Hello All
May I present to you my take on the Eduard 1/48 Fokker E.V and thank all of you who helped in those early, busy days with references and advice, not least Zabu, ALBATROS and Trackpad. All the faults are mine alone.
First some notes on the finish. Eduard ascribe this aeroplane to a mystery owner, perhaps from Jasta 8. Confusingly, the main art work on the box neither accords with the image on the side panel, nor with the decaling and finishing instructions. Furthermore, the guidance is of an era when the entire upper and lower wing surfaces were thought to be a plain olive, perhaps with the signs of streaking.
IMG_4765 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
I am only aware of one photo of this aircraft, which Zabu found for me. It provides a view inside a hanger, taken from the starboard, forward quarter looking back towards the tail. The snake and rabbit emblem are shown clearly enough. For the wing surface, we just have to extrapolate from any clues in the photo; perhaps the original negative might help us more.
Without absolute consensus, the current orthodoxy seems to rule out plain olive finishes on the wings. Instead, it points us towards bands of coloured wood stain, streakily applied: two colours on the upper surface and two below. What appears uncertain is the number of bands, with the sources provided for me suggesting between 3 and 10. The colour profiles kindly provided by Gary (Trackpad), vary from 3-7; Dan San Abot (DsA) felt this might extend to up to 10 and in my early construction notes I tried to map out how this might look. From Gary’s images, where the number of upper surface bands was odd, the extra one seems always to have been green.
To add further confusion there appears an element of doubt as to whether these bands of colour were, when viewed from the upper trailing edge, angled as a forward slash, or a backward slash; DsA raised the possibility of the latter. In the absence of a direct plan view of this mystery aircraft, I’ve gone for four forward-slashed bands on each wing surface.
The next challenge concerned the actual colours employed. In casual terms we are talking about a green, an earthy brown, a blue and a variant of a purple, but these words hardly convey the true sense of a finish that seemed heavily streaked anyway. Aesthetically, I prefer the tones used by Rick (RAGIII) in his magnificent E.V build, but I have gone along the lines of those used by Filip (xmald) in his equally fine work, although banding it in different ways. I’ve attempted through the medium of oil paints to capture, if non-too successfully, the colour swatches and Ronny Bar artwork in Volume 2 of Achim Sven Engels’ (Fokker Team – Schorndorf) Fokker D.VIII in Detail.
IMG_4772 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
I’ve tried to vary the varnish finish according to the surface on which it is applied. My earlier notes and some of the photos seem to suggest a much glossier finish to the wings prior to weathering than I have managed. To keep the model in line with the others in my collection, I decided not to apply dirt and muck on the tyres and tailskid etc or engine oil in exposed places. That is a challenge I’ll have to face with my 1/32 work.
IMG_4780 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
IMG_4774 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
IMG_4777 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
IMG_4768 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
IMG_4766 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
IMG_4761 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
IMG_4786 by
nigeljjackson, on Flickr
Details of the actual build did not materialise on the forum as I progressed, but if Des is happy I’ll post something retrospectively to show the stages.
Thanks for looking and sorry for such a long posting.
Best wishes
Nigel
PS. The hand is Ena's!