The Little World

I remember seeing a photograph of a Junkers D.1 on the Western Front many years ago and thinking that it was like a Christmas Bullet – a fake flying machine made out of a corrugated iron shed.

No, apparently, and now here is Roden serving me a 1:72 model of it for my WW1 shelf. As it has no struts save those that hold out the wheels, I should have a more soothing build.

The Roden plastic is both soft and brittle, and you need some skill to separate the smaller parts from the sprue trees without losing detail. I resort to a mini-saw blade for much of it. Fortunately many of the Roden kits are carefully moulded and you can get some fine joints.

Is the colour scheme on the box art authentic? I hope so, as I do not fancy trying my luck with lozenge decals over those corrugations. As it is, if the angular decals fight back in the slightest, I am going to mask and spray them. This is a straight, rather than curved aircraft.

One encouraging thing – the machine guns seem very finely wrought, as does the engine. There is flash, certainly, but it will go down before fine blades.

The colour call-out is very specific, and I had no idea I’d need so many pots of paint-= even have to mix a custom purple when it comes to the wing.