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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)
One of the most fameous Fokker D.VII's was flown by Wilhelm Hippert, Jasta 74 in late 1918. He flew an early fokker built aircraft painted in black & white checkerboards with blue nose, wheels and struts for Jasta markings. The upper wing was also marked Mimmi. This kit was the Roden early Fokker D.VII kit, and was basically stock, Eduard gauges and photoetched gun jackets were added. The cowl had several field modified holes and louvers added, I cut the holes to match some photos in an article by Dan San Abbott, and I used Evergreen 1/4 round styrene rod for the louvers. The decals were from Aeromaster and were designed to fit the DML kit, so were about 1/16" too short for the fuselage. I hand painted the black edges to match the squares on the bottom. The wing lozenge was from Americal Gryphon as were the rib tapes. The prop was painted a light acrylic tan with dark colored pencil for the different layers. I then gave it a wash of burnt umber oil to blend it all together. to finish it up, I had to scratchbuild the oxygen equipment used by Hippert in a photo. I used photoetched mesh to form a cylinder, and added a smaller styrene rod inside the mesh. I also added wires and a pressure gauge to the top, and used Miliput putty to make the bag on the side of the tank, with a piece of wire for the mouth tube. One of the few D.VII's I have done based totally on the color scheme, since Hippert was not a Jasta leader or Blue Max winner, but for some reason was allowed to paint his aircraft with most impressive personal markings.
Here are photos of the Fokker F.1 triplane. made from the 1/48 scale DML/Dragon kit with Rosemont Hobbies resin conversion kit - the resin parts were the new horizontal stabilizer and cowling. The engine was a Aeroclub white metal LeRhone 110hp and the prop was a hand carved wooden made by Marty Digmayer. Markings are for F.1 103/17 flown by Werner Voss and the cowling was done in olive green since the chrome yellow would not let the white face show from a distance.
Also done at the same was a Fokker Funfdecker painted at the same time as the F.1
Kit: Eduard (1:48)
This kit was built for Internet Modeler a couple of years ago using the Eduard kit. it was modified to represent the white D.VII flown by Goring in Sept 1918 as jeader of JG1 Richthofen. Several items were modified like the cutout in the forward fuselage and a handle to help him into the cockpit. Gun shell shields were added to the guns. The kit decals were used to finish it basically out of the box but I used the seperate photoetched sheet for seatbelts, instruments and gun jackets. Although I am not a fan of Goring's history following the war, he was a Pour le Merite winner with 22 confirmed kills and leader of JG 1 so I think he deserves some respect in the WW1 community.
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.
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.
This model was started way back around 1995, I was originally going to build Udet's striped wings until all of the arguments about the correct colors startrd...so I figured I would do Loerzer's well documented black & white striped one. I did the wings back in 1995, using americal Gryphon 4 color lozenge on the lower top wing and the upper bottom wing. The wings were painted white and Microscale black trim film was used for the stripes and crosses. Then, it was packed away and 3 moves later I figured I would finish it up, the original nose was changed to the early Fokker style with resin panels from Atlee Resin, which made some great resin parts back in the 90's, unfortunately they are long out of production. In the 15 years it had been sitting in the box I found that the DML fuselage was incorrect, had lost the ailerons, and discovered the rudder was too small. Luckily with the new Eduard kit they give you two fuselages, I ended up cutting off an Eduard turtledeck and adding it to the DML fuselage to give it a higher profile. The rudder was made from sheet styrene, and I got an extra wing to cut the ailerons off from a list member. Went together nicely, the leaders streamers were made from regular white paper coated with thin ACC. With a little work the DML kit looks good next to my newer Eduard and Roden ones.
Kit: DML Dragon (1:48)
Here is an old DML Fokker that was modified by adding the early style nose from an Eduard D.VII. I removed the upper cowl and scratchbuilt the inner engine compartment and interior. I added the louvers as seen in photos of this aircraft. The rudder and fin is scratchbuilt from sheet styrene since the kit rudder was way undersized. The fuselage and wings were painted Model Master Deep Yellow. The decals are from Aeromaster, and the lozenge is from Aviattic with rib tapes sliced from an old Americal Gryphon sheet. An aldus sight was taken from a DML Foker Dr.1 kit. I used Bob's Buckles for the landing gear turnbuckles with EZ line for the rigging, and ceramic Wonder wire for the control wires goint to the wings and the tailplane brace. Now I have quite a bright colored aircraft to add to my Fokker collection!