Albatros D-V

 

I've put together a 1:144 Albatros D-V, mostly using components from my D-III.

It just needed a new tail fin and rudder, and I had to rebuild the fuselage in its more rounded form, and add the undercarriage aerofoil. None of the other detail changes between the D-III and D-V are visible in this scale, so I haven't bothered with them.

Although the D-V was the replacement for the D-III, which was struggling against the new generation of Allied fighters, it was not as well liked as the earlier model had been, being heavier and less nimble while failing to add anything much in speed or climb.

The STL is available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/brands/mojobob-hoochyman

Siemens-Schuckert D-III (1:144)

 

This 1:144 model represents one of the modified variants with the cutaway engine cowling to increase engine cooling, a necessary change as the initial production suffered seriously from engine overheating, a problem caused by the synthetic oil that replaced the scarce castor oil by 1918.

The Siemens-Schuckert D-III was very fast, very manoeuvrable,  and climbed like a rocket. It went into service in April-May 1918, but the aforementioned engine issues kept it from being the game-changer it might otherwise have been. By the time those issues were fixed, and its replacement by the D-IV, the Great War was pretty much over.

Fokker E-III (1:144)

 

It's taken a while to get around to it, but I've finally painted this 1:144 scale Fokker Eindekker.

Now it's ready to go out and shoot down that BE12. Or maybe get shot down by it. It could happen. 

It's FDM printed on my Ender 3, and the undercarriage needed substantial post-printing repairs.

 Next day...

 Eindekker #02. This one was printed on my new Mars 5, and judging by the banding on the fuselage, I may have to experiment a bit with antialiasing to smooth things out.

On this one I painted in all the small crosses by hand, and reserved the decals for the big wing crosses. They're not as perfect as the decals would have been, but with these teensy-tiny ones it was less trouble overall. 

Aviatik C1

 

The Aviatik C1 was introduced in 1915, one of the first German C-type armed reconnaissance aircraft.

The observer/gunner sat in the forward cockpit with the pilot behind. This arrangement gave the observer's machine-gun a very limited range of fire, and in the last 50 aircraft produced the seating positions were reversed.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I went to the effort of modelling this — probably because I wanted my Germans to have something as useless as the BE2c. 

 Next day...

I've put both the Aviatik and the BE2c up at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_early_ww1_recon_pack_1_144_  as a two-for-one pack. I very much doubt that many people would be interested in buying them individually, so perhaps this will make them a bit more attractive.

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.

 

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.

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

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. 

SdKfz 251 ambulance

 

This 15mm (1/100 scale) Hanomag SdKfz 251 half-track ambulance is a model I designed and printed some considerable time ago, but the print was a partial failure — the nose of the vehicle is distorted, and the wheels didn't print at all. I just got around to making some new wheels and gluing them in place.

I'll add it to the rest of the ambulances I've been modelling over recent years. I've got a few of them now. 

Pantherturm (15mm)

 This is a freebie STL of a WWII German Pantherturm, an emplaced Panther tank turret used extensively in the Italian campaign and during the fall of the Reich as a (relatively) cheap protected anti-tank bunker.

 https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_pantherturm

The model is designed at 1:100 scale for 15mm, but it will scale up for 20mm without any issues, and even 28mm at a pinch. It'd also scale down to 1:150 or 1:144 for 10-12mm gaming, though the gun barrel might start getting a little fragile then.

Both the turret and the base have sockets to accommodate round magnets up to 10x1.5mm.

 It printed successfully on my Ender 3 FDM printer, but the print failed on my Mars Pro resin printer — I don't know why. That printer's been getting quite flaky in recent times, and the failure rate has increased markedly. 

The base will need to be embedded in an appropriate terrain diorama. For Italy, that would be most often rural terrain, but in the invasion of Germany they were often dug into city streets to overwatch important road junctions. 

 Here are a couple just sitting on top of a terrain sheet, and they look okay just like this. I'd still like to embed at least one of them in a scenic base though.

2026-03-13

I've now included a groundwork STL that the base piece can be pressed into, for those who don't want the trouble of making a scenic base the traditional way.

 2026-03-14

Here are my prints, now encapsulated with grass and dirt collars so they look more dug-in. 

These are 3d-printed bases, but really it would be a trivial matter to make the exact same thing out of air-drying clay or the like. 

 2026-03-16

Here's one in a base better suited for urban rubble, this time created from scratch using traditional modelling techniques and materials (polyfilla, kitty-litter and matchsticks). 

