This is the 1/72 Toko kit of the Aviatik D.1 from the Austrian Fliegertruppe flown by their top ace Frank Linke-Crawford.
Toko was the first Ukrainean company to produce model aircraft kits. The kit is quite old now.
The Aviatik D.1 was the first completely in Austria designed and built fighter plane. It had some novel features like machine guns enclosed in the fuselage close to the engine and therefore not freezing up at altitude. Unfortunately stoppages of the MGs could not be fixed by the pilot as they were out of reach. The Austro Daimler was also a bit unreliable so the pilots preferred the Albatros.
The Austrians had an special camouflage composed of hexagons that were handpainted.
These were fortunately included as decals which were still useable after all these years.
The biggest challenge was creating the spoked wheels, as the model only had solid ones.
What I did was first file out the centre to make space for the spokes. Then I drilled 24 0.4mm holes into the circumerence of the wheel and inserted 0.3mm copper wire. This was then superglued in place. Final addition was the hub made from a piece of 1mm pipe.
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