I built this kit for my mother for her 60th birthday because, to this day she amazes me with her airplane knowledge and has always been a fan of World War I aircraft. Harrier? Phantom? Spad? She knows them all which is pretty killer in my book so I figured I would pull out all the stops with a big, top-notch kit with small amounts of tricking-out courtesy of me.  

The kit itself is wonderful, the fit is great and is a welcome addition to any collection as they say. I quickly realized that everything would have to be sub-assembled and then painted before final assembly. This is a way different way than many other eras of aircraft kit in that my main worry was that once dry-fitted, then painted the paint buildup would alter the fit. Make sure your tiny pic-a-file is handy for the three wings, the spars, the tail, etc. Whew!  After all the color research (which I still got wrong) the kit went
together well. I added toothpaste tube and masking tape seatbelts and a little dial decal for the compass on the floorboard. The interior was finished in a light RLM green and the first exterior coat was an RLM light blue to simulate the 'Fokker turquoise'. I then realized that on all but the Red Baron's and Voss's Dr.Is, doped linen was applied topside. After that, RLM dark green over the top and then grayed out yellow and red for
the personal markings. Krystal Kote and then the kit decals (which are not for Lothar's aircraft) and then flat coat. .015 steel wire for the rigging which, thank goodness, is minimal on the Dr.I. The dog is the 35th scale Tamiya German Shepard from the animal set and I am still amazed at myself that it came out looking like a German Shepard. I really am! 

My own 'post-build' observations are as follows: The decals are wrong in that the fuselage and tail crosses should have white outlines. If you want to do Lothar's triplane get Dave Claus's decal sheet from Meteor. I scoped these out in Atlanta this year and even talked to Dave but for some reason.  I am lucky enough to own an Alps printer so I made the '454' serial number for the starboard side. The para-wing or whatever between the wheels should have been dark green on top. The steel wire seems too thick to me but I didn't know what else to do. After a few questions at local piano stores for spare wire I ended up at the local hobby shop and that was all they had. Also, I didn't want the streaked green look of the real thing so I used a Badger 150 to try to simulate it which you can kind of see. I don't know how the World War I guys do it. Their research is unreal. The sub-assemblies and rigging would have me taking up jigsaw puzzling in no time. Anyway, accuracy (which I am a student of) is great if your friends and family have written books about the history of air warfare. Mine aren't so model building is still my favorite hobby. I hope you enjoy it as much as I like showing it off!

Happy Birthday, Mom!
Erik