Raupenschlepper Ost 1942 - test print

Quite some time ago, I designed this model in Blender. It's a simplified version of the Raupenschlepper Ost, with the cab made from plywood instead of stamped from steel, and with a canvas roof. They went into production in 1942, with the aim of making production faster and cheaper.

But I never did actually get around to printing it. Mainly because its hollow cab would have made printing quite difficult.

Today I filled in the cab and cargo bed with a solid block, but in the cab I kept half of each of two crewmen visible, so that they could be painted in a kind of bas-relief style. It seems to have worked reasonably well, and the model printed on my Ender 3 without any issues at all (except that I initially assembled the running gear the wrong way round, and had to tear it off and re-glue it). 

It means, of course, that there's no interior detail visible, but for a gaming model that doesn't disturb me too much. 

 Several days later...

I've got it painted now, in a post-1943 colour scheme. All in all, I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out. 

Flak 36-38 88mm (15mm)

 

This is the 3d printed 15mm Flak 36-38 88mm gun that I've been working on the last couple of days.

The crew are all Command Decision 15mm metals. 

Overall I'm reasonably happy with it, except that the groundwork is a bit garish. I might hit it with the airbrush and see if I can tone it down a bit. 

 A bit later...

The groundwork is now definitely less gaudy, but I don't know that it's really any improvement.

Ah well, never mind. 

Germanic Test Painting

I've been trying to find a set of pre-mixed paints that I'm satisfied with for painting my 15mm WWII German foot-sloggers and artillerymen. They've almost always turned out too dark, sometimes too light.

This bloke, a Command Decision 15mm artilleryman with a binocular rangefinder, I base-coated in Vallejo ModelColor 759 German Tank Crew, and then dry-brushed (or moist-brushed really) fairly heavily with 886 Grey Green. I added an overall wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade (my favourite), which darkened everything a tad, and then came back in with 886 again for the highlights.

This method gives me a field grey that I'm satisfied with. I know that German field grey is a vague and uncertain colour anyway, but I do want something that looks good to me.

I could have done the base coat in 830 German Field Grey, which is tonally similar to 759, but warmer. Once the wash has gone on, I doubt that it would make much difference.
 

Old Gun

 

This is a WWII German 105mm LeFH howitzer, 15mm (1:100), 3d printed quite a long time ago and finally finished off.

The crew are a mixture of Peter Pig metals and 3d printed, and the base is a honking great big fender washer. The big washer may have been a mistake; it adds a lot of weight to the group, and it may imperil the figures a bit under the mashing of great sausage-fingers.

The gun is a later model, with pressed-steel wheels and a muzzle brake, but painted in Dunkelgrau for pre-1943 service. After then they would have been in Dunkelgelb, and most likely in a three-colour camo scheme. 

As far as actual wargaming goes, it's largely pointless, as guns like this are almost always going to be off-table. Never mind though. 

Marder 1 (Lorraine)

 

I started work on this model, a German WWII Marder 1, quite some time ago. But then I forgot all about it, until I happened upon the beginnings of the project a few days ago, and finished it off. Working on the digital file zoomed in all the time, it was easy to lose track of how small these vehicles were.

I've put the STLs online at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_marder_1_lorraine_ 

I did a test-print this evening, which was mostly okay, though there are a couple of things that I think might need attention.

 

The main issue is the gun shield:  printing at the angle I did meant that it was lying pretty flat to the platen, and I got some delamination and distortion at the corners. I think it might be best to detach it and print it as a separate component.

Nashorn Crew

 

I like to include some crew figures in my little 15mm (1:100) model tanks, both to give a sense of scale, and also so that it doesn't look like a bunch of autonomous robot machines tootling about on the wargames table.

I think the Nashorn actually had a crew of about six, but any more than these two in the fighting compartment would be unfeasibly crowded, so these guys are symbolic of the crew rather than actually representative of it as a whole. 

I kitbashed these figures from a bunch of others. The main bodies came from 3dBreed, but things like hats and helmets and shells and so forth I made myself and added to the cut-up original figures. They were printed on my Mars Pro resin printer.

Nashorn #2

 

Nashorn No.2

This is another model I printed quite a while ago on my Ender 3. Compared with similar prints from my Mars Pro, the FDM layer lines stand out like dogs' balls.

I've painted this one in a three-colour scheme suitable for  Kursk or Normandy or Bagration or later. 

I have to do some crew for it, as I do for the earlier Nashorn and the Hummel I completed recently.