Way back in April I first thought about dipping my toes into the pond that is Shapeways
and asked for some advice on the forum. As a result I ordered a couple of planes as a trial that sat untouched for a while until I had the time, and I finally got them painted last month.
One of the planes I chose was the Caudron G.4 by kampfflieger (in WSFP). The other plane that I'd ordered, the Short Bomber, was printed in
WSF and I wanted to compare the two. Ultimately, there's pretty much no difference that I was able to detect! I hadn't realised when I chose this particular plane what sort of can of worms I was opening though! Several different unofficial cards existed for it, with different fire arcs and they even used different sized bases. I got reading and researching and found that different configurations of armament were common - thus I chose one that seemed fairly common and had a couple of surviving examples in museums that gave me some useful photos to which I could refer. I decided on markings that would likely have been representative of 4 Wing, RNAS. Next, I realised that there wasn't actually a flight stand for this base yet -
so I set about designing one!. It was a lot more fiddly than I'd anticipated making this base - but I learned a lot in the process and my next will be better!
My initial hesitance in starting my first Shapeways planes was being unsure of how to best prepare them, as well as sourcing crew figures. I sought the mythical Johnson's Klear polish in vain, so finally plumped for coating them with thinned PVA. Two coats of this and nothing seemed to be happening. The surfaces weren't benefitting from it so I paused and re-thought things. I finished with a couple of coats of thinned gloss varnish which did make a difference; more coats would have made for a smoother finish, but if I'd continued I was worried about losing definition on detail that I wanted. So after a couple I called it quits and got on with things.
I wasn't sure which crew figures I wanted to use, so I ended up buying one sprue of pilots (in
FUD) from Shapeways, and Boney10+ and Flying Helmut were kind enough to donate some of different designs and manufacturers. Many thanks again chaps.
I based the colour scheme, markings and armament on a couple of surviving planes, one of which was the
Smithsonian NASM example. The paint scheme wasn't complicated, but the plethora of tiny and hard-to-get-to struts meant for a lot of cursing while painting this up!
Decals were a combination of Dom's Decals and home-made ones. The pilot was initially going to be a ReducedAircraftFactory
FUD pilot, but the head snapped off while I was (very gently) checking the fit, so I chose instead for a Peter Pig scarf-wearing flyboy. The observer (another Shapeways one) should probably be firing a Vickers since RFC Caudrons generally seemed to be Vickers-equipped - but I'm fine with the Lewis too, frankly. Their scales don't really match closely, with the pilot seeming a little oversize.
One the Aerodrome Accessories base.
With its custom cards, and the first examples of my own Crew Damage and Engine Damage counters. (More about these to follow!)
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