Roden 1/32 Fokker D.VI By Tom Solinski

First things first a BIG APOLOGY to Roden. THEY are CORRECT in their dimensions on this kit! In my inbox review I strongly questioned Roden’s use of the Dr.I fuselage in lieu of using a lengthened version as indicated in the references I had at hand. Since that time (in a great weekend at a full-scale and R/C WW-I fly-in at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton Ohio) I’ve acquired the Albatros Productions Datafile on the Fokker D.VI, which clarified the length issue. For the January 1918 competition Fokker submitted two Dr.I based biplane prototypes that were slightly larger than the Dr.I because they were designed around more powerful engines. The V13/1 had a 130 Hp Oberursel U III and the V13/2 a 160 Hp Siemens – Haske Sh III engine. After the contract was awarded it became clear that neither of these higher power engines was going to be available in sufficient quantities. So Fokker shrunk the winning design to more effectively use the output of the very available 110Hp UR-II. Thus, the THIRD design airplane that was the one submitted for actual type testing by the German military had the same dimensions used by Roden in this kit.

Let’s try a little different build format. As I’ve previously stated I like to try to build straight OOB and this build is no exception. But because of my recent Dr.I build I felt pretty familiar with this kit. So my build was done in a manner to expedite the build not directly follow the instructions. So this will be an hour-by-hour progress report on what was accomplished.

Hour One

Since there is a lot of lozenge decals on this plane I started with the wings so that the decaling on them would be well dried by the time I started final assembly. So in the first hour of assembly the wings, axle fairing and horizontal stab were cut off the sprues. The wings and axle fairing were glued together and the seams on the glued parts were cleaned up. Roden has included alignment pins on at the outermost ends of each wing panel, which makes assembly of these two components a snap. The axle fairing top and bottom half were rested vertically on the table on their trailing edges and the front edge was glued together. I also trimmed the joining straps off of the bottom of this part because I wasn’t sure as to exactly how the full-scale part was assembled. With the wings assembled and cleaned up they both received several coats of rattle can gloss clear lacquer to aid in keeping all of the lozenge decals attached. This wasn’t a mirror finish just enough to have a smoother surface to stick too.

Hour Two.

In the second hour, fuselage interior decaling and some exterior lozenge decaling was started. As stated in the inbox review one item not addressed by Roden is that the interior surface of the lozenge fabric should be visible in the cockpit area of this airplane. I don’t have a source of reverse printed interior lozenge decal in 1:32 so I attempted to get close by using what little extra of the normal upper lozenge there may be on the Roden decal sheet. There is one spare square of upper lozenge identified for use as rib stripping on the model. This piece was just large enough to cover the cockpit aft closeout frame and parts of the fuselage interior adjacent to the cockpit opening. After these areas were trimmed and applied, I moved on to applying the lozenge to the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer. As a test the decals are applied directly to the plastic without a gloss coat being applied first. All these parts were then allowed to dry for 24 hours.

Hour Three

Build the engine, trim the decals off the tail, add the upper lozenge on the horizontal stab, clean up the elevator and clean up the prop. . I started the evening with Roden’s little jewel of an Oberursel UR-II engine. And in no great surprise it turned out just as well as the one I did on the Dr.I two months ago. If you take you time and carefully trim the parts off of the sprue with multiple passes of a knife blade you will end up with cylinder heads that require very little clean up once they are installed. Only two items to look out for on the entire engine; DO NOT sand the front and back engine blocks to get them flat, the spark plugs on the front half stick out past the edges of the front half to act as alignment pins. Sanding the front half of the case may sand off some or all of these plugs. Do sand or scrape the tops of the cylinders to get a good flat surface for the cylinder heads to set on. Otherwise they have a slight domed top that makes the heads stand a little proud.

