Great that you got the last one they had in stock, my friend @lgardner! Always a good feeling to get "the last one".

Excellent work on that engine, Louis (@lgardner). I really thought that metallic section looked like cast metal.

@lgardner great progress, Louis!

As ever leading from the front! Engine is very well done

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
Thank you. Yes I do often get a good sense of accomplishment when I am able to get the last one available. Just the opposite happens when one gets away ! This also happens to me... and more often that not.

John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
I agree with you. A good bit of luck is often required.

Carl Smoot (@clipper)
Thank you Carl ! I am very pleased with how it's turning out. When I first painted the crankcase, it didn't look quite right. So I gave it a few swipes with some Rub N Buff. This worked out fantastic.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
Thank you for the compliment, and for the description of how crabbing is actually done. I had a good idea of how the pilot did this, but I was off some and didn't have everything in mind. I also didn't think about the extra power needed to do it, but that would make perfect sense.

I couldn't imagine having to do some maneuver like this to keep from being scalded to death with almost boiling hot water. This was before anti freeze / ethylene glycol was being used regularly. I think that happened in the late 1920's.

What a horrible experience that would have been.

I have read that some pilots would paint odd stripes on their aircraft in hopes it would throw off the aim of an attacker. Then flying "crabbed" might also be another trick to incorporate.

Paul Barber (@yellow10)
Thank you Paul. I have decided that I would definitely be adding the spark plug wires. So I had to make some adjustments, and remove the intake manifold so that I could. Otherwise, there are several wires on the Starboard side that would not be possible to do. So now I know what to do on my next engine build... which will be very soon with the Voss Pfalz D-III. So please stay tuned ! Take care my friend.

Robert Royes (@roofrat)
Thank you Robert. It's great to hear from you.

I'm going to be posting another update in just a few... so please stay tuned.
Thanks !

The engine with your extra work looks wonderful, my friend @lgardner!

Thank you Spiros Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
and John John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)

We had some errands to run today. So I did not get as much time at the work bench as I wanted to.

But I did get the spark plug wires done and I also wrapped the intake manifold today.

Here’s what the finished engine looks like.

You can also see how the exhaust manifold has been sanded down and is now ready to install when the time comes. It still needs to be painted though.

This is what the engine looks like now that it’s completely finished. I’m hoping that it will be mostly visible once it gets installed in the fuselage.

If not then at least I have some good pictures of what it looks like now.

I’m calling it a night and I’m very pleased with how this has turned out.

I have two more Roden 1/32 scale engines to assemble. I also have a Wingnut Wings kit that I will be building soon to go along with the Pfalz D-IIIa WNW kit that has a build journal too. So I will also be building a WNW Mercedes D-III, and it should be very interesting to see how the WNW engine looks when compared to the Roden version.

Now that I have made all of these scratch built improvements to the Roden engine, it looks more than adequate.

One Roden engine will be used for this Voss Albatros D-III, another Roden engine will be for the Voss Pfalz D-III.

The last one will be for another 1/32 scale Roden Albatros, but it is a very early version that is called the D-I. It has radiators mounted on each side of the fuselage, and the top wing is mounted much differently that the later versions were. It also has a much larger lower wing, that is very close in size to the top wing. It has dual struts on each wing near the tips, instead of the typical "V" style that we see in the later Albatros versions.

It has no build journal and no work has been done on this kit. I simply want to build the engine for it now while it is still fresh in my mind and I know the tricks needed to build the engine quickly and also be very highly detailed. Eventually I would like to build a plane from Jasta 2 using this kit. In a perfect world, I could make it as one of Oswald Boelke's planes.

But I'm not sure if he ever flew a D-I or had one assigned to him. I know he had a D-II, but there are quite a few changes that would be necessary to convert the D-I into a D-II. Time will tell which markings this one will end up wearing. I have to do some research before I dive into this one... and I will be starting a build journal for it when I do get around to building it.

First I must finish up the aircraft kits that I have started build journals for as part of this Great War group.

I’m calling it a night.

As always comments are encouraged.

Thanks for stopping by.

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
Thank you my friend. I sincerely appreciate your kind words. I will be posting photos of the assembly line as I get to work on them, so please stay tuned.

Take care brother.

Very nicely detailed engine Louis.