At this point I started thinking about how I was going to rig the Pup “shudder” I started by drilling holes in the tailplanes and rudder with my smallest drill bit which turned out to still be too big. Since the top and bottom wings were both one piece rigging hole were drilled right the way through the wings. At this point the subassemblies were sent of the paint shop as the top wing is easier to paint if it isn’t attached to the plane.

The original Propeller went AWOL and hasn’t reported in for duty as of yet, as this is my first WWI plane I didn’t has any suitable spare in the parts bin so I had to “borrow” one of the props off my Airfix Anson  and use it as a master to cast a new one for the Anson, the original Anson prop was then cut down and reshaped to a more suitable size and with my first attempt of painting wood grain finally had a prop for the Pup.

The under side of the wings and tailplanes are natural doped linen and this was painted by first hand painting matt black over the ribs to pre-shade them. I used a home brewed shade for the linen as I couldn’t find anything locally that looked the part, once a couple of light coats were sprayed over the wing I went back and filled in the valleys so the ribs showed up as being slightly darker, you cant see it in the photos as my camera is having a few issues lately but the pre-shading is there.  

 Once dry the lower surfaces  were masked off and the green was sprayed using the same formula so the ribs showed up as being slightly darker, Airfix doesn’t quote colors so I used Tamiya Olive drab with a dash of Olive Green in it. All that was left for the painting was to mask off the engine panels and coat them with Rub-n-buff and buffing them up to a high shine.

 A couple of coats of Future was sprayed on in preparation for the decals but unfortunately the decals had suffered from the ravages of time and the first roundel disintegrated in to a million pieces on contact with water. I managed to find some wing roundels from the spares box but had to coat the “Anzac” decal and the fuselage roundels with liquid decal to get them to hold together long enough to transfer them to the aircraft. As you can see the blue in the wing roundels is quite a bit darker than the fuselage roundel. The rudder stripes were hand painted as the decals were unusable.

 Once the marking were on and dried it was time to add the top wing and start on the rigging. Airfix supply two pieces of plastic to use as a jig for the upper wing making it a snap to get the stagger right. If all WWI models were this easy a lot more people would do them I think. Once the Superglue had hardened on the upper wing it was time to start feeding invisible thread through the pre  drilled holes. Once fixed on one end it is a simple matter to pull the thread up tight and add a dab of superglue to fix the other end. When dry a new No11 blade was used to trim off the excess and the touch ups done with a 00 brush. The final touch was to use an incense stick (Oh wow, man...Patchoulli....Ed, tripping back to the late 60s...) and wave it under the invisible thread to snap it tight. The Undercarriage was assembled and painted up with a wood grain finish. Wheels were cleaned up and painted Tamiya Dark Grey after reading Tom Cleavers excellent post about tyre colors through the ages.

The Pup was a mixture of nostalgia and firsts for me, the childhood memories of the Airfix Blister packs taking me back to a time when all I had to be worried about was getting up in time for soccer on Saturday and not spilling too much glue on the table. The Pup was also the first WWI aircraft I have done since my youth and with it’s few parts and simple but effective jig a real novice like me can get that all important stagger right. Rigging isn’t too complicated with this one and I’m glad I cut my teeth on the Pup as it has inspired me to do more aircraft from the great war.  

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