Bristol Fighter

 

I just finished this 1:144 scale Bristol Fighter to add to my menagerie.

I haven't tried printing it yet, but no doubt I'll get to it soon enough. 

 2026-09-16

FDM test print turned out mostly okay, eventually. The print failed in a tail-down orientation by breaking the back of the fuselage, and in a nose-down print posture the nose failed to print, so I had to cut off that bit and replace it with a nose section I printed separately.

Alas, my elderly resin printer — an Elegoo Mars Pro — is bung, and it's too old to find replacement parts for now, so a resin test print will have to wait until I get a new printer. Which may be, if I'm lucky, this afternoon.  

Albatros D-III — success at last

 

After fiddling with the thickness of struts and things, and tinkering endlessly with the placement and height and angle to the print bed, plus adding some custom supports in problem spots, I've finally got a model that will reliably print a 1:144 Albatros D-III in one piece. Now I can get my forces together for Bloody April.

 

Nieuport 17

 

Somebody asked me if I was going to make a Nieuport 17, and I thought that was a good idea, so I did. I want to do a Nieport 11 Bebe as well, if I can just find my drawings for it. I know they're around somewhere.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself though; I have many more models waiting to be printed and painted than I have finished. 

Pfalz D-III

 

I've built another German aeroplane for 1917, the Pfalz D-III. It was generally considered to be inferior to the contemporary Albatros D-III, but it was much stronger and could survive the G-forces in pulling out of a dive when the Albatros would fall to bits.

 I'm not really satisfied with the fairing of the lower wing with the fuselage, though I'm not really sure how I can fix that.

 The test print is FDM (eSun PLA+) off my old Ender 3 with a bog-standard 0.4mm nozzle.

FDM vs. Resin

 

I've done two test prints of my DH2 model, for comparison purposes. The one on the left is FDM, printed on my Ender 3, and on the right is resin, from my Mars Pro.

The resin print has clear superiority in terms of detail and cleanliness of line, but it is structurally weaker than the FDM print. The resin print is quicker and easier to clean up, as I don't have to worry about clearing off stringing and nubbins.

They each took about the same time to print — a bit over three hours — though if I had a more modern FDM printer, such as a Bambu A1, that print time would likely be cut in half.

The FDM print, though physically stronger, is much more sensitive to heat. You can see where the starboard wing tip and struts have been distorted from when I was flash-burning out the stringing.  Also, I like to use a little hair dryer to speed up paint drying, and that's a bit perilous especially on slender members like struts and booms.

At tabletop distances, the difference in detail isn't really obvious, especially to those with old eyes. However, I'd probably still prefer the resin print, in spite of its relative fragility, if not for the fact that I'm having some issues with the Mars Pro and I'm lazy when it comes to printer maintenance.

The Whale

 

Many, many years ago I built the Airfix model of the Roland C-II Walfisch (whale). I was always rather fond of its portly form.

Alas, somebody dropped something heavy on it, and that model is no more. But today, in a fit of nostalgia, I built a new one in 1:144 scale.

I haven't tried printing it yet; that will probably be for tomorrow, if I have time

Camel

 

Next up is the famous Sopwith Camel, the famous mount of the famous Biggles himself. 

It was the replacement for the Sopwith Pup, and initially, when it was introduced in 1917, it was nicknamed the Big Pup, but the name Camel  eventually took off because of the hump in front of the pilot that partially shrouded the guns.

I realise now, looking at the render, that I've forgotten to give it any elevators or ailerons, so i suppose I'd better take care of that. 

Pup

 

I've been concentrating pretty much on German aeroplanes, so I thought I'd better make some opposition to all the Albatroses and Hamberstadts, and fired up Blender to make this 1:144 scale Sopwith Pup.

It's designed for FDM printing, and for use as a gaming piece rather than a display model, so all the struts and things are way out of scale. 

Siemens-Schuckert D-III

 

I'm on a real WW1 aeroplane kick at the moment, so I'm taking advantage of it while it lasts.

This next one is the Siemens-Schuckert D-III, from very late in the war. It was very fast and manoeuvrable, and could climb like a rocket, but its huge 4-bladed propeller meant that it had to have very tall undercarriage, making it tricky to control on the ground, and the powerful engine was prone to overheating.  The overheating issues were solved in the D-IV, but by then the war was pretty much over.

Albatros D-II

I've done a couple of 1/144 Albatros D-II, one with the side-mounted "ear" radiators, and one with the centrally wing-mounted radiator perfectly positioned to spray boiling water straight into the pilot's face if a bullet goes through it.

I haven't tried printing them yet; probably tomorrow.

 Some days later...

I've successfully test-printed one of these models, and splashed some paint on to it, and overall I'm pretty satisfied with it. 

Fokker D-VIII

 

The next teensy aeroplane in the queue is this 1:144 scale Fokker D-VIII, nicknamed "the Flying Razor". It appeared late in 1918 with spectacular performance, but it came too late and too few were ever put into service for it to affect the course of WW1.

Junkers D1

 

I've been working on a 1/144 scale Junkers D1, a German metal monoplane fighter from very late in WW1.

I've been tossing up whether or not to try to represent the corrugations of the metal skin — on the one hand, they were very characteristic of the Junkers aeroplanes, but on the other hand, in this scale (and when printed in FDM) they'd be barely perceptible unless they were wildly out of scale.

It's a usable wargaming model just as is. I might try a corrugated one just to see, but I suspect it won't really be worth the trouble.

 2026-09-06

I've printed and painted it now, and I'm glad I didn't corrugate the crap out of it. 

Simple Sopwith Triplane

 

I'm experimenting with a drastically simplified model, a Sopwith Triplane. Absolutely minimal detail, and nice chunky easily printable struts and things.

The original design was (I think) from CapnAhab on Thingiverse. He has done a lot of models, designed in 1:100 scale, but intended for printing at 1/300. The geometry is always very simple; no wing ribs or anything like that, and sized to be able to be shrunk down without issues.

I've just smoothed out the faceting of some (most) of the elements, and provided it with a socket for a flight stand attachment.

Having smooth wing surfaces should ease the application of decals, and I can paint on wing ribs, as I've done on 1/300 and 1/200 models. 

For gaming purposes, the silhouette is much more important than fine detail, which seldom gets seen at tabletop distances in any case. I have one on the printer at this moment, so we shall see how it turns out. 

Few hours later...

 The Tripe printed without any real issues, and I also did a Fokker D-VIII from a similar style of model, which also printed very easily.

I clean up the prints as best as I can straight off the printer, but inevitably I find that I miss a bunch of zits and nubbins in the raw bright white PLA which is very hard to distinguish detail in. A quick primer coat reveals them though. 

 2026-09-09

I've made the model a touch less simple by the addition of some wing ribs. I couldn't resist.

I also tidied up quite a bit of the geometry while I was at it.