Eduard 1/48 Fokker D.VII Weekend Edition
By Dave Calhoun
Please see the September Internet Modeler for the First Look on this kit for a brief history and description of this kit. I am using the markings furnished in the kit, the Fokker D.VII F flown by Oblt. Hermann Goring, JG1, Marville, September 1918. Goring flew D.VII F 5125/18 in September 1918 while he was in command of JG1 Richthofen. It was painted an overall white, and photos show that it was in an immaculate finish and that all of the serial # and stenciling was done in black. Since none of the stencils were overpainted it is assumed that the plane was painted white at the factory, and that Anthony Fokker presented it to him personally for his use. Although no one knows for sure if the aircraft was originally covered with a clear doped linen or the standard lozenge fabric as used on all production D.VII’s, over on the Aerodrome Forum, this discussion has lead to the educated guess that the lozenge fabric was used at the factory and overpainted white when completed. It was standard Fokker practice to cover the rudder and tailplane with lozenge fabric and overpaint it white, and the white was very opaque and did not allow any of the lozenge to show through, so I will assume that the entire aircraft was finished in the same way as the typical rudder. Goring also had several modifications made to his aircraft once it arrived in September 1918. He followed the design of his previous Fokker D.VII and cut away the forward cockpit coaming on the left side, and added a small handle to make it easier for him to enter the cockpit, due to a hip injury or arthritis. He also had small metal deflector plates mounted to the forward decking behind the gun ejection chutes to prevent brass cases or links from flying back into the cockpit. On the right side of the cockpit he mounted a rack to hold several flares (located on the outside of the cockpit) and had a metal tube exiting through the fuselage pointing up and to the rear. The flare pistol could be inserted into the tube and fired through the tube to exit in the proper location with no worry about hitting his own wing or tail. Unfortunately all of these additions are not included in the kit, but they can be added simply and make the finished aircraft look like Goring’s actual aircraft. There are several good photos of this aircraft as well as his earlier Fokker D.VII in the book “von Richthofen’s Flying Circus Colors and markings of Jagdgeschwader Nr.1” by Greg VanWyngarden with plates by Ray Rimell. This is a great book for anyone interested in the colorful markings used by the pilots in JG1, and has the reference photos needed to modify Goring’s D.VII.
The first thing that I did after removing the fuselage parts from the sprue was to cut away the coaming in front of the cockpit on the left side, and make it go straight down to the upper longeron as shown in the photos. An X-Acto knife and small file made quick work of this. I drilled 2 holes and bent a small handle from copper wire and CA’d it into the holes.
Then I used some leftover lozenge decals to cover the interior of the fuselage, only the area that would be seen when the fuselage was assembled, from the firewall back to about ½” behind the seat. The color of the decals do not matter, you can use some old stuff that has inaccurate colors since it will be overcoated later, it is supposed to look like fabric that has been printed on the other side of the fabric, so you are looking for a subdued appearance with the lozenge visible but not bright as looking at fresh lozenge on the top surface. I brushed on a base coat of Future to give the decal something to bond to, and brushed on several coats of Micro Sol to allow my old lozenge to suck down around all of the interior details molded into the fuselage. When dry I mixed up some acrylic ivory paint with some Future acrylic floor polish to get a watery clear doped linen color, and brushed it over the lozenge. When dry the lozenge pattern is still visible but it looks like the faded dye as seen on the reverse side of the fabric. Of course some may say that the interior lozenge should be reversed, but I’m not that crazy to worry about reversing the pattern on something that is not that noticeable anyway!
I painted the framework inside the cockpit with RLM 02 grey/green which may or may not be the actual color used by Fokker, but it looks right and matches photos of the original Fokker D.VII in
The engine is supposed to be a 180hp BMW engine but uses the exact same parts as the Mercedes engine in the kit except for the intake pipes. Normally I would replace it with a BMW from the Roden D.VII (since each Roden kit gives you BOTH correct engines) but since almost none of the finished engine is seen once the fuselage is closed up I decided to use the kit engine. I painted the crankcase aluminum with dark gunmetal grey cylinders. The cam and intake pipes were painted steel, then a black wash made it look grimy and used.
Painting is easy – everything is white! Not really, but I began by assembling the wings and axle wing and sanding the seams smooth. I airbrushed what seemed like 10 coats of Testors Model Master flat white over these parts and also a few coats on both fuselage halves with a piece of aluminum foil tucked inside to prevent the lozenge from any white overspray. After the white dried I painted the interior metal panels – firewall, engine bearers and inner engine compartment with RLM 02. The completed engine, firewall and interior were glued into the fuselage half, then both halves were glued together. The stitching on the bottom of the fuselage is a separate piece so no filling is required here, but the upper turtledeck behind the cockpit needed to be sanded and filled with a coat of MR Surfacer to get a smooth joint. Back to the white, needed another 5 coats to blend in the smoothed seams! Would have been easier if Eduard used white plastic for this kit.
Next I used a polishing cloth to rub down the ribs on the wing, you have to be gentle with this since if you rub off too much paint it will allow the grey plastic to show through. You want a subtle polished area on the ribs to make them stand out from the flat white paint. The ribs are pretty thick on this kit so easy to polish with a lot of water and a 3200 grit polishing cloth.
