When Wingnut Wings released their original trio of Fokker DVII's three Forum Members, Gary Barling, Chris Johnson, and myself combined efforts to encourage Rowan Broadbent of Pheon Decals to produce a Decal Sheet to cover some of the twenty plus captured DVII's transferred to the just formed Canadian Airforce's 1 Canadian Airforce Squadron (Sopwith Dolphins) at Hounslow, UK and later shipped to Canada. Rowan agreed after a short exercise in encouragement, badgering, cajoling, and whining on our parts and released the markings in combination with his early Snipe set. The set contains markings for three Canadian Fokkers: 8493/18 OAW, a second OAW Serial unknown, and 6810/18 ALB, the well known "Knowlton Fokker" considered to be the best surviving DVII aircraft. My subject is the former, OAW built 8493/18 as flown by Canadian Ace Andrew McKeever (Top Bristol F2b Ace with 31 Aerial Victories) at Hounslow in March and April 1919. I believe Gary is working on the same aircraft; Chris will shortly start on the unserialised DVII flown by Canada's William Barker in an aborted Air Race from Toronto to New York in August of 1919.
Many Thanks to "Mr. Pheon", Rowan Broadbent, for listening to the wishes of his customers. Hopefully the Sheet, with it's Snipe Aces included, will be a marketing success. With the inclusion of William Barkers' Snipe it's bound to do well in Canada!
Here's a facsimile of 8493/18. Although the only photos I've seen of the actual aircraft were taken after removal of the twin Spandaus I'll be modelling her with her "teeth still in" until shortly before being shipped to Canada.
I've only been working on this for a few sessions, and per normal started with the cockpit module which is getting close to being assembled. The seat, rear bulkhead, and floor. The original aileron control cables had to be replaced by the correct "doubles", the elevator cables will be added later.
Work thus far on the cockpit frame members. I added the radiator shutter control rod on the starboard frame and the throttle and spark advance control rods.
Fuel tank and Ammo cans........
Seat ready for those wonderful HGW Belts.....
..............and last, the flying surfaces sprayed with gloss white enamel in preparation for the Aviattic Lozenge Decals. I'll be using their 4 Colour Faded versions and am very much looking forward to trying them out!
This will be a slow Build, Spring's coming and the clean up and yard work after a long hard Winter are looming. I'll get more photos posted once the seat is "belted" and hopefully some Lozenge applied.
Cheers,
Lance