Jack Garnter's Fokker Models
This is Esci's 1/72nd scale Fokker DVII, an easy to build kit as long as you
don't mind absolutely no interior! It was my very first WWI airplane after
taking up the modeling hobby once again (about 12 years ago now). The color
scheme (flown by Lt. O. von Beaulieu-Marconnay in
Jasta
19) happened to catch my eye in the Aircraft in Profile series and I built the
kit straight OOB. B-M's personal marking was hand painted using homemade
stencils. I used Superscale lozenge for the wings, and, total novice that I
was at the time, also used their way too blue and WAY too oversized rib tapes
for both upper and lower wings! Live and learn, but then again, Dicta Ira
prevailed here as well! Also my first attempt at painting laminated props...
This is a build up of the original DML release of the 1/48th scale Fokker D-8.
Eventually I'd like to build another, along with a 1/48th scale D-7, because
you get the beauty of WWI planes without the hassle of rigging them!. This was
a straight out of the box project. I don't know if anyone else had this
problem, but the fit of the fuselage halves was terrible. They had a MAJOR
step (about 1mm!) along the bottom surface when the upper was aligned, and the
upper surface where the elevator fit to the fuselage had to be filed thoroughly
to allow the elevator to sit level. Also, the fit of the lower wing portion to
the upper (why they didn't mold the wing as one solid piece I'll never know),
was bad as well with a huge gap along the rear (looks like flap seams!). Those
of you familiar with the kit know the lozenge decals were truly awful, so I
replaced those with Aeromaster upper and lower sets. I made my own arrow
decals and the cowling, wheel cover and elevator markings were hand painted.
The markings are for a
Jasta
6 bird.
I've always loved the Fokker Triplane, but never wanted to build any of the
typical marking schemes. I bought Alex Imries book "The Fokker
Triplane" and my choice was made. This is "
Die Optische Tauschung
" (The Optical Illusion) flown by Lt. Hans Kirchstein in
Jasta 6.
This build represented a real challenge, both because of the markings scheme
and because it was another early DML 1/48th scale release, and as with their
Fokker D-8, the fuselage halves were horribly mismatched, with over a 1mm step
along the lower halves and a decided slant to the mating surface for the
elevator. After puttying and filling repeatedly, I finally gave up and put a
sheet of styrene along the lower surface of the fuselage. Except for that
necessary repair, this build is straight out of the box. I can tell you that
the optical illusion works both in reality (Kirchstein reported that the only
bullets to ever hit were along the very outer edge of the port upper wing) and
on the model. When you look at it, you'll think that a lot of the parts are
out of alignment, but after repeatedly working with rulers and calipers, I can
assure you they are not!
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