In Progress - 1/48 Eduard Albatros W4

[MerlinV]

Looking very nice Brad.
I like the effect of the rib tapes.
The colour of the Eduard Lozeng was one of the reasons that I went for the Clear Doped scheme on my own build.

Keep them photos coming!

Cheers,

Hugh

[bobs_buckles]

Brad,
Looks stunning m8ty.
Love what you have done with the rib tapes and the wood effect is superb.

Cheers,
Bob

[PrzemoL]

Great job, as usual! The rib effect is at least as fantastic as the wood imitation, here I especially admire your courage to cover the decals with masking tape!
My only worry is about the size of lozenge hexagons. Or were they indeed smaller on early W.4s than on the late ones?

[Brad Cancian]

PrzemoL - A very good question regarding the hex sizes.

To be honest (and I defer to the experts here) I suspect from looking at photos that the hexes on the kits lozenge are too large, and the hexes on the pegasus decals are too small. After reading some of the discussions going on over in the camo forum of this website regarding naval hex colours I also have my doubts on the colour accuracy of both sets of decals - The eduard decals containing a lot of pink and the pegasus decals containing alot of blue and light grey (research suggests that browns were also included). The decider for me was the pink in the eduard decals which just looked too wrong to me and not very "Naval" (although some underside lozenge patterns on army aircraft had pink hexes).

Thanks for the kind words though, I am just glad I managed to recover this model after the disaster of the first wood grain attempt

BC

[PrzemoL]

Concerning the colours, as far as I know there were two sets of naval lozenge. The description of colours does not mention pink but there is something about violet:
one set is light blue, mid-blue, light violet grey blue (I suppose this is your choice, I have also tried to imitate it on my W.4 preparing my own decals since Roden's were impossible to use); another is: deep blue, purple, brown.

As for the size of hexagons, I have seen photos of late W.4s, where they were much bigger than those on your model.

[RAGIII]

Brad, for what it is worth in my opinion your second wood effect is far superior in scale than your first! In my mind too much contrast and grain in the original for the scale. That being said as always I am in awe of your ARTISTIC skills in modeling!
RAGIII

[JohnReid]

That looks great!

[Flamingo]

A most impressive and wonderful model, and the Pegasus decals look at least 500% better than the night bomber stuff by Eduard (did they ever inlude any useful lozenge? Better leave them off and lower the price!! )

For the later W.4s their size is ok though, if you count their number on photographs but you wisely selected 954, nothing visible on the photo, nothing to criticise - unless Murphy decides to give us a new photo.

If you look at the two Friedrichshafen on page 10 of the Datafile their hexagons look larger than on most Brandenburgs so there might have been TWO sizes?

The finish of the W.4 is rather complicated, on 747 the tailplane is extremely translucent and the wings not at all. On the cutout there is a dark edge suggesting painted upper surfaces.
Here is a photo from the 1300 series showing the same dark edge to the cutout. Of interest is the rectangular device at left.



Now two photos of 1115 with a nice arrow marking and an overall dark painted scheme in a single colour with light under surfaces - or what is your interpretation? The edge of the cutout appears to be darker than the wing upper surfaces.



Again we have this rectangular thing aft of the radiator and in front of the rigging instructions (?). Note the plate above the exhaust. On the left lower wing there is a white field around the cross, on the right wing there is none.




Looking forward to more pictures of your model

Joachim

[PrzemoL]

Great photos, Flamingo! Many thanks! Am I not mistaken that there is just one Spandau fitted to this 13XX? Then maybe I was not so wrong in putting just one on my 1486...

[Brad Cancian]

Well folks, I have officially registered major disaster number two with this kit (this is a new personal best for me...).

As I wanted to try and keep it all close to OOB I decided to ditch my usual turn buckle "rig after the wing is on" process and rig prior to attachment of the upper wing (ie glue the rigging to the top of the struts - this has worked will for me in 1/72 scale). Rigging and installation all seemed to go well. I come back to the model a few hours later and notice that a combination of slightly too much tension and some very long and thin inerplane struts has caused one of the interplane struts to snap, leaving the model looking slightly worse for wear and the top wing pulled to one side. Desperate attempts to remedy the situation and re-join the busted strut led to a number of the other struts popping out of place - more desperately applied blobs of superglue assisted me in fighting a valiant rear guard action but the inevitable crunch of mass structural failure could not be averted.

Dang.

I literally was mid throw when I gathered the good sense to not send the W4 flying. Damage report - all interplane struts pulled, one snapped strut, some pulled lozenge decal from around the strut and rigging attachment locations, but worst of all, some very ugly blobs of glue on the bottom of the upper wing which will essentially require sanding and a repaint of the bottom of the upper wing.

Dang again.

It's not that it is a bad kit. It is in fact a very good kit. Which is why I keep getting surprised by these disasters. It's not that I am a bad modeller - at least I don't think so (I reckon I have a reasonable idea on these biplane things having build about 10 of em). I am not doing anything differently this time than I have done any other time... Its just that a higher power somewhere has decided to test me with this kit (maybe as punishment for not having any major disasters before).

Alas, I am determined moreso to not let this kit beat me....! Stay tuned folks, as these things tend to happen in three's....

BC