The Little World

And so few of us remember ours, eh?

The Roden Pfalz D.IIIa is done, and within 4 days of start. It had been the Christmas-New Years hiatus and I hied my atus to the workshop and got busy. It was not such a kit as demanded a great deal of work, but it repaid precision.

The parts were small, of course, and surprisingly detailed. Revel and Airfix have no room to boast against modern Czech and Ukrainian moulders – when they are concentrating upon their jobs. I can turn from this Roden kit to others from the same maker with pleasure and a degree of confidence – if you can get a biplane to go together straight and clean you can cope with most other models.

Even the thick engine shroud yielded to scraping and thinning and in the end the result was fine.

The choice of livery? Well those silver stag emblems sold it right off the box for me – I appreciate the uniformity and corporate identity that British aircraft of the period present – and I like the light colours of the French – but the German use of camouflage and colour makes their Imperial air force a lot more rewarding to build and display.

I hope that the current Ukrainian war will not push up the prices of Roden kits inordinately – here in Australia each handler will add a percentage of profit but I wonder if any of that will filter back to where it is needed.