I thought that the paper propeller that I scratchbuilt back in May looked a little bare, so I built a plane to stick onto the back of it. This is the Wingnutwings Roland D.VIb. I wired the engine, installed steel wire pushrods, and insulated the intake manifold with tape. I used Gaspatch guns (very nice and easier than rolling the brass cooling jackets provided in the kit). Rigging is a mix of fishing line, E-Z line elastic thread, Gaspatch turnbuckles and Bob’s Buckles. Rolands had a variety of fabrics and rib tapes applied to the wings so Wingnuts provides these as individual strips of decal. It’s nice to have all the options but this way you have to trim and apply about 120 decals to finish the wings! I was mostly done before I found out that Aviattic makes decals with all the options custom fit to the kit.
Thanks guys, the fuselage was sprayed with a tan Tamiya basecoat then brush painted with thin streaks of tan and brown Vallejo. The paper for the prop came from a craft store and was laminated together with super glue. Once the paper is saturated with glue it carves like wood.
I’m staring at two kits from my stash: WNW Sopwith F.1 Camel “USAS” and Fokker D.VII (Fok) “Early” and, when I’m done with my next kit I may just attempt one of them. If I do I doubt they’ll come out as beautifully as yours but your thread is sure a motivator.
Thanks Mike, if you build the Fokker next watch out for the fit of the fuselage around the cockpit framing. I built the WNW Fokker D.VII last year and was frustrated to find that the top of fuselage wouldn’t close up behind the cockpit. After discussing this with others I found that I wasn’t the only one to have this problem. The top rear corners of B10 and B11 have raised circles with a hole in the middle to accept pins from the top corners of the seat bulkhead. If you deepen the holes in the circles then cut them level with the rest of the fuselage frame the fuselage will close around the cockpit.
