Spiros, Tom & John...

Thanks for your comments. I'm heading back to the work desk shortly to start painting the control surfaces. Hope to have some more photos in the pipeline soon.

Regards,

Paul

Hi, guys... here's the next batch of photos.

As you can see, I have addressed one of the most challenging sections of the build, namely permanently attaching both upper and lower wings. Tricky in places, but not quite as daunting as I thought it might have been.

So, over the last few days I managed to attach the elevators and get their rigging completed, which was a big help as it meant there were fewer strands of elasticated thread hanging around and potentially getting wrapped up with each other. As with other parts of this kit, the fit was quite neat therefore the slots for attaching these parts to the tailplane needed a little widening using wet and dry paper.

Next up were the bombs and bomb racks. The main racks under the lower wing centre section have been put in place, and the smaller racks will be attached to their bombs, then attached as a complete assembly under the nose and on the fuselage behind the wing trailing edge point. Due to a slight change in shade regarding the grey-blue paint, I had to adjust the strength of the paint on the elevators to better suit the horizontal tailplane, and indeed, the rudder with the fin, the former likely to be one of the last parts attached.

I then permanently attached the upper wing centre section onto the cabane struts, and although very flimsy during dry run tests, the struts and centre section held well once the adhesive set. I used water-soluble glue - Kristal Klear, which would give the parts a little play when doing the rigging. There are eight attachment point for rigging on the centre section, most of which are congragated around the rear cabane struts, coincidentally the most difficult location when attaching the wings. Nonetheless, I pressed ahead with doing as much of the rigging as possible at this stage before finally, and unavoidably, psyching myself up to put the top wing sections on. One of my main concerns in marrying the wings to the centre section was knocking the turnbuckles out of position, but the wings actually clicked in well and, bar holding the front and back of the wing where it attaches to the centre section, I had no major issues. I started by lowering the wing onto the struts located on the engine cowlings, and using normal polystyrene glue, thus allowing a little bit of 'play' on the wing part before the adhesive dried. I then carefully drew the wing underside onto the centre section, using superglue to attach it, and then held the leading and trailing edges of the wing firmly in place using index finger and thumb... and doing this for about 30secs to give the superglue time to take effect. I was very pleased and relieved to see the wing sat well, supported by the engine struts, albeit with a fair amount of 'bounce', a characteristic inherent in both upper and lower wing outer sections. However, this in turn allows for the insertion of the interplane struts as you move outwards towards the wing tips. In the photos below, the two sets of interplane struts are not permanently attached, but nonetheless they hold well between the wings, are aligned well and even without adhesive, fit snugly into position; my intention will be to do the struts in pairs on both sides of the model and arrange the turnbuckles and rigging on the lower wing as well, connecting as many strands as possible as I go along. Once settled and in place, I think I can work to attach turnbuckles onto the 'open' ends of the various threads and carefully attach them into position without the need to turn the model upside down. You can see I have acquired a block of foam which stands 4 inches in height from the surface of the desk, and I hope that perhaps titling the model forward onto its nose will suffice in presenting the upper wing location points for the turnbuckles to be fitted in to. Similarly, arranging the model's forward areas to point upwards on to the edge of the foam block whilst safely secured at the rear to prevent slipping, will hopefully present the front location points.

So, that's as much as has been done of late, and I hope you like the progress. I trust this finds you all well, and thanks for looking in.

Regards,

Paul

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Amazing how she looks already, Paul @paulh
She might become quite difficult to handle now with these dimensions.

Hi, guys... well, almost three weeks since I last posted here, but I am pleased to inform that my Gotha G.IV is now complete.

Most of the last few weeks were taken up by rigging the wings which by the nature of that task, is quite time consuming and I took a day or so here and there to have a break. Easily, the most difficult areas were the inner sections between the engines and fuselage, but with taking my time and carefully adjusting the angle of the model as required, I managed to cope. The areas from the engines outwards towards the wing tips were much easier as they have greater space to work in. The interplane struts were very easy to fix into position as there was a lot of play in the wings allowing the struts to be inserted as I slowly moved outwards, completing each section in its own right before moving on to the next. Thankfully, there was never any requirement to turn the model upside down, although working in daylight conditions made things easier, as the location holes for the turnbuckles are very small.

The only things to address after the rigging were the top wing fuel tanks, the machine-gun mountings and the guns themselves, the bombs, bombsight and the small windshield ahead of the pilot's position. I left the double cable rigging from the fuselage sides, out across the front of the engine cowling to their end-point on the lower wing uppersurface until the last. The propellors are a nice neat fit requiring no glue at all, so they were just slipped over the engine pins and can be positioned at any angle.

The unit is unconfirmed, other that it was a 16.Staffel aircraft. On doing some further investigation, it may have been part of Bogohl 3, which was raised in early April 1917, and comprised the 13. - 18.Staffeln. The crew of 'Lori2' were Lt. Kurt Küppers & Oblt. Fritz Lorenz; previously, this aircraft was pale blue overall and marked on the fuselage with the letters R.G. Both finishes show the aircraft with the same fuselage serial, so a change of ownership/crew is likely to have occurred, with the overpaint in a darker shade perhaps introduced for night operations.

I hope you like the finished kit; the YouTube video is now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQqvVuxKUyM

Thanks for looking in on this one, and I'll catch up with you all soon.

Regards,

Paul

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Thanks, John... :-).

Impressive! Most Impressive! @paulh, ( to quote DV), that really is an absolutely incredible looking build. Love how you did the interior, looks so real and like you could climb in. The complete build though really looks great. Those WnW kits really seem to be some of the best, and you made the most of this one.