Hannoverische

The Airfix Hannover is blessed with rib detail on the wings which if scaled up would mean the ribs on the full size aircraft would be six inches higher than the fabric, a little excessive methinks.

I started by sanding the whole lot off, as the rib tapes would cover the detail anyway.

Struts were thinned by scraping with a sharp knife and the wings were primed with holts grey primer, given a coat of floor polish and then decalled with Aeromaster 5-colour lozenge. Bits of this were also applied to the tail area as Munson's picture of this aircraft appears to show bands of colour oversprayed (or brushed) onto the lozenge fabric at the rear end.
The rest of the model was painted in mauve, green and earth, with the white arrow made from solid white decal sheet cut to shape.

The Airfix decals were badly yellowed, so I taped them in a polythene bag to a sunny window to bleach them. (A tip gleaned from a modelling magazine.)

This would have worked well had not condensation got into the bag and destroyed them. I ended up using bits and pieces of decals of very variable quaility from the spares box.

Talk about a ha'porth of tar...

Just after I took the photographs for this particular page, I returned the model to 'a safe place' on a bookcase in the bedroom. The following day, while cleaning the room, I knocked a Lalique bottle off the top shelf, this fell in a most unusual way and landed on the model. The Hannover reverted to kit form and the bottle smashed.
I cut my hand on the broken bottle and dripped blood onto a Sopwith Strutter on the bottom shelf. Worst case of 'Hanger Rash' since I put a garden spade through a 3 foot wingspan flying model in my garage ten years ago. My wife wasn't too pleased about the Lalique bottle either.

The model was repaired in August 2001 and is now kept on a more secure shelf in my workroom.