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Kit: DML (1:48)
Flown by Franz Buchner, leader of Jasta 13 in 1918. Additions to the kit include detailed interior with lozenge & bracing wires inside the fuselage, compass & instruments, added external fuselage ribs to simulate fabric covered frame, moved all control surfaces, used Atlee resin OAW cowl & exhaust pipe, used Americal/Gryphon lozenge on upper wings, painted undersurfaces light blue, used slightly darker blue rib tape decals to show out a little better, used Americal/Gryphon Jasta 13 decals, painted more detail on the werewolf face since it looked too cartoonish, and sealed it with Future mixed with Tamiya flat base to get a nice semi-gloss shade on blue & green fuselage. Cabine struts were replaced with brass strutz since the kit ones exploded into about 5 pieces when I cut them off of the sprue! Same thing happened with the guns, so I replaced them with Copper State resin & photoetched Spandaus. I added a custom center sight seen on photos of Buchner's aircraft, and a flare gun tube through the left fuselage side. Prop is a Digmayer carved Axial wooden prop with photoetched prop boss & bolts.
Here are photos of one of the first WW1 models that I built - back in 1990. It is the Monogram Fokker D.VII, built out of the box with stainless steel wire used for the rigging. It is painted as Von Hantlemann's aircraft, and uses the old SuperScale lozenge decals, which look terrible compared to the latest stuff, but they looked good to me at the time. The upper wing is way too flat, but the fuselage ribs look much better than the flat sided DML kit.
Kit: Roden (1:48)
Here is Udet's Early OAW built Fokker from the Roden 1/48 scale kit. It is basically out of box with Eduard photoetched seatbelts, gun cooling jackets & gauges being the only additions. I built it with the open cowl and no flash guards as shown in the Windsock "von Richthofen's Flying Circus" book. It uses Americal Gryphon lozenge decals overall, and Eduard rib tapes left over from their D.VII kit. The personal markings are from Americal's Jasta 4 sheet, and stencils are from the Roden kit as they were easier to see. I still want to add black & white leaders streamers to the tail to finish it.
Kit: Eduard (1:48)
Eduard Fokker D.VII (OAW) in markings for Rudolph Stark of Jasta 35b. It is mainly out of box except the right hand cowl was modified from a Roden kit, and a wooden Digmayer prop was used.
It was built as the early OAW version using a resin nose from Atlee models that is unfortunately no longer available. Decals are from PD Products, and give the black outlines for the figures, and must be painted whatever color you think is correct. I based the figure colors on the old paint job of Rhinebeck's D.VII in similar colors, although this is not proven to be correct. The fuselage is mid gray with a brown nose. The lower cowl is Bare Metal Foil overpainted with dull coat to give a nice unpainted metal finish. Americal/Gryphon lozenge was used for the wings with light blue rib tapes from Aeromaster. A compass and gauges are added from Copper State German gauge set. Some old Eduard decals were used for the lozenge on the interior with a light gray wash to resemble bleed through on the linen on the interior side. Rigging is from silver stretched sprue. It won first place in Rigged/Multi winged aircraft in the 2001 Wings & Wheels contest.