I have recently noticed that a number of very well made balloon wings have been making the rounds.   These wings seem to be based on legitimate post-WWI balloon wings (examples of which can be seen in a number of the wings book references by Duncan Campbell and Terry Morris).  I had the chance to actually handle a couple of these wings and do a side by side comparison with the wings from the book, an EBay auction and a “fake”.

I call these the "hairy wing" wings (for obvious reasons). The middle wing is a scan of a wing in Pinks and Greens, the bottom wing was an EBay auction of a wing I was pretty sure was a good one, and the top was a wing (also EBay) that I thought was a bad wing.

The top wing seem to be based on the bottom wing. The balloon and gondola are typically pretty good, but the quality of the feathering really is lacking.  All the wings are die struck, and some of the wings have “fantasy” hallmarks.  By themselves, the fakes are hard to tell apart from the “good” wings.

When one looks at the wings, side by side like this, you can see obvious differences in the pattern and quality of the feathering. The top wing lacks the detail and balance of the other two. With out careful side by side analysis, it is easy to see how this “fake” could fool lots of people.

The other thing is that the detail of the outline of the wing is lacking on the top wing. In hand, the fake wing has a kind of flat, 1-dimension feel to it. Also, the tips and sides of the wings seem rather flat and without definition in the fakes.  Thus, clearly a great deal of effort need to be spent in studying the known examples of this pattern wing.