This was probably the most difficult kit I've made to date. Mainly because of the large number of PE parts - which all fit together well but are incredibly small and difficult to handle. The cockpit assembly I found to be a huge effort - it took forever, looked beautiful, and once installed is almost entirely hidden.

The wing assembly looked to be a problem so I cut the locator pins off the bottom wing and replaced them with brass and installed matching brass tubes in the fuse. This gave me a solid bond plus the ability to fool with the dihedral before any gluing actually took place.

The biggest modification was using 1/32-inch plywood on the fuse. I realize that there are other alternatives, which might give a better scale representation, but there's just something about real wood - and besides this kit is perfectly suited for it: 1) fuse parts are ridiculously thick so it was no problem filing away enough material. 2) Surfaces requiring wood are relatively flat 3) detail parts are PE so you aren't actually removing any detail 4) The kit was taking forever anyway.

One problem was how to put a finish on the wood but still have a surface to glue the PE parts onto - in the end I decided to use CA as the finish. This worked out well since the- CA sands out to a nice gloss finish and bonds well to itself plus I think it actually hides excess glue.

In retrospect I wish I had used some other wood product other than plywood. You inevitably see end grain somewhere and the middle ply is pretty dark. On the top of the fuse, where the curvature is the greatest I had to sand down the plywood to get it even with the cowling and some of the darker wood came through. But all in all I was pretty happy with it

DML Focker d7 Just another OTB D7 - to my mind one of the best WW1 kits I have ever seen. I only wish I had waited for the Udet version

First - Yes, I realize the markings are historically inaccurate. I used Blue Rider decals which I think had been sitting around too long because they fell apart when I tried to apply them and I ran out of roundels of the appropriate size. I didn't have the patience or inclination to wait around for another mail order set, so I just made up my own scheme.

Details and machine gun from Tom's Modelworks, white metal engine and prop from somebody I can't remember, (I made this kit about 10 yrs ago) LG and Cabane struts from brass.