While the main case and cylinder heads were curing, the excess lower surface lozenge was trimmed off the horizontal stabilizer, and the upper decals were applied. The elevator was cut from the sprue and the pouring tubes were trimmed off and what little flash on the edges was cleaned away. Since we are working on the power plant I also cut the propeller off the sprue and started cleaning it up. I chose to do the second of the three paint schemes and the instructions called for using the propeller that I didn’t use on the Dr.I build. The injection points leave rather large blemishes on the boss of the blade, and there were two huge sinkholes near the hubs. After the miniscule flash was scraped off the leading and trailing edges, and the injection points cleaned up, in a very rare move, for me at least, a little putty was troweled into the sink holes. I went back and looked at the remaining prop in this kit and on my Dr.I leftovers and all of them show a sink mark at these locations to some degree. With the putty drying on the prop I closed out the build session by adding the valve pushrods and intake tubes to the engine.

Hour Four

Applying lozenge to the wings. I’ve got to stop here and give Roden’s decal makers a HUGE ATTABOY! The lozenge provided in this kit is strong, it holds up to handling well and it responds well to MicroSol. The most impressive finish was that it they snuggled down well enough to actually see the slight fabric surface texture molded in to the wing surfaces. As stated above the three coats of rattle can lacquer gave a nice smooth surface to the wing, and it had dried over night so it was time to get the decals on the wings. I had read somewhere that the Fokker factory folks had the habit of starting covering at one wing tip and working to the other. This would cause the seams sewn in the lozenge fabric strips to fall at unusual places. I tried this on this kit. Roden provides a diagram as to which of the decal section go where, so I started with the lower surface of the left lower wing. I found that I could easily line up the front edge of the decal with the seam between the upper and lower surfaces of the wing itself. This provided a nice straight line of applied decals. Applying decals in a rotating pattern from the left lower wing, to the right lower wing, then the lower left tip of the upper wing allowed me to finish covering the lower wing surfaces and the lower elevator surfaces in one hour. With a liberal application of MicroSol the decals even smoothly pulled down over the wing mounting posts. However, there is one problem, on the decal layout illustration in the instructions there are 5 panels labeled as upper wing upper lozenge, but there isn’t enough of this lozenge to finish the upper wing. The good news is you only need four of the five panels for the lower wing, so save one of the lower wing lozenge panels to finish the wing tip of the upper wing. This applies to both the upper and lower surface of the upper wing.

Hour Five.

I moved on to the fuselage. The first noticeable revision in this kit from Roden’s Dr.I kit is that you now have to drill three holes in the fuselage side from the inside to allow for the struts used on the D.VI. For us metrically challenged folks the 0.8 mm holes work out to be 1/32 of an inch and the 1.2 mm hole is close to 5/64. Drill the holes then I did a little old-fashioned brush painting of the wood fairings that form the curved sections of the D.VI’s for ward fuselage. While that is drying with the interior tubing parts still on the sprues, the flash was cleaned off and hit all of them were brush painted with a coat or two of WW-II German RLM gray. This color, or something near to it was used as primer and protectant in the first war too. One shortcoming on both the D.VI and Dr.I kits is that Roden attempted to mold the throttle quadrant and associated pushrods on the left fuselage frame, sadly in all the photos I’ve seen this pushrod comes out as a short shot. To fix this I cut off the remains of the short shot and glued in a piece of 3 pound fishing line to replace this pushrod. While all of this was drying I moved on to the floorboards and seat installation, cleaning up the little flash and completed all my pre assembly painting.

Hour Six.

With the paint dry on all of the interior subassemblies; floor boards, seat support/bulkhead, ammo cans and fuel tank, these were completed following the instructions. (Did I say that? I followed the instructions?!!!)

Hour Seven

Time to close up the fuselage. In this case I replicated the method I used on the Dr.I. The fuselage side frames were glued in place as far forward as possible to allow a small gap between these parts and the tubing that is molded in the aft section of the fuselage. Then the cockpit closeout bulkhead was glued in this gap, perpendicular to one side of the model. Some trimming of the panel was required to get a good fit. Then the floorboard was glued to the wing spar hump on the same side of the bottom of the fuselage. The two fuselage halves were joined but only along the bottom seam. This allowed a little flexibility in the top half giving us some give to play with in positioning the ammo cans, cross pieces and fuel tank. On the Dr.I you had to wait to install the fuel tank so that the filler neck aligned with the fuselage decking. On this plane Roden has simplified the installation by molding the fuel and oil filler caps right in to the upper decking. The upper decking takes more time than it should and takes quite a bit of filing and fitting to get it to rest on the top of the fuselage sides, and at the same time clear the interior fuselage tubing that is just inside of it. Final fuselage close out involved installing the engine on the firewall and then fitting the firewall to the fuselage.

