Eduard Box Art from their website, hard to believe they still keep instructions online, too. Good work, Eduard.
Nieuport XI "Bebe" N1135
... guys it's Christmas time and I wanna open a box of something...
And above you can see some really cool details; check out that doped linen color shifting... oh, snap it looks like one wheel is unpainted and one is PAINTED GREEN, oh that is cool...
Historical Note: Capt Jacques de Plande Sieyes de Veynes took command of N 26 in May 1916. On 5 June, N 26 was transferred from Flanders sector to Cachy in the VI° Armee sector where it join Brocard's Groupement de Combat de la Somme. On July 3 1916, Capitaine le Comte J L V de Plandes Sieyes de Veynes of Escadrille N.26 was brought down in the German lines between Flers and Douai. His Nie.11 N1135, broke its tailskid, but apparently was otherwise undamaged.
Why this 2001 kit by Eduard?
This kit dominates the field in 1/48 scale. My main reason for starting on a quarter scale kit is my limited available workspace. I'm not quite able to stretch with enough room for a 1/32 kit which has led to stalled builds and frustration. Also: anyone familiar with Eduard will recognize the quality of the plastic tooling on two very well-designed sprues with one small clear part for a windscreen. Photos to come in my next post. Many of you may not know but the majority of my model kits reside in storage. I have a small place and expect to be moving soon.
My Game Plan
This will be a long term project. I'll be working through the known information and the realities of scale presentation. I'll be learning about biplane rigging as well, but primarily I see this as a detailing project. Let's see where that idea takes me. I tentatively set aside the next quarter to build this kit and would really like that to be the case, however I'm open to an even longer time frame. Why spend so much time? For me, this is about learning and developing better skills. I have been remiss here on the forum from posting and would like to change that. I'll be starting from the pilot's cockpit area and developing the project along the familiar build lines we all use, but I'll be also comparing and contrasting with images from source material as I go along. From all accounts I have seen, this is an excellent base kit to build into a very credible model.
Question
Is anyone familiar with WWI French biplane colors? I have the following call outs prepared by Eduard. What are these numbers? Mr. Color call outs? Forgive me, gents. I'm just getting back into this business of aircraft models again!
