Roland CII WIP Pt.4

Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey, right? Well, that certainly seems to be the catchphrase for this on-going project. Bought at Christmas 2012, started in September 2013 and still rolling along well into 2014... This time I present the rigging!

Compared with the Pfalz DIII which I built a while ago, rigging the Roland seemed to be stuff of nightmares. Maybe it would have been a million times easier had I kept the top wings off, something I discovered after putting the top wings on...

I went down the route of the stretched plastic method as it was quicker than using fishing line rigging, even though I had bought some of Bob's Buckles for the very purpose. However, just looking at the tiny buckles sent me cross eyed, so I decided to go with the method I was happier with. It took a few nights of concentration, swearing, getting up and walking away and head pounding frustration, but eventually the bloody thing was rigged... I then painted over the glue smears and scratches and generally tidied up the paintwork and it was time to turn her over and play about with the undercarriage... 

This went together surprisingly easily, I fixed the two outer struts to the fuselage with polystyrene cement, allowed them to dry a little then brought them into position with the wheel cross bar, by gluing this to both struts at the same time. The Eduard undercarriages are not the easiest things to put together and are very delicate, something I noticed with the Pfalz, but this method worked pretty well. OK, that's all for now, I will return to this plane and fix the wheels in place and finish off the remaining parts and start the weathering. Drop back later to see the finished product!!