Closet Case

buzz1941 · 23 April 2005, 12:20 AM

The time comes, as it inevitably does, when newer and better kits start to crowd the old clunkers off the shelf. Rosy memories of childhood building sessions butt up against common sense as one weighs the pros and cons of completing a half-built kit. Is it worth the effort? Will it look halfway decent? Do I have the modelling chops to make the necessary changes?
However, in the case of this just-started Aurora Albatros, there was a bit of an emotional imperative. It was started several years ago by my late friend James Clair Nolan. Jim, a PB4Y driver during the war and an astute observer of all things aeronautical, was an enthusiastic builder of anything with two wings. I inherited his Great War files and kit stash when he passed away, and this Albatros was the last thing he worked on.
Finishing it simply seems like the right thing to do.
I also discovered some old MicroScale and Fowler decals that were useable, as well as a Ziploc filled with Tom’s Modelworks etched-brass and cast-metal parts suitable for the Albatros. I also have a number of (unbuilt!) Eduard Albatrii that are good for comparison purposes.
As for the kit itself, it’s a typical ’50s product, although I think this was one of the kits cleaned up by K&B during the ’70s. It’s chunky and the plastic is hard as a rock, but it looks like an Albatros. It just needs some refining to make it presentable.
Jim had roughly glued the fuselage parts and lower wing together. He pushed some red putty into the kit's sinkholes, and that was about as far as he got. Looking at it today, the interior needs work and the engine needs replacing but most of all, the fuselage is rather too deep. The front end is oval instead of round. The answer seems to be to reduce the height of the fuselage, and that was accomplished by opening it up with a razor saw.
Now it looks like a convertible …

PeterL · 23 April 2005, 01:21 AM

Burl, you've obviously done your homework in pinpointing what needs to be done, and "just started" does no justice to the work you have put into it already. Those of us who remember a time when the Aurora kits and their various clones were all there was salute you. Whether or not you ever finish it, or even want to is for you to decide. Me? I'm just too bone idle these days.

davecww1 · 23 April 2005, 06:55 AM

Reminds me of when I started seriously building WW1 models, i think it was around 1990. I had already done a Monogram Fokker D.VII & SMER DH2 that I rigged with stainless steel wire. I was able to find a guy at a flea market that had a good stock of Aurora & K&B kits that he traded me for my entire collection of Star Wars action figures (wish I still had those, all of the originals from 1977-1980) but I got a Gotha, Nieuport 28 Albatros D.V & Pfalz D.III. I did the Nieuport 28 and Pfalz, adding Aeroclub engines & wheels, guns & scratchbuilt interiors. They looked pretty good to me at the time, although they have no major shape corrections since I had none of the Datafiles or drawings at this time. They still hold a place in the collection on my shelf, and look good next to the newer Eduard & DML kits. Too bad for me, about a year after I finished those 2 Glencoe re-issued them! I should have saved the originals as collectors items, but had pleanty of fun building & detailing them!
Dave

StephenLawson · 23 April 2005, 07:19 AM

You've a man's work cut out for you sir.

buzz1941 · 24 April 2005, 07:58 PM

What the heck did Jim glue this thing together with? It practically takes a hammer and chisel to separate the engine and cockpit details from the old Aurora fuselage. Once they’re out -- and they come out in little, shattered pieces -- the insides of the fuselage are smoothed with a Dremel and sanding disc. The thickness of the cockpit combing is misleading, as it turns out that the fuselage sides are already rather thin. I don’t have the heart the grind away Aurora’s logo and street address embossed inside the rear fuselage.
A sidebar -- as these projects tend to do, it leads me to other kits, and to my surprise, Eduard’s original issue of the Albatros D.V bears little relation to the current issue. It seems tentative and half-formed. I may build it up at the same time, as the color scheme will be quite similar.
Back to the old Aurora: The D.V had sesquiplane wings that plugged into the sides of the fuselage, while the kit is engineered to give the impression the lower wing is all one unit. This can likely be faked by building up the belly between the wings and creating grooves and cutaways at the wing connection. The belly is roughed in with scraps of plastic and thick CA and emeryboarded to shape, with tape protecting the wings.
A set of Eduard tail surfaces are laid over the Aurora tail and a pencil line traced around them. Yep, the Aurora tail is somewhat too large. Luckily, it’s all solid plastic. I can just cut it back and file the airfoil back in.
I naively saw the rudder off the fin, thinking it can all be thinned down a little. No way! The vertical surfaces are appallingly thick. The whole thing has to go. The internal hole that results from the inside of the fin is more like the size of the actual fin.
At this point, it’s time to get out the drawings and the Eduard sample and the dividers and micrometer and start measuring, trying to determine how deeply to reduce the height of the fuselage. And for the first time, I start to have serious doubts about the outcome of this mission. The fuselage is way, way too deep. Not just a little bit. It’s like a quarter of an inch. I remove the combing around the cockpit and determine that the bast result might be to separate the top fuselage into fore and aft pieces with the seam at the cockpit, and the angled cuts to do so won’t be deep enough to be exact, but it’ll help. It won’t match in cross-section and I have visions of vicious grinding sessions with the Dremel and sanding sticks, but that’s why the good lord invented surface putty. Take a deep breath and start to cut ...

buzz1941 · 28 April 2005, 03:23 AM

Some of this goes surprisingly fast. Reshaping the horizontal tail outline and restoring the airfoil to it is accomplished in about ten minutes. Gluing and fairing in the rear upper fuselage portion goes quickly also. I feared that the upper part of the rear fuselage might not be thick enough as it was filed down, so chunks of sprure and gobs of viscous CA were laid in. The fear turned out to be founded -- that dark patch on the upper rear fuselage isn't Mr. Surfacer, it's where the sanding sticks went right through the upper fuselage.

It goes quickly because I don't have to worry about preserving surface detail. Everything is being obliterated in favor of a nice smooth fuselage shape. It actually takes longer to neatly sand the puttied joints on the flat tail than to massively reshape the fuselage.

A nose disc is turned on a Dremel to exactly the right size, and this also centers the hole on the disc. It will make sure the nose is round. I know this space is actually open on the Albatros so the engine can breath, but construction strength and alignment trumps purist accuracy. Cockpit bulkheads, braces and floors are being roughed in with styrene, using the new Eduard D.V kit as a guide.

A side view, with the still-loose upper nose dropped into place, shows that the overall shape is slimming. Because of the complex curves of the original, where it indents the most is right underneath the cockpit opening. This will have to be filled, big-time. But at least it's not too big an area.

At this point, the fuselage will have to sit idle until some aftermarket stuff arrives in the mail. I suppose the wings are next. Eduard, bless 'em, provides an extra upper wing in their D.III kits, but that would be cheating. Besides, those extra Eduard D.III wings are earmarked for a couple of really nasty Glencoe OEF Albatrii....