Decalling began next, I brushed a coat of Future acrylic floor polish over the upper wings, lower wings and fuselage. This dried to a smooth glossy surface for the black decals. The decals went down nicely, with a little Micro Sol they sucked into any cracks. When they dried I washed any excess glue off with a damp paper towel and gave them another coat of Future. I attached the lower wing to the fuselage at this time, which needed a little filing to get it to fit in the lower fuselage. It probably was due to all of the white paint but once it was in place the gap was too large, so I used a little CA to make the seam a little shallower. There should be a seam visible since that was a panel line on the aircraft, but not a trench! I also used a scribing tool to scrape the opening behind the forward lower cowling panel, since on the real plane this was a gap to allow oil to drain out and cool air to flow out. I also added the lower access door from the PE set as shown in the Datafile plans. It appears that this photoetched panel is slightly off center, the edges are not even all around but shorter on one side than the other. Looks good enough to me. I also scribed the vents in the cowl side panels to give them some depth. Once everything dried I painted the front radiator a steel color. Then a black wash was used to pick out all of the vents, panels and other details on the nose. I wiped most of it off before it dried since the plane was never really dirty in the photos. Just wanted to pick out the various panel lines and vents on the nose to add some life to the all white paint.
The tail was glued on now, along with the rudder. Next came the machine guns. The kit guns were way too small, I compared them to the guns in the DML Fokker D.VII and the ones in the Eduard Fokker DR.1. notice in the photos they are probably at least 1/16” too small at the front lower edge right behind the jackets.
I added sheet plastic to build them up to match the other kits guns. Also I cut off the molded on gun jackets and used the PE ones provided in the set as well as the ends with the sights. The plastic gun muzzles look too small but I drilled out the ends, cut them off and CA’d them to the end of the jackets. With a coat of dark grey paint followed with a wash of black and a drybrushing of powdered graphite from a pencil they really looked sharp. I glued them to the ammo feed chutes. Unfortunately Eduard does not have these chutes molded open, they are a solid smooth surface with no visible ammo belt. DML got this part right but I was trying to keep it mostly OOB so kept it as molded. They didn’t include the ammo belts on the PE sheet either. I cut two plates out of .010 styrene to represent the shields mounted behind the gun chutes to prevent shells and links from entering the cockpit matching the pictures in the Windsock book.
Next step was to install the landing gear, this as kind of tricky since each strut was a separate piece instead of a solid V strut on each side as we usually find. I used lego blocks to hold the wings level and had the bottom of the axle parallel to the ground making sure everything dried square. The cabine struts were installed next, using the upper wing as a guide to get the struts lined up correctly. Mine didn’t come out right, I ended up having to sand down the top of these struts to get the N struts to fit in correctly. Next time I’ll attach the upper wing to the N struts then attach them to the lower wing and finally attach the cabine struts, it would probably fit much better if I did it that way. I did not attach the air speed gauge to the N strut, it was not visible in either of the photos I had of this aircraft, but may have been on the strut not seen clearly in the photos. Once everything was dry the struts held everything firmly in place.
The final coat of paint was a clear coat, I used Model master semi-gloss, this gives it a scale shine of a gloss painted aircraft without the high gloss toylike appearance. Next I brush painted the tires a flat neutral gray and glued them in place. The tail skid was painted with my wood mixture, and given a gloss coat. Then the metal parts were picked out with flat black. I also painted the rear underside of the fuselage flat black, this area should be open on the real aircraft but is molded closed. Once again the DML kit got this right while the Eduard kit should be drilled out & filed open, but with my final paint already on the flat black looked good to me.
Next were the final details, control horns on the ailerons and tailplane, and on the right hand side of the fuselage I added a bracket with 2 flares in it (leftover from a DML Fokker DR.1 kit) and drilled a hole in the fuselage to add a tube for the flare gun. I useda piece of styrene rod and drilled out the end. I painted it steel and drilled a hole for it, then glued it in pointed to the upper rear of the aircraft. For rigging I used invisible thread, although would have rather used ceramic wire or stainless steel wire, although I was out of both of these materials. CA held the wires in place, the Fokker had very few, an X brace between the forward landing gear struts and aileron control wires going up to the lower wing. Also control wires went to each control horn.
The finishing part of the model was the prop. A nicely painted prop really accents a WW1 aircraft, and I tried something a little different for this one to make the laminated Heine prop. (the instructions call for the Axial prop but according to a photo of the aircraft a Heine was used) I painted it light tan, then used a watercolor pencil – dark brown. I sharpened the point then dipped it into water, then penciled in the laminated dark wood lines following a photo of an actual Heine prop to get the correct curves. Once dry I gave it a heavy wash of burnt sienna artists oil, it is thin enough to let you see the laminations but just barely! After letting it dry a few days a couple of coats of gloss lacquer were brushed on, then last but not least the pointed high speed hub was painted flat black. Do not use the Axial logo decal on the Heine prop! After it was painted I noticed that the Roden D.VII prop was about 1/8” longer, further research shows that the Eduard prop is too short!
Well since it’s done I guess I will have to live with it for the time being.
A nice kit but there are several serious flaws that will have to be corrected in order to make it represent the aircraft flown by Goring, as noted it needs the left side cut
out around the forward cockpit, and a handle, shields and flare rack added from spares or scratchbuilt. To make a more accurate model I would still have to hollow out the lower rear fuselage and install a longer prop. Also the blast shields for the guns are not included in the kit or PE set, these appear in both the DML and Roden kit so it’s a real surprise not to see these here. Not a bad kit
for the money, it has the outlines of a Fokker D.VII and with a little extra work can be made into a contest winner.
Thanks to Eduard for the review kit, and to Matt Bittner for sending it my way.
References:
Von Richthofen’s Flying Circus
Greg Van Wyngarden w/colour plates by Ray Rimell
Fokker D.VII Anthology Vol. 1
Edited by Ray Rimell