1/32 Special Hobby Fokker D.II (Josef Jacobs Jasta 12 1916)

[macsporran]

As Hamlet almost says 'Frailty thy name is model-maker' - how fickle is our choice of subject matter.

Here was I, fresh from difficult builds of Roden and Special Hobby Nieuports, determined to get stuck into one my mouth-watering WNW kts and what does my eye alight on? a Royal Blue Fokker biplane - and I just have to have it!

The offending (attracting?) subject appeared in a pile of Osprey books acquired for a song in a (sigh) model shop closure and only now getting full attention. Apparently Josef Jacobs felt his light-coloured Fokker D.II was too visible glinting in the sky and warning off potential prey, so he asked the ground crew at FokkerStaffel West/Jasta 12 to paint it 'dark blue' to afford him a little camouflage.

No post painting pictures exist, only pre-'blueing' so your imagination is free to interpret what the resulting machine would have looked like. This always attracts me - where critics can't produce any picture to nit-pick where a cartridge holder should be placed! Also a rattle can of Halfords Ford Royal Blue paint has been catching my imagination for a nice colourful build, if I could only find a subject for it!

I noticed the 1/32 Special Hobby Fokker D.II sitting dustily atop my stash

If I had only been in the bath I could have shouted Eureka and run naked through the streets - a la Archimedes!
Sandy

see attached images from Osprey's Early German Aces - please remove if any copyright issues but on the other hand I'd heartly recommend this title to everybody and think these extracts can only promote the book. (Even if I slightly differ from them in my interpretation of the colour scheme!)

[macsporran]

Osprey's thoughts (with some of the Halfords paint decanted from the rattle-can.)
S

[macsporran]

The Special Hobby kit.

A typical SH kit, this gives you fairly accurate outlines and some nice details but construction akin to a short-run subject. For example, there are no locating pins for fuselage halves, little in the way of mounting locations for struts, empenage etc. And if anybody is brave enough to use the PE rigging tensioners and turnbuckles, I'll take my hat off to them.
But, for 30-odd quid and PE, resin parts and nice decals I'll buy anything they'd like to produce. (Hint, hint) Great value for money.
Sandy

[macsporran]

The Paint

As an aside, these automotive rattle-cans are a terrific way of acquiring a huge range of colours of high-quality paint at very low cost. I use the primers all the time and a 500ml can of white if I remember correctly is 7.99GBP - and often on 3-for-2 offer. The beiges are good for linen etc.

Don't use straight from the can as you'll end up with a thick blob entombing your model. I cut a short length of drinking straw and slip it over nozzle before decanting into little hotel shampoo bottles. You have to leave caps loose for a day or two to de-gas otherwise your little bottle will blow up hugely and maybe explode! (Always open these bottles carefully!)
Sandy

[KiwiZac]

Ooooh, this sounds cool Sandy! I didn't know Jacobs flew a D.II (that said, I know precious little about the type anyway) and this looks like a cool scheme to build. Standing by patiently but excitedly for updates!

[DaddyO]

Great start so far Sandy and an interesting subject. I've always had an interest in these early Fokkers and hadn't come across the dark blue one mentioned which should stand out in all that steaky camo.

(I seem to remember having a vac form in my preferred 1/72nd somewhere, although that may be an in line engine rather than the D.II. I must dig it out again for a look)

Paul

[macsporran]

Thanks guys, on to initial construction.
I don't intend this to be a museum-quality build as I can already see there are going to be problems (such as mounting the top wing) - and I don't want to expend months on the sub-assemblies only to end up throwing the whole thing against the wall in frustration! I may regret this later, but we'll see.

Lots of cleaning up required and test fitting of internals to make sure the fuselage will close up. Experience of building vacforms comes in handy in positioning alignment tabs. I can see the front of the engine will be visible so conrods are replaced with steel rods rather than the flat PE of the kit and spark plugs are drilled out and replaced with brass tube and fuse wire. Some initial pre-assembly painting. You can see at this stage I use all sorts of paint - Revell acrylics, Humbrol enamels, Vallejo washes, Mr Metal, artist oils, etc
Sandy

[macsporran]

I always think the 'office' most important as it's the bit you always look at first to see if you could climb in and start her up! For wood finishes I favour Revell Aqua water acrylics as a base colour - 'beige' is perfect, it dries quickly, brushes easily and within a few minutes you can start to work your oils in. I use a lot of W&N Fast Drying Medium with their Umber and Sienna colours adjusted to taste, then some Tamiya clear orange/ yellow/ red variations for details such as the control stick handles.
The linen fabric interior is Revell beige with a little oils worked in with lots of the FDM to dirty it up. It won't have much impact on the final effect, especially after the internal rigging and control wires are applied, but you'll know it's there!
At this stage I feel the kit's tube framework is a little heavy but I'm not going for a competition winner - in fact I really just want to get onto the blue paint scheme!!!
Sandy 

[macsporran]

Some internal bracing and control wires added last night, instrument crossbar and time for zipping it all up.
Sandy

[macsporran]

Cement all set, so I'll apply some filler this morning and give it time to set during the day to possibly crack on tonight.

I've been recommended this 'Perfect Plastic Putty' product as being fast drying, easy to mould with wet fingers while applying and rock-solid setting. It's also supposed not to shrink at all, so we'll give it a try in place of the usual Green Stuff, Milliput etc. Time will tell...
Sandy

[DaddyO]

Cement all set, so I'll apply some filler this morning and give it time to set during the day to possibly crack on tonight.

I've been recommended this 'Perfect Plastic Putty' product as being fast drying, easy to mould with wet fingers while applying and rock-solid setting. It's also supposed not to shrink at all, so we'll give it a try in place of the usual Green Stuff, Milliput etc. Time will tell...
Sandy

Looking good so far Sandy 

Interesting to see how you get on with the PPP.
I've just been recommended 'Knifing putty' used by car repair shops for repairing scratches in paintwork etc. (Most of the usual fillers are fine on big cracks, but I've found they don't work so well on those annoying little tell tails when you've filled a seam and rubbed it down, but you can still see a trace of the join)
Just bought some which I'll try at the next opportunity
Paul

[macsporran]

Pleased with the results with the PPP. Although it set very quickly I gave it plenty more time to cure, then set to work with sanding sticks, flexi-file and micro-mesh. Applied a little more filler to a tiny hairline along top seam. This where the wet finger application is very useful. Final sanding and happy with final effect. I'll certainly use this stuff again.

This stage highlighted some of the shortcomings of the Special Hobby approach. The cowