Hello,
thank you very much for your interest and your kind comments!
Gary, yes, now I think it was your E. II build. Really nice! Bud, Lance, Manni, Rick, Des, Ian and Stephen thanks for looking and your nice words!
Frank, if it will be possible for me to go to FFB (which is sadly not sure, but hotel rooms are already booked – I hope I don't have to cancel them), I will bring the D. II with me. I am very keen on seeing your birds in person!
Willy, I know the problem of too large resin engines not fitting the plastic cowlings. The reason is mostly that the resin engines are 100% up to scale, so the cowlings are too thick for them. WNW's rotaries are as far as I know a little under scale to fit their plastic cowlings. So the WNW Oberursel fits the SH cowling perfectly, no trimming needed at all. I'll post pictures as soon as possible.
Work went on as a kind of therapy for me. I never had thought how important gluing little scraps of plastic could become.
Seat belts are made with lead foil, I only used the kit's buckles, cut from the PE belts. I prefer flexible lead foil instead of PE seat belts.
Meanwhile the fuselage halves are closed and the lower wings are added. At first I was afraid of installing the lower wings according to the instructions. Both wings are connected by a quite small plastic bar that resembles the single wing bar of the original. This configuration connects the wings quite shaky and you can't hold this part on one wing without the other sagging dramatically. My first intention was to cut both lower wings into separate parts, closing the fuselage by adding the bar and then connecting both lower wings to the fuselage with brass rods. But my lazieness brought me to give the intended connection a try and after gluing the part onto the fuselage it became quite a sturdy construction once the glue had hardened.
All the seams are sanded and/or puttied and sanded and I started to add some detail to the exterior. There is a rectagular inspection pannel behind the engine that is a separate part. After gluing and sanding all the details had disappeared so i had to rebuild it by carving the panel lines with a needle and a steel ruler.
Now on to the tail unit! And it is time to think about the color sheme.... I didn't decide yet if I should do a Jasta 16 Fokker, painted by Fritz Grünzweig, or maybe Josef Jacobs dark blue Jasta 12 Fokker. The kit's decals are for two versions, once for Otto Desloch, CO of KEK Ensisheim/Jasta 16 in factory colors (WDF, p. 17, no. 35 and 36) and a bird of the well known Kest 4b at Freiburg marked "Dodo" (op. cit, p. 33, n. 77 along with other Fokker biplanes, a Fokker E IV and a Halberstadt scout). But as I prefer doing frontline airplanes, I tend to doing Grünzweigs less well known Fokker that is shown on p. 22, n. 55 of the WDF. This picture is quite well known and also can be found on the internet:
As Special Hobby is going to release another boxing of their D. II called "Grünzweig's planes", including these markings as decals as well, it may sound like a stupid idea. But anyway, I am going to paint the Heuschrecken-face by brush. But this picture raises several
questions:
According to the WDF the first Fokker D. II left the factory in CDL, later ones were spray painted in two or three tone camouflage of brown-green or brown-green-light green respectively (cf. Kissenberth's Fokker D. II). Obviously some Fokkers had their wings and upper fuselage camouflaged, but the sides left CDL. other's have camouflaged sides, too. Camouflaged machines frequently had their metal parts including the cowling camouflaged as well, but the engine fumes removed the color on the lower part of the metal front, exposing the "swirreled" Fokker metal. A closer look at Grünzweigs Fokker shows light fuselage sides. So:
1. Was Grünzweigs plane a CDL-over all airplane or were its wings and upper fuselage camouflaged (the serial number is unknown)
2. The light color on the fuselage sides brings me to the conclusion that this plane didn't have camouflaged sides. There are color profiles on the web that show it with Fokker streaked sides – but there are no traces for them on the photo. The problem is: an uncamouflaged fuselage side speaks for a non-painted engine cowling/metal forward part of the fuselage.But there's the swirling only on the lower part of the forward fuselage side, the upper part including the cowling looks like painted with a solid color. For me that makes three conclusions possible:
a) The upper part of the front part of the fuselage and the cowling were painted a solid color on Jasta level as a kind of primer for the Heuschrecke painting. Then it could be any color appearing in that tone on B/W photos, maybe gray, beige or a light green (like grasshoppers – heuschrecken – look like).
b) The fuselage and/or the whole plane was painted field grey instead of CDL, like many Fokker Eindeckers were painted as we meanwhile know.
c) The shadow of the upper wing makes the swirrled metal look like a solid color on the upper front part of the fuselage.
What do you think – especially regarding my theory that also Fokker D planes could have been painted field grey?
Thank you for your opinions!
Best regards
Borsos