Hour Eight

To allow all the glue in the previous step to cure I finally moved back to the lozenge decals on the upper surfaces of the wings. But to avoid making a mess out of those decals, I first tested the fit of the lower wing into the fuselage. BAM! The first big brick wall in this assembly. First, please understand that I am, what most of you would call, a model assembler. I build OOB just to be building. I don’t strive to “improve” what comes out of the box. So I have a big disappointment when I discovered that the lower wing on this kit does not fit in its proper place on the fuselage without a LOT of cutting, scraping and fitting. If you just try to force the wing where it belongs you’ll end up with enough anheadral to make you think you’re building an A-7 Corsair II. The source of the problem is right at the joint between the wing and the fuselage. Trim a little plastic out of the opening on the fuselage and off of the rib around the main spar on the inside edges of the lower wings. BE CAREFUL! Roden has modified the landing gear on this airplane from the Dr.I molds. There are two small filler plates molded on the lower leading edge of the lower wing spar. You may consider cutting these off to do the trimming to get the wing to fit, then glue them back on just before you finally glue the lower wing in place.

Hour Nine.

Lozenge decals on the fuselage and painting white. Now that the lower wing fits, I finally got to add the lozenge decals to the upper wing surfaces. Two things to look out for here; as stated above you have to use some of the lower wing upper lozenge to finish the upper wing, upper surface, and the second shortcoming is that the upper wing lozenge panels are not long enough to cover the entire upper wing. You end up with a 1/16 wide strip of uncovered plastic at the trailing edge. I also finished any other decals needed on the elevators and ailerons at this time.

While the decals were drying a coat of Testors Model Master Insignia White was airbrushed on the cowling and rudder.

Hour Ten

Final assembly. The most terrifying part for any novice biplane builder. With all of the subassemblies glued, painted and decaled it’s time to put this puppy together. Quick work is made of attaching the lower wing, stabilizer and elevator. With the glue on the back end of the model curing, the guns, ammo feed and collection chutes can be added to the upper decking. There are some clearance issues in this area so be ready to open the holes in the upper decking, just a little bit. Adding the top wing. A method that has worked well on my other Fokker builds is to first attach the “N” struts to the lower wing, park the airplane upside down so that these cure perpendicular to the wing, then attach the upper wing to the “N” struts.

This almost worked the first time on this model too. The problem is that these “N” struts are extremely flexible, and I didn’t get a good glue joint the first time. This worked out to my advantage because these “N” struts are also very slightly too long. This is fixed by SLIGHTLY opening up the holes in the upper and lower wing surfaces to let the “N” strut itself rest on the little molded attachment plates. Once the “N” struts have fully cured, attach the “V” shaped cabanes between the upper decking and the wing center section, followed by the third leg “V” brace between the wing and the side centerline of the fuselage. Let all of this cure over night.

Hour Eleven and Twelve

With the wing in a ridged state we add the aft cabane struts from the lower fuselage to the wing center section, then the horizontal stabilizer braces. Last major installation was adding the landing gear. Take note that there are two sets of landing gear struts in this kit, one left over from the Dr.I kit and the correct ones for this kit. The six glue points were attached using slow cure Testors glue to allow time for final alignment. While the gear cured I started on the final decaling with national markings and other details. I want you to take special notice how opaque the Roden white decals are, not one hint of the underlying color is showing through.

Hour Thirteen

A little rigging with invisible thread painted bright silver with a paint pen, and install the engine, cowling and propeller and we are done.

Things to look out for in this build
- Plan which lozenge decal is going to go where before you start cutting.
- Plan on lots of trimming and test fitting on the lower wing attach area on this model so that the wing fits like it is supposed to.
- Make the N struts fit as deep in to the sockets as they will fit.

Have lots of fun building a not so famous WW-I fighter.

Again my thanks to Roden, IM and Matt Bittner for the opportunity to do this review.

Tom Solinski, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
29 November 2005