage halves enough to squeeze in the interior sub-assembly. I suspect that this would not have been an issue had I installed the interior before joining the fuselage halves, but I suspect that if I had of tried it this way that I would have done more damage to the interior trying to get the fuselage and wings to line up. To make matters worse, the upper decking didn't quite fit over the cockpit frames. Sigh. More superglue and pressure...

Through the clean up process I had managed to sand off most of the panel and hatch detail - not to worry as the Eduard etched fret has all of the hatches etc - all I had to do was re-scribe the panel lines (which I hate doing and screwed up a couple of times!)...

Anyways, here's the proof it's together to this point....

BC