Fokker D.VII "Blume" 1/72 Eduard

[SimonK]

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How about the kit engineering - any build issues to report?
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Dave

The engineering is spot on with the following caveats;

• If you built this unpainted, you could slap it together in a couple hours and need no sanding or filler on any of the joints; it fits together that well and structurally solid as a rock, positive strut locations, it really is well crafted.
• Like other recent Eduard 1/72 kits (Spit, Fw190, Bf110, MiG21, F6F), the tolerance is tight, so excess paint needs to be scrapped away from joints and in general, from my experience, a sloppy approach to alignment or overuse of glue takes these kits into a spiral of problems down the line. Just my experience! I have made a real hash of all of these superb models until I learned to slow down and test fit regardless of how well they are engineering.
• Fitting the machine gun casing tubes, I just could not get the port one to fit without cutting off most of the stem. Would love to know how they fit the gun into position so that there is enough room! Not an issue with the starboard gun.
• The rib taping. I have seen that this was done in the field not just from the factory on a regular basis. I seem to remember that it was not a neat affair with some tape stopping at the leading edge, some over. So I did this too.  I don't know if the longitudinal taping along the trailing edge should be right at the edge or inset. In either case, Eduard have these strips printed thin but the carrier film either side is huge! I cut some of this back.  These decals are really really thin creating a headache positioning them before they stuck fast.

[Fvdm]

Nice little kit and a great scheme. I like wings with half lozenge and half white.

18 more to go

[SimonK]

How about the kit engineering - any build issues to report?

Regards

Dave

Sorry for long delay posting reply, nope, it's easier than their Fokker Dr.1, a hell of a lot easier than their Albatros. Placing all the edged rib tape is tedious and it's not clear at all if that should be on the centerline of the leading edge (I assume it is),  but where along the trailing edges?

[DaveB]

Great - thank you Simon

I will look forward to building this in the future in that case

Regards

Dave