Author Topic: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben  (Read 20114 times)

Offline jeroen_R90S

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Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« on: November 26, 2015, 06:41:57 AM »
I'm sorry if you may have read these post over on the 72nd Aicraft forum before; I'm not much of a cross-poster, but instead of simply copying a link I'm rather have the whole thing over here.
So here are a few posts back to the future!

=========================
My resolution for 2015 is to build as many of my stalled and half-baked kits as possible... the EP-3B was first, so on to the next two candidates!
A Roden Fokker D.VII and Albatros D.Va.


With Aviattic Lozenge and Pheon Jasta 18 decals.
The Albatros will be one of these four:

The Fokker this one:

The one above it with the skull is also and OAW early, but I did not like the black edging. The one I'll do has wide green stripes on the tailplane. (true green, looks a bit blueish in the picture)
The remaining options (save for the lone Pfalz D.III and Fokker Dr.I) are Albatros mid and OAW Late, neither of which are avaible from Roden OOB. They can be made from the avaiable kits, but will need louvres, cowlings or access panels added or removed)

As I said, my 2015 resolution (modelling-wise) is to finish all my already started models, and besides, both the Lozenge and Jasta Raben decals were birthday gifts from my wife -but not for the same birthday if you know what I mean!
Here's how it stands so far:

Some home-brewed details in the Albatros cockpit. It seems a simpler build than the D.III (Öffag) I completed recently since the fuselage is 1 piece, including tailskid and rudder.
It still has the 3-piece topwing, but after the Oeffag I knew how to tackle that.
Unlike nearly every other Roden kit, the engine fits completely without hacking and sanding!  :blink:

The D.VII on the other hand had all the mods done as per my review:
http://modelingmadness.com/review/w1/ger/koend7.htm
Except that I now have the experiences behind me to hopefully make this build go smoother!

I backdated it to an OAW Early since I did not have that kit (Roden does one OOB) and had no intention to buy another...
Removed all cooling louvres and nearly all access-hatches, fabricated a new hatch from thin film and drilled a new hole for the low exhaust. The high hole was stuffed with evergreen, and later removed most of it again when I found out my subject had extra cooling holes in the upper cowling. I also extended the engine shelf and sanded the interiour thinner.
Then I widened the axle wing and lower wing:

As noted in my review, all parts that mate to the fuselage are too narrow (or the fuselage is too big -either way, they don't fit!)
I also made sure the horizontal tailplanes fit and deepened the cutout in the fuselage.
I still need to sand the fuselage on the undersites to make sure the rudder meets the the lower fuselage, but I'll do that after assembly. Most of the hard work is done by now, so hopefully some paint in a few days/weeks!

BTW, the control surfaces were animated by sawing the sides with a fine JLC saw, then scribing between the ringes and simply bend them slightly and fix with a drop of CA and then Tamiya Extra Thin.
All other parts are now also cleaned up and removed from the sprues -quite a lot of work on these kits with their flimsy struts!

The engine mods, to the right is the OOB Albatros engine, on the left the heavily modded Fokker engine. I cut off the oil sump, engine front, and left most stuff off that won't be seen. On the Alb engine I had to make some valves from tiny pieces cut off stretched sprue (due to a lack of a punch & die set) as they were in the sprue gate flash. The D.VII uses the same sprue, but had less flash...


Jeroen

Offline jeroen_R90S

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2015, 06:42:24 AM »
Mass-painting (efficient modelling -what...!):

All acylics, primercoat is Vallejo urethane, which dries very quickly and allows quick overpainting with the final colours -also helps with masking in between for different colours.

And a few days later, in between my telephone duty for work, I managed to finish the woodwork with oils:


Jeroen

Offline jeroen_R90S

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2015, 06:42:50 AM »
I managed to do some small stuff in between a lot of other non-hobby related things like family and work (and a 1/24 Hasegawa VW Transporter I'm also working on for a friend)


Albatros engine nearly complete; only needs some small brass and wood details done.



Albatros interiour almost done, the wash is overdone to keep the effect after everything is closed up. Unfortunately I had to repair the bulkhead, and it still shows. Once assembled it's not that noticable because it is under the fuselage... (hopefully). Bulkhead was apparently fabric and could be linen or lozenge, to try out my new Aviattic lozenge I went for the latter. This is the five-colour upper variation.


Fokker-insides, inside-out Aviattic lozenges on the sides, and again an overdone wash with dark grey. The rear fabric bulkhead is upper 4-color lozenge, also Aviattic.


Some small stuff...

And finally I cut most of the lozenge outsides to size, but apart from a pile of lozenge strips that's not very photogenic! :D

Jeroen

Offline jeroen_R90S

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2015, 06:43:14 AM »
Both Alb and Fokker had their seams treated with CA and Mr Surfacer, the Albatros has been fully rescribed thanks to some very, very faint panel lines and a rough surface texture on the fuselage parts that needed sanding and polishing.
I also made some signal flares for the outsides and modfied a Roden Parabellum from sprue Z into a flare gun, which the D.VII had mounted on it's top wing cutout.
Still need to make the support for that. Both the flares and gun are probably way oversize, but they give an impressium. Fumbling fingers could not get a tidy bracket for the flares, so I left it off.

All holes for struts and rigging were either drilled or deepened (many Roden holes for struts are just dimples). I also cut all Lozenge decals for the wings to size (4 colour for the lower wing surfaces of the Fokker, and 5 color for the Albatros lower wing surfaces, as well as the upper surface of the lower wing.
Getting closer to the primer stage!




(there's a flare gun somewhere! :lol: )

Jeroen

Offline jeroen_R90S

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #4 on: November 26, 2015, 06:44:33 AM »
I've been silently working on my kits and while I did quite some things, like pre-drilling rigging holes, fiddling with struts, etc etc, it's not quite much to show for.
I'll give it a try, though!
First I made another flare gun, as I found a picture of the Albatros I'll be doing and in addition to a rear view mirror, it also carried a flare gun on the upper wing centre section cutout.
After that I added those black edge decals from an Airfix decal sheet to reinstate the lost rib details on the 3-piece upper wing:


I also dry-fitted the D.VII top wing and shortened the rear lower part of the struts by about 1,5mm. The top wing sits a bit low, but it'll have to stand next to my other D.VII and I don't want them to look different. The struts are the correct length, by the way, it is the fuselage that is too tall and makes it look like it sits too low. I reamed the gaps in the axle wing and fitted the struts with Extra Thin, then fitted them to fuselage so everything was measured to be square. And, all that, dryfitted, looks like this:

I filled the holes on the centre section, as the cabane struts won't fit any more and I'll cut them to length and make them fit about where they should go. Not entirely accurate, but if you get them approximately in position it's not that noticable.

Finally, today the weather was nice enough to open the door in the shed to paint all of it with Mr Surfacer 1200 -I'm quite pleased by the Albatros (not surpisingly, since it is the better fitting kit of the two), but the nose and upsides of the D.VII are also quite nice. The bottom, especially near the wing, will need some extra work, though, but that's mostly a flat area.

Hopefully next week all of it is thoroughly dry and I can sand the seams, re-shoot the areas with primer and then it's hopefully on to the paint colours! :)

Jeroen

Offline jeroen_R90S

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #5 on: November 26, 2015, 06:46:01 AM »
Again, my apologies for mass-posting this way, but the next update will be real-life: I've finished a second (and third!) round of sanding an priming just now, and both models are now primed fully in Mr Surfacer and looking good to my eye -ready for the first "real" paint! :)

Any tips and comments are more than welcome, I'm always willing to learn and improve :)

Jeroen

Offline radio

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #6 on: November 26, 2015, 08:11:19 AM »
Very great start to build both kits Jeroen.
Cheers
Martin

Offline GAJouette

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2015, 12:37:31 PM »
 Jeroen,
Outstanding progress my friend. Lovely couple of little kites!
Highest Regards,
Gregory Jouette
" What Me Worry"

Offline RAGIII

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #8 on: November 26, 2015, 01:51:03 PM »
Really nice builds! Thanks for posting and catching us up. You have done an excellent job correcting the wing fit issues on both kits. I am looking forward to seeing your next step!
RAGIII
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Offline vincentm

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2015, 11:08:15 AM »
Good job so far. I like the inner wood effect color. The Roden D-V is not easy to build to say the less (I made 3 in the past year), but your build confirms it's the best choice at this scale, with its crisp details. The 3-part upperwing is a pain in itself, it's due to the numerous Albatros types Roden has issued, as many parts are common to all.

I also think the Roden D-VII is the best one at this scale, compared to the MAC kits, but I haven't built yet any (I have Berthold's boxing in my stack). So I'm curious to see how the building goes.

Offline IanB

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #10 on: November 28, 2015, 12:14:41 PM »
Lovely work so far! I've built the Roden Albie, but my DVII was the MAC kit, which needed almost as much work, but in different areas! Looking forward to seeing these resplendent in their Pheon decals.

Ian

Offline Des

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2015, 12:44:15 PM »
A very nice production line you have happening here, you have done a great job on both kits so far, looking forward to seeing more updates.

Des.
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Offline coyotemagic

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #12 on: November 28, 2015, 02:00:20 PM »
Beautiful work so far on both models, Jeroen.  Looking forward to more.
Cheers,
Bud
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Offline Alexis

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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #13 on: November 29, 2015, 12:02:37 AM »
Both are coming along pretty well so far , nice job on the wood effect  8)




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Re: Roden 1/72 Fokker D.VII (OAW) and Albatros D.Va -> Jasta Raben
« Reply #14 on: November 29, 2015, 01:57:19 AM »
Thanks for posting this one over here where it can get even more love.

Warren