Yes, Here I am. Still here, and not yet fully back either.

These pretty little planes were designed by the late Fabrizio Prudenziati, a very talented model designer from Italy, who passed away in april 2014. The planes were a real joy to put together. Nice and simple yet very nicely detailed, delicate and very well fitting design. I did these three almost in one go. There are more to come. At least one of von Richthofen’s legendary Fokker Dr1 Dreideckers, but also some British WW1 planes and maybe others, too. It looks like PK is back. But is he?

Today, your Paper Kosmonaut has turned 45. (Yeah, thanks.) I’ll get over it in the end. Luckily I still look quite okay. A destinguished grey hair here and there in my whiskers.
And with these little planes it appears like I'm coming up to steam again making paper models.
But in fact, I'm not, really. There still is too much happening outside the paper world.
Main reason is my dear GF, who isn't really back to her fine healthy self yet. And before she is, I am afraid I won’t or can’t  do anything big and papery any time soon. I just don’t have the time. I just don't have the inspiration.

But these little ones, those well-designed planes of Zio, yes. That I can do. They maintain my finger skills a little, I enjoy the tinkering with wings, props and even strings. There will be some more of Zio's planes to come. Maybe I'll turn them into a big mobile. A big aerial dogfight in the hobby room. Who knows.

More pics after the jump.
Thanks for keeping in touch, thanks for your patience. There will be more and better and bigger stuff again, just wait.

--PK

This actually was the second plane I built, a Fokker D-VII. I made a little mistake with the wings, they're upside down. But the camo was facing the wrong way that way. Anyway, the plane still looks nice. It wasn't meant to be accurate anyway.

The engine was made a little more pronounced by using the cut-off heads of sewing pins. I glued them upside down on the paper engine to represent the piston heads. The Exhaust pipe was made from a brass tube.

The propeller is a separate kit, made by Leiff Ohlsson, who provided the paper modeling community with a very pretty detailed nine layered wooden propeller model. It consits of two ingeniouly bending parts around a front and back end for the middle . It rotates, too.

The purple plane is an Albatross D-III. Those Teutonic WW1 pilots sure knew how to pimp their airplanes! Tis was the first one of the Zio- planes I did.

Fabrizio even made a nicely detailed dashboard in the cockpit. man, he sure made very nice models. I just had to really get used to his way of uisng glue tabs on his models. You have to fold them inward and pinch them together. It works, it gives nice tight seams. 

A second Albatross, this one is black and has a skull on the sides. Very piratey, I think. You can almost see the pilot in the tub, with a white scarf flapping behind his leather capped head, looking at you while he zips past, showing you his big skull on the planes' sides.

In this Albatross version, the D-V, the wing radiator was placed a little out of center. I don't know why that was but it was the ony significant alteration I could see in the model.

The Ariane V however, still awaits its shroud. I cannot get myself to do it. It has to go right in one go. It has many steps; the inside of the two shroud parts are clad in all these sound dampening panels. Very intensive job, punching out all the small circles and squares for these parts. Hundreds of them. And then the two parts also must go together more or less seamlessly to form a cylindrical, conical piece that can separate. That is a job for later. The rest of the rocket is so good, I cannot leave it with an ugly looking shroud on top. It needs to be of the same quality. 

I will get back to it, I promise. Also to myself.
But not yet.
Next post probably will contain some more WW1 plane stuff. I'll see you around, I hope.
Thanks for stopping by anyway!

--PK