1/48th Scale Albatros D-III

As regular readers may already know, I occasionally like building military models for no other reason than for pleasure. In the last year, I had a smallish build pile of a few First World War aircraft and they had been sitting there for a little while. One of them was this Albatros D-III, which I began one weekend.

I had hoped to have it finished by the end of the weekend that I started it, but a conversation on Twitter led me to buy wood grain decals for the fuselage, so I had to wait until they were delivered. However, when they did arrive, I am glad I waited as they were easy to use and made the plane look a whole lot better than if I had painted it by hand.

I painted the plane as the one used by Leutnant Werner Voss in April 1917. This was one of the schemes that was presented in the box and I ran a poll on Twitter and this won. The alternative scheme was the Red Baron's. This was the more interesting of the two schemes anyway and I prefer Voss as a pilot to Richthofen.

The rigging took a while to complete and I made a few mistakes here and there, I also missed a few bits, like the tailplane rigging as I lost the four tiny pieces that held it in place...

As I said, it took a little longer than a weekend, a week and a half in total, to complete. But that was largely because I was waiting for the decals and not working on it exclusively throughout that time. But now she sits with my other model kits in the display cabinet in the front room.