Three more.

I am getting back on track. Slowly but surely. And I really like making these little planes. It's  not about pressure, no intentions to make them top notch super clean and competition-worthy models, it's just about having a bit of fun, messing about with Xacto and glue, enjoying making a little old plane out of a sheet of paper.
Fabrizio Prudenziati's models are just the right thing for this. Nice and simple and fun to do. 
However, I slowly am getting more detail in them, too. The last one I did, the British SE5, had a two-sided, 2D Lewis gun on a Foster mount on top of the upper wing. I wanted to make it more of a 3D thing, so I scratch built a new one. The German DR.I is the one the infamous Red Baron flew, Manfred von Richthofen. This one was fun to make, too, with its little engine parts protruding from underneath the cowling. The props and wheels of all the planes are able to rotate. The Sopwith Camel, the third new plane, is also a British aircraft. In this one, the engine is clearly visible. It had two machine guns that shot through the line of the propeller, but were 'tuned' not to fire when there was a blade in front of the barrels. It made the aiming easier but the amount of bullets fired was smaller. The SE5 with its Lewis gun on top could fire over the propeller's diameter but the pilot had to operate the gun with a cable that was attached to the trigger. He could reload the gun's ammunition drum, however, by pulling it down on the rail.

There isn't really a lot more I want to share at the moment, so I suggest you just take a look at the planes. More details after the jump.

First up is the little Fokker DR.1. The propeller is one that was designed by Leiff Ohlsson, and is not the one that went with the model. I love the wooden layered structure on the prop.

This is the Sopwith Camel. The hump to embed the two guns in front of the cockpit gave the plane its name. 

And finally, the SE5, her shown with the double sided drawing of the gun and what I made of it. Things like this make me a little happier, I still have some skill to make stuff. I was a bit afraid I'd lost it. I guess that's not entirely true. 

See you next time and thanks for stopping by.
--PK