Wien, September 1937 - the Austrian military unveils its treaty defying Air Force (consisting of aging Italian CR.32 biplanes) to the public and the world for the first time at a giant air show.
This somewhat speculative vignette places one of the freshly painted CR.32s alongside a more famous Austrian creation, the Steyr ADGZ 8 wheel armoured car which were, perhaps, also displayed to the public at the same time.
The CR.32 is from the Minairons kit. Primarily intended for wargaming, these kits are quite basic resin pieces with whitemetal detail parts.
They make up quickly into a pretty good facsimile of the type. They wouldn't compete with a detailed plastic/etch model but since one isn't available in this scale, this is definitely welcome.
The whitemetal struts are probably the main thing I would replace when I build my remaining three of the type in the stash, see if I can find some fine brass strip.
Since the struts were quite bold, the rigging wire seemed rather lost so instead I used thin brass wire for the small amount of rigging on this type.
Painting was all done by hand, mostly with the Vallejo Chain Mail metallic. Unfortunately this didn't go down perfectly. For better results next time I need to attack the wings with fine sandpaper thoroughly before painting to get a smoother finish.
The scheme is from an LF Decals sheet. These are single printed sheets so need each element being cut out (fun with the tiny tail numbers) and have slightly grainy detail but again not readily available in our scale, so you make do with what's available.
The vehicle is a Steyr AGDZ, a gifted 3d print by Decapod. Can't find a paint reference for their pre-German adopted scheme but photos seem to show a medium type grey and no visible markings. No evidence that these also appeared at the airshow, but seems like a plausibility, so why not...!
Figures are from the Preiser range. Painting civilians is always one of the hardest things to do since you need to make a varied mix of clothing, but not too varied. For these figures I managed to find some fashion magazines from 1937 Austrian which gave useful information on the colours to expect - mostly brown, grey and whites.
Not my best work but something a little different and certainly adding the civilians was good fun and made for an unusual setting. Thanks for reading.