Wingnut Wings' DFW C.V

This was a piece of work I'd wanted to do for some time, and as I almost knocked this model out of the cabinet recently - by accident, I should say - I decided it was time to address the undercarriage issue, as it was very unsteady and really needed replacing. Having looked around online, I chose the replacement white metal undercarriage legs from Scale Aircraft Conversions. Initially, the downside was that I had to deconstruct the entire model as the attachment points for the rear legs where they link into the fuselage were inaccessible after the lower wings went on. So, in order to remove the offending pieces as well as insert the new parts, I had to remove the top wing, struts, rigging and lower wings just to get at those areas. The silver lining was that I had an opportunity to remove the colour scheme which I'd grown to dislike, and set about researching an alternative.

WnW manufactured two DFW C.V kits - a mid-production variant and a late variant. I had the former kit, but ended up with the latter variant. I found some of the information online to be interesting and confusing in equal measure. After seeing a contemporary WW1 photo of this aircraft with a partial serial number, the caption confirmed the full serial and the unit. I could see the aircraft had a stippled fuselage but could not determine how the wings were presented; some sources suggested stippling for the fin and rudder as well as the fuselage, but another suggested those areas and the uppersurfaces of the wings and horizontal tail on my specific subject should be lozenge-covered. As the photo I was working from could not confirm the lozenge pattern on the wing, I opted for a little 'modellers licence' and settled on what you see here.

This is my interpretation of C.3420/17, a rarity in that it was apparently one of perhaps only a few Halberstadt-built aircraft that displayed the serial number; this company was known to be dismissive of the regulation that aircraft should carry their serial numbers. The stippling effect is another indicator of Halberstadt's construction as it was a paint effect they were known to use on their own Halberstadt CL.II aircraft. My option shows an aircraft assigned to Fliegerabteilung 15, and the unit was known to be in the area of Subbat in Imperial Russia - now Latvia - during October 1917.

If you'd like to see the work on the model, please use this link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2jDj2XlM9E. Thanks for looking in, and I hope you like this reimagined, and in my opinion, much more interesting offering.

15 additional images. Click to enlarge.