Hello Rowan, first of all I hope you are in the rudest of rude health sir?
A question: from the profiles it appears that you may be opting for an olive/brown wing colouring - I remember the declaration on the Aerodrome forum by DSA regarding the use of streaked coloured stain which differed for top and under surface of the wing and wondered which you favour? I personally, with respect to those who put the debate forward, find it difficult when folk, well intended and studious as they may be, make what are clearly intended as definitive pronouncements on WWI colour schemes. Unless we KNOW what colours are, it's all guesswork, with a varying degree of education. I sort of opt for blissful ignorance...
Yours, as ever
Health now all systems go, thanks for asking - heart has new plumbing and big old tumour and right kidney now removed with no signs of any spreading of nastiness, diabetes well in check and no lasting ill-effects from the toxic shock syndrome; I'm back on the bike and knocking off 15 to 30 kms most days and feeling ten years younger. Happy as the proverbial pig in manure!
I share your antipathy towards unequivocal statements on WWI colours without sufficient factual evidence (see the late great Carl Sagan's quote below...). There has been too much of that in the past but I detect a more cautious approach nowadays. Certainly Ray Rimell has always urged caution when interpreting WWI colours and the same attitude is clear in WNW booklets.
As to the EV wing colours I find the brown/green upper surface and violet/blue under surface streaking with wood stains/dyes on plywood to be very beguiling, although the possibility of mixing green and brown and blue and violet to give a uniform streaked colour above and below is also quite a logical interpretation. Where it differs from the streaking practice on fabric surfaced Fokkers is in the use of wood stain on plywood, of course, which gives its own particular effect. I am of the tentative view that the replacement wings shipped to the front after the grounding of the original EVs and used in subsequent D.VIII new production aeroplanes
might have had a single colour streaked finish top and bottom - olive green top and blue lower - as a means of easily differentiating between the two production wings (surely something pilots would have wanted) and as a further cost reduction (two stains instead of four and less labour to apply) by the notoriously cost-conscious Fokker. EVs supplied to Poland would almost certainly have been fitted with the new-build wings and they
could have had such a finish, but that is all
pure guess-work and extrapolation, as I'll be making very clear in the booklets for the two sets.
Ray the printer tells me that the decals are on schedule and I should get them in the next week or so. The jigs for wing and undercarriage fitting are now done and tested and the booklets nearly done, so we should get the sets out to pre-order customers in mid July, as originally promised. The special offer for both decal sets expires tomorrow midnight, by the way! My order for a WNW Oberusel engine for the Mikro Mir kit has just gone off, so I want to get building my own EV soon - Looking forward to some good old-fashioned plastic whittling!
Rowan