Roden Pfalz D.IIIa 1/72

The 1/72 Roden Pfalz D.IIIa kit is designed with the fuselage broken into three pieces: left, right, and upper forward. The kit comes with two upper forward parts, one apparently intended for the DIII and the other for the D.IIIa The D.IIIa upper forward fuselage part has a square open area just forward of the cockpit, partly occupied by a pair of guns. There is also an unidentified part ("14a") that is somehow supposed to attach somewhere behind the engine. Unfortunately, the only guidance for the "14a" part is an arrow pointing vaguely in the direction of the cutout area. I don't have any decent photographs of this area on a D.IIIa, but even the drawings of the area included in the Roden instructions do not look like the parts. Adding to the confusion, the artwork on the front of the box suggests that "14a" should perhaps protrude upward from the square cutout, just forward of the windscreen, to about the height of the rear of the guns.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a photo of the area immediately to the front of the cockpit on a Pfalz D.IIIa?

Reply to
Norm Koger
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There are plenty of books out there but a quick search found this page:

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It has some photos but they're kind of grainy and hard to see much detail. Best bet is to find one of the books on Amazon such as:
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HTH

PS TOAW is one of my all time favorite games.

Reply to
RJB

I looked, and they don't reveal much. Two of the shots show the right area, but not well enough to tell anything other than that Roden is right about the cutout on the D.IIIa. I'm still in the dark about the mysterious "part 14a", and I can only assume that there is a compartment floor somewhere below the level of the guns in the cutout

- otherwise things could get a bit windy down by the pilot's legs. The MAC kit seems to model the cutout with a shallow (probably too shallow) rectangular depressed area, while the Eduard 1/48 just seems to tack the guns onto a D.III fuselage.

It wouldn't be a big deal if all of this were well under the top wing. But the back of the cutout is going to be clearly visible just forward of the windscreen.

I do think Roden's gun cutout may extend a bit too far back. If I end up guessing from the photos and drawings I do have, I may use a slice from the end of the unused D.III upper fuselage part to close off the back of the cutout just behind the end of the guns.

Thanks.

Norm

Reply to
Norm Koger

"Norm Koger" wrote

This is unquestionably the ammo box for the guns. It sits below the guns immediately below the two protrusions on the top of the D.IIIa gun decking (they represent the ammo belt and spent cartridge chutes)

The guns sit on two cross bars, one near the butts, one forward and out of sight from the cockpit. There is NO floor under the guns on the D.IIIa, just the pilot's legs.

I can manage a scan of factory drawings if you want them. Email me on

bristolf2b@hotmail.(remove)com

Shane

Reply to
Shane Weier

Shane,

Thanks for the answer.

Very interesting. It's actually pretty cool to be able to look down between the guns at the pedals. This gives an incentive to consider a bit more detailing than I usually bother with in that part of the cockpit. Typically, if a 1/72 WWI kit doesn't come with photoetch I just stick the plastic pedal part down there and be done with it.

I still find it surprising. I would expect that you'd get a bit of an annoying breeze down by the legs because of the extra air path.

I would appreciate that if it isn't too much effort. Please don't put yourself out though. If it's going to take more than a couple of minutes I'd rather not impose.

Norm

Reply to
Norm Koger

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