DRDesign 1/72 scale 14 bis -photoetched-

(The finished model is here:)
http://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2012/11/drdesign-172-14-bis-photoetched-kit.html

Another model offered by DRDesign, the photoetched 14 bis in 1/72 scale.

First, the good thing: you have a kit of an iconic pioneer plane of the beginnings of aviation. The photoetched media renders, to a certain extent, that ethereal quality of those early machines, and you have a little less assembly to do.

The metal parts are not flimsy, and handle well. As in the other kit most of the parts come already separated from their trees, save a certain amount of smaller parts still attached to them. To cut them loose will require a good, somewhat hefty tool, and later some refining.

This particular kit comes with a resin engine, gas tank and figure. All of them cast with a rough surface and ambiguous detail. I like the stance of the portrait figure, though. Some work will have to be done before those parts become presentable.

Also included are two “tires” (two “O” rings), the covering material, three pins and several pages of instructions –in Portuguese-.
And then things start to get a bit not so good.
As with the Lilienthal kit, many of the captions on the instructions are incomplete. Now this starts to get annoying, guys. Don’t you ever check what you are about to launch into the market? Well, you should, pals.

It seems that the person in charge of putting together the instructions for printing just clipped what did not fit well. How responsible. The quality of the printed material is barely passable. Some of the metal parts, like the wheel spokes, are kind of heavy handed; almost inadequate actually when compared with similar aftermarket items.

The kit provides a “stencil” to put the “14 bis” lettering on the fuselage sides. In my sample this part was not correctly etched and is useless (see photo). Fortunately, I can make my own decals. Some other parts are affected by this “incomplete etching”, and it really burdens the building process with a truly unnecessary extra load. No “folding” grooves are etched either, making the task of folding the parts again unnecessarily challenging. It is obvious that the manufacturer needs more stringent quality controls.

The kit is OK, but would benefit enormously from some supervision and some extra care.

And again, this is not a bargain-priced kit.
As the building of the model progresses, and more shortcomings are exposed, I have to conclude that this is, indeed, a not very good kit. I do not like to "hammer" kits or kit makers. It takes a lot of work, time and knowledge to put out a kit, and surely you won't get rich during the process. But there are good products and not so good products. This could have been a good kit. May be my kit, plagued with bad etching that I continue to find as I build, is an exception,  a fluke, one sample that should not have reached the market. This is not Eastern-Europe etching quality. No plan or 3 view is included, making things difficult, for example finding the amount of dihedral; same for the angle of the canard, rigging, etc. The instructions show four spoke wheel rims (two per tire, one on each side), but the kit has only two. Further down during the build, I discovered that the engine supports and a structural member through which the prop axle goes were missing too. At this point it was obvious that one fret was missing from the package. One less brownie point.
The funny thing is that if someone at the kit manufacturer would have taken the time to actually look at the defective etched parts before committing them to the box and replaced them with good ones, if the resin parts were a better quality, if the instructions would not have the captions stupidly clipped and were a bit more clear, then you may have a nice kit.
Hope they take note. Their Lilienthal kit was good, though.
Be very judicious in the use of the covering material if you, like me, to be historically accurate, want to cover both surfaces of the model wings, vertical vanes and “ailerons”.

The material provided will be enough, but not with much to spare. If you follow instead the kit instructions, and cover only one surface (top on the top wing and bottom on the bottom wing, for some reason) then you will have plenty of covering material.

I did not follow the kit’s instructions regarding covering first the parts and then form them into their final shapes (canard surface and fuselage) finding that method highly impractical. I covered the formed shapes as shown on the photos here, as you would do with a flying model airplane, finding thus no trouble.

The kit's instructions photos describing the ensuing stages (rigging and detailing) are small and many times not clearly printed, besides the previously-mentioned incomplete captions.
Rigging was accomplished with both, metal thin wire and monofilament.
The last images show the model closer to completion, with a scratched starter cart device.
So, can you make a nice model from this kit? yes, you can. Would it be easy? hell no. But it can be done.

 

The following images show the parts affected by defective etching.

You can't remove the "flash" with an Xacto, it is too thick and hard, so you have to file it, risking buckling.

 

 

 

The structures and parts were primed in preparation for painting:

sênior Dumont e chapéu panamá

 

I opted to use aftermarket spokes, given the fact that the kit's were half-missing and a tad coarse:

 

The frames have been painted a wood color. Some exposed diagonal members will later on be painted black, since they were wires, and other bits aluminum, since they were metal structural parts.

The home-made decals can bee seen in the photo too:

 

 

A starter cart was scratchbuilt according to era photos to add a bit of "ambiance":