After fixing and doing a minor repaint of my Russian Nieuport 17, my blood was pumping and I was ready to paint another plane. So for the first time in 3 years, I got out my box of 1/300th scale planes, and assembled this Albatross DII from Heroics and Ros.
Building it was fairly easy, as I remembered the tricks from a couple years back. These little planes can be quite the nuisance to put together and I recommend patience, and replacing all the struts with 22 gauge wire. Much easier to work with than the small bits provided.
For the paint job I coupled together a fairly common paint scheme from google combined with the skull I found painted on an Albatross DII when it was captured during the war. I really wanted to mimic that, and with this being my first plane in sometime, to make sure that the paint just was smooth and did the plane justice. I think it worked out.
I hand paint all my Iron Crosses on the wings and on the tail. I have varying levels of success with it, these ones I would give about a 7/10 for quality, not my best, certainly not my worst. I am quite pleased with the one of the tail. That Iron Cross is no more than 2mm across!
Of course only recently have I learned that I can get 1/285th scale decals of early war and late war German aircraft, so they will start looking a lot better in the future.
I have already used this plane a few times in my recent games of Canvas Eagles. Despite the Albatross DII being a poor late war aircraft it was quite the fighter in the early days of the war, and is a great plane to fly.
Written by: Andrew Gregory
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