Ulrich Puchala Luftwaffe pilot & mechanic figures
Helmut Wick puting on his parachute
Ulrich Puchala 54mm Miniaturen is a German company that produces white metal stuff. They also have a line of pilots&ground crew. Most is Luftwaffe, but there is also a World War 1 section, RAF and some modern pilots figures. About 60 figures in all.
I always had a soft-spot for figures. When I discovered that I wasn't really born to build dioramas, I switched to building single subjects only. But I started to miss figures, so I started adding pilots or ground crew to my models. But finding figures of pilots in 1/32 is a tedious task! Then a certain gentelman named Aurelio Gimezo Ruiz came to the rescue with his article in FSM about modeling 1/32 Luftwaffe North African diorama-with Ulrich Puchala figures. The rest is history...
Anyway, I'am sure that only a few of you know this company or it's products, so I will try to give a fair acount. The first thing you notice when you open their catalogue is that every pilot figure has a name like Bar, Galland, Graf, Priller and so on. The name is not there without reason, because resemblence to the pilot is amazing. Some figures are made by refering to original photos. The pilots also wear things they wore...Galland wears that French flying suit in which he was seen so often during the batle of Britain, I could go on for ever! OK where were we?? Ah yes, you get your figure in a plastic bag with cardboard backing instructions and a photograph of the completed figure. The instructions are quite crude-don't expect any FS numbers for the uniform colors. Figures are cast in white metal. They are normally cut-down to 2 seperate arms and the body with legs. The surface has that white powdery Talcom residue on it so ran a steal wool cloth across the surface. The fit is no problem. If you use acrillys make sure that the base coat is enamel. The only thing that is not so good are the mold lines. They are easy to remove but have a tendency to run across the ears-this makes the ears look pit-like. I would recomend replacing the heads on some figures-they are to chunky. Just look for an simmliar head in your scrap-box. The price for a figure is 14 DEM.
These were my first white metal figures-and if I can do it you can to. Strongly recomended (like you have a choice!! :-) )