DFS 230 Glider

 

I was looking through some of the models for the many, many incomplete projects I've started over the years, and found the bits that I began for Crete. That was never very successful, as I don't have access to any 15mm early-war Fallschirmjager, mainly due to the cost of postage these days. I thought I could proxy them with some PSC plastic late war paras, but I never did anything about that.

However, one thing I can do something about right now is my parlous lack of gliders, so I put together a 1:144 DFS 230 in Blender that should print pretty reliably on my Ender 3 FDM printer. Hopefully.

I'll probably split it up for printing, though I haven't yet decided exactly how I'll go about that. The most straightforward method is just to split it longitudinally and print it in two halves, but those wings are very long and I've started having occasional issues with taller models becoming detached from the print platen.

We shall see.

Test Print

I printed this with the model split longitudinally, which gave me good results with the wings and tail planes, but the layer lines are very apparent on the fuselage. A decent paint job could disguise some of that, but it really needs quite a bit of filling and sanding.

The figures at back are Battlefront 15mm desert Brits — 15mm is the scale I'd be using the model with, but I don't have any Fallschirmjager yet to go with the glider. The figures in front are a 10mm (1:150 scale) Bren team I printed in resin on my Mars Pro; they're much closer to being in scale with the glider.

Split version 1:
Straightforward, but printing artifacts on the fuselage are problematic.

Split version 2:
More faffing about with assembly, but smoother printing results overall.

I was struck by how tiny the DFS-230 was compared with the Horsa, or even the Hadrian/Waco. It carried just 9 men (plus the pilot), even with so few it was pretty cramped.

Horsa (again)

 

This is WindhamGraves multi-part Airspeed Horsa model, assembled as he originally released it, except once again rescaled to 1:144 to fit in with all my other wargaming aircraft.

I've modelled this one in 'unloading' format, with the tail section detached and the forward cargo hatches and ramps deployed. I haven't included any troops or cargo, as everything else on the table would be 1:100 scale, so they'd look diminutive and out of place. 

Next Day:

After watching a thing on Youtube about the Horsa, I found that they used loading beams to get heavy cargo like jeeps and guns on and off. No great surprise there.

So I added a pair, and my teensy-tiny paras will no longer have to lift heavy things in and out of their glider.

Horsa, complete

 

I've finished my 1:144 scale Horsa glider, and I've photographed it here with some PSC 15mm plastic Red Devils.

It's clearly too small in scale against the figures — probably closer in size to a Waco/Hadrian — but it won't look too out of place on a 15mm wargames table. A full scale model would take up a lot of room, and would be absolutely enormous compared with almost any game's ground scale.

I did not enjoy painting the fuselage side roundels at all. The wings and tailplanes really got in the way.

A different Horsa, but still 1:144 and still WiP

 

I'm making some progress on my simplified 1:144 remix of WindhamGraves Airspeed Horsa model. This was printed on my Ender 3 at 0.1mm layer height; it took about ten hours to print. The STL can be had at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5987961

This is about it for all the masking and airbrushing; from here on in it will all be freehand painting I think.

I had to bore a hole under the nose for some weights so that it would sit forward on its undercarriage, but in my most recent version of the STL I've provided a cavity in the nose that you can just glue a weight into.

The red and blue of the roundels turned out a lot brighter than I'd expected, so they'll have to be knocked back a bit to better represent the low-visibility markings used on these gliders.

Also, the invasion stripes were apparently just slapped on with brushes and rollers, so a bit of imprecise hand-painting wouldn't actually be all that unrealistic. However, when I've actually tried that sort of thing, it just ends up looking like crappy modeling.

Airspeed Horsa (1:144, WiP)

 

I've just finished printing the Airspeed Horsa model by WindhamGraves from Thingiverse, and now I'm into the assembly phase. He describes it as "easy print", and it certainly printed easily, but I can't say the same for assembly :)

With reference to the one-piece STL he provides, along with some pictures from here and there, I'm slowly working out which bit should go where (I think). The undercarriage is going to be interesting.

The interior rib detail is pretty nice, and some of it will be visible when everything is finished (I'm doing a 'landed' version). There are no seats, but that's really no big deal. I'll be modeling it with the tail detached, which would make it more likely that it was a cargo flight in any case. Bergman includes some airborne jeeps with his Waco models, so perhaps I'll include one of those in the vignette — though maybe not, since a 1:144 scale jeep (to fit with the glider model) would look comically tiny alongside the 15mm figures and vehicles I use.

I've re-scaled it to 1:144 to fit in with all my other WWII wargaming aircraft. The original model was designed at 1:100.