¹⁄32

Airco DH.2

Inspired by many great builds of D.H.2s, I too wanted to try my hands at doing a real stringbag. The rigging seemed a bit scary just looking at it, but as I studied the plans and started to break everything down in its components, I came to the conclusion that the rigging was probably not more difficult... just more!

I started this project wanting to show off the internal structure a bit more. The decision was to show one side of the narcelle sans fabric. This meant building a new frame, and deconstructing the kit bits, so I used the hacksaw, taking things apart, before I could start building it up again.

Most of the interior, was either scratchbuilt, or adapted to work with the many modifications I had to do to the narcelle The wicker seat is an AM item from Pheon models, and I also used the etch set from Eduard for further detailing. The covered side of the narcelle, was made using heatduct tape and aluminium foil to simulate a linnen covering.

I painted it up as 6011 of 24 Sqn in the summer of 1916, at about the time of the battle of the Somme.

In the end this build proved very satisfying and fun project, where I got to test some new things with a lot of good advice from the Early Aviation crowd. And the rigging? Well it was not very hard to do... truly just more!

After looking at the finished kit for a few months, I also decided to ad a base and a figure to set it off a bit more. At this point I also had to tension the rigging lines, as they'd gone more than a bit slack. This was done by carefully using a soldering iron, hopefully they will now stay in this shape. Now I felt the model was truly finished.

Link to the Buildlog.