COMPLETED Fokker D.VII OAW Leusch, Eduard 1/48, Update 5.7.2019 Completed

[kensar]

Nice work, Frank.  The kit engine will be fine.  Not much of it will be visible.

[pepperman42]

Very nice clean build

Steve

[Bughunter]

Wow my friends, such a great feedback!
Rick, Stephen, Alistair, Antonio, Ken and Steve - the best way to say thank you is to show more pics


At first I need to answer Stephens question:

The tiny lettering on the wing tips took my breath away - how do you do it?!

This are decals, very tiny, included in this weekend edition. With naked eye the white print is not visible on the blue sheet.



Metal and radiator

On the after fuselage there were some handles, in plastic only 0.8mm thin. But still to thick according to my plans, and I don't like to cleanup such small parts.



So I added handles from tinned 0.4mm brass.



Same problem with the step. So I drilled 0.3mm holes into a 0.5mm brass pipe and soldered 0.3mm holders. The sides are open, as visible on real pictures.



Lower wing and landing gear glued in place.



Added four foot steps (PE) on top of the wing spars, and the mounted step below the fuselage. Leather painting on cockpit opening.



There are two radiators in the kit, but the manual says only use one of them, but not specific for both markingh options. I tried, but the one with the pipe do not fit. Then I find out in the manual of a OAW Profipack, that D7 fits on fuselage halfs D3 and D4 (and D6 on halfs D1 and 2).
The manual says radiator in flat black, but the anthology shows some very bright sheen on some OAW Fokker radiators. So I painted it with "pale burnt metal", masked it with a liquid mask and painted it yellow.



Some of the edge holes are filled (casting flaw), but it looks not bad after unmask.



Then I hand brushed some high diluted flat black into the holes, and finally a oil wash. A PE part could not be nicer. Glued in place, also the exhaust.



The tail skid was painted and mounted. The struts are plugged in only and the elevator is only white primed.


So that is the actual state from another angle of view.



Oh yes, I start to really like this biplane!

Cheers,
Frank

[RAGIII]

Absolutely Awesome work! The step in particular is amazing! I know exactly what you mean by "Beginning to Like this little biplane". You have reached a point where it is all coming together and looking Fantastic.
RAGIII

[Juan]

Wow Frank, are you sure this is not a 1/32 kit.  Looks fantastic.

[Manni]

Fantastic work, Frank. Your additions are really "Franktastic". For me it won't be possible to drill a hole into a 0.5mm pipe and you make it look so easy. I also like this scheme, it was my first Wingnuts model.
Bye,
Manni

[Bughunter]

Thank you Rick, Juan and Manni!

are you sure this is not a 1/32 kit.

May be my number sense is wrong and you are right But I never touched a 1/32 kit of a biplane, so I cannot know the difference

Your additions are really "Franktastic".

For me it won't be possible to drill a hole into a 0.5mm pipe and you make it look so easy.

I can also not drill in this round surface. So a fool need a tool

Should I betray my trick? Okay ...

- so I used a rest of a printed circuit board (GFK).
- cut a slot with a thin resin saw
- now drill from the thin side a 0.5mm hole, the slot will guide the drill
- drill from the surface of the board a 0.3mm hole, again the slot will guide the drill
=> and voila, you have a tool!
Put the 0.5mm brass tube into the side hole and can drill through the 0.3mm hole in the middle of the brass tube!

And don't forget to pay me a patent fee (or give me a beer on the next model meeting)

I like to be creative on such problems

Cheers,
Frank

[Juan]

Hi Frank, just complementing your skills.  Your 1/48 looks better than anything I have ever produced in 1/32.   

[Alexis]

Frank , this is really shaping up nicely and coming together wonderful . Looking forward on the next up-date 



Terri

[pepperman42]

Very nice work. Great colour scheme!!

Steve

[Bughunter]

Thank you, Juan Terri and Steve!

Looking forward on the next up-date 

Terri, the problem is not only the prepare pictures and text, I also need to build something in between
So I have only some small parts today.


Control horns


I had to take care of the connections of the control surfaces, but had no idea - and with the kit parts not a good feeling.
Right in the picture you can see the control horns of the kit. Clean up, glue oppositely aligned, drill hole for control wire ... No thanks!

On the PE set there is nothing, so my solution (I can not throw anything away) is made from a PE frame of colored set, coated metallic. From this I made the parts according to the drawing, in the middle the part for the rudder, on the same principle two for the elevator on top of the cent and below for the ailerons.



In the book with the 3D drawings you can see that for the link plates were welded to the frame. So I sawn thin slits into the rudders and glued my horns. Automatically aligned, easy to mount and true to the original.



It's even easier on the elevator. There are 6 hinges, with the rudder horns between two closely spaced hinges. Eduard left the material here at the fixed fin, so here sawed in slots and glued in deflected position. So I can mount the control wires without the elevator.



For the ailerons I forgot a picture, but here the horns stick out the same amount on upper ...



... and lower side. My first double horn was to short, because the aileron is thicker than scale.



That was a bit of work, but it's a good solution to handle with, robust and true to the original.

Cheers,
Frank

[RAGIII]

The control horns could be the Most amazing part of your build Did I say Amazing 
RAGIII

[Dave Brewer]

I've always thought that there would be a good market for generic PE control horn sets of this type in a variety of sizes.I despise plastic control horns and PE ones with a tiny tag to glue in aren't much better,if you use tensioned mono rigging rather than elastic.

[Bughunter]

Rick, you seem to like every update, thanks for commenting!

Dave, from the polish company PART there is a set S48-087 "contolhorns & turnbuckles", I own it, but I do not found matching control horns on this fret.

Cheers,
Frank

[Bughunter]

Tail


Now I can start to do the first rigging:



The control wires for elevator are added:



As next step I painted the control surfaces with MRP white, added a bit of MRP bleached linen, futured, decals and shadowed.
The company logos are stolen from a Albatros kit.



Glued in place:



Added struts and the rudder control wires:



A little step further to finish ...



With the mounted aileron I was able to add the crosses and cutted them.


The four control wires are also in place.



So the upper wing is prepared for later mounting, but before I have to handle some details.

Cheers,
Frank