Marek Pfalz D.III

[smithdr]

Looking good, Greg...Pflatzes are always beautiful!!!

Dan

[YOAVHOZMI]

very impressive work Greg ... especially on the engine.

Well done.

YOAV

[modelperry]

Thanks again everyone for your support!

Today is tail feather day.

My choice of Bristol board for the internal former cores for the vertical and horizontal tail pieces was a good one. No issues with fit at all. I installed the horizontal tail former structure piece by piece into the tail skin to improve fit.

When installing the horizontal tail piece onto the fuselage, the fit was very snug. I had to work slowly to avoid wrinkly or any other damage.

Tail skid center piece was laminated onto Bristol board to keep the overall thickness to a reasonable level.

greg

[Rata]

Greg, the header card gives Jasta 5 as the unit. Any idea on the name of the pilot?

[modelperry]

Originally Posted by Rata

Greg, the header card gives Jasta 5 as the unit. Any idea on the name of the pilot?

Most likely this is the Jasta 5 "mystery Pfalz". Pilot unknown. Found this in some other forum....

Greg

[Don Boose]

Pfabulous Pfalz!

Don

[elliott]

You're making good, steady progress Greg and the build is looking mighty good so far.

[smithdr]

I love it. The tail looks great!

Not to hijack your post...but I just read RATA'S quotes at the bottom of his posts. The one about stop whining you can print another one sounds SOOO familiar!

Made me chuckle.

Cheers,
Dan

[modelperry]

Today's entry applies to the build of the lower wing.

I did not find the build of this portion to be very intuitive and had to make a few concessions when completing it. I also missed a few things that may have made the build experience different but probably not easier.

To reinforce the wings and help them keep their shape there is a box structure that goes in each wing. There is also a former that inserts in to the wing root with two dots marking areas to be drilled (although there are no notations to denote that fact actually). I only drilled the forward holes on each because drilling the rear ones would have separated the formers into two pieces. They are just too thin.

I had to do the same to the two matching formers for the wing mounts as well.

Speaking of the wing mounts, there is a cross piece that passes through the fuselage. There are hatched marks on the fuselage where it goes, but again no denotation that is what they are for. Thankfully I guessed correctly that this cross piece and its associated attached structural parts should only be laminated to Bristol board and nothing thicker.

Skinning the wing mounts took some thought and starting with the bottom pieces was the way to go. The top pieces incorporated those dreaded wing fillet bends to fair them into the fuselage proper. Lots of complex bending going on but somehow it all worked OK.

Next I used two short pieces of thin brass rod inserted into the drilled holes of the formers to help locate the wings. And I Superglued those suckers in place with gel Loctite. I let the whole mess sit flat to cure a bit. Later I discovered a pattern for the wire pieces that were supposed to be inserted in these holes and pass through the fuselage from one wing to the other. I can only imagine actually trying to get them to work right and am glad I missed them.

The wing bottoms did not meet up flush to the wing mounts for me during this process. No matter what I had tried when gluing the wings in place, I had a gap on each side.

To address this, I used a newly acquired modeling putty from Vallejo that has marble dust in it. So far, I am impressed with how it can be easily smoothed out an faired in with minimal shrinkage.

After it dried I painted over it with some Vallejo red acrylic that matched well with the print color.

So, while I am not 100% happy with my lower wing experience, I think it will look OK at the end.

greg

[Rata]

Lower wing gap issue only noticeable 'cos you pointed it out Greg.

Model looking great otherwise.