Albatros D.V Build Up

By: Brent Theobald

The Armored Fist is pretty much done. It still needs to be rigged. Obviously Nather's and Dilthey's have some distance to go.

Since it is difficult to mask over lozenge decals I took Steve Hustad's advice and decided to use clear decal film painted green for the panels on the wing.

First I applied Amierical/Gryphon five color lozenge and rib tapes to the wings. I marked out how large the wing panels needed to be on the decal paper. Then I applied the old style Iron Cross decals to the decal paper. I did not use setting solution at this time for fear of melting the clear decal film to its backing paper. After the iron cross decals dried I over-painted the clear decal sheet with Humbrol Emerald Green. My goal was to have the old style iron crosses be just visable thru the green paint. A second coat of green was required to get a uniform shade. There was nothing wrong with the paint; just my poor airbrushing skills left some "stripes" in the green panels.

After the green paint had dried for a few days I cut out the panels with a brand new X-Acto blade. The green panels went down on the lozenge decals without a hitch. Now, for the final decal I applied a cut down Americal/Gryphon cross to the top wings. I didn't do this for the bottom because I couldn't find the correct size. Oh well... My big mistake in doing this was using Walther's Solvaset. Apparently it's a bit too strong. I have some hard to remove wrinkles. Perhaps it is the layers of decals (seven including paint!) that caused this. Next time I'll apply the Iron Crosses directly to the lozenge and apply the new style of crosses over the green fields on the decal sheet. Maybe that will help everything settle down.