1/72 Toko Hansa Brandenburg D.1

Gallery Article by Andy Bannister

 

Designed by a madman and flown by raving lunatics, I think that pretty much sums up "the flying coffin".

These Toko/Roden kits are the greatest thing since Revell's line up of 1/72 WW1 kits from the sixties. The only problem I had with this was the struts, not surprisingly. The kit ones didn't fit at all so I replaced them with Contrail (now available from Aeroclub) extruded strut stock. There are no locating holes in the wings for the struts so I just scraped away a tiny bit of paint and glued the struts right to the wing surface. Worked fine but some sort of jig is a necessity.

 

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The prop is carved from two pieces of 1/16” plywood laminated together with a photo etched prop boss, there's a bit of extra detail in the cockpit and the tail struts are from heat stretched Contrail strut stock. The under- carriage rigging, rudder control cables and aileron actuating rods are stretched sprue.  Radiator hoses are brass rod. Otherwise it's pretty much straight out of the box.

I experimented with hand painting the machined 'sworls' on the cowling with bright silver over a base of flat aluminum. Worked quite well but it doesn't show up in the photos so you'll just have to take my word for it.  

Andy Bannister

      

Photos and text © by Andy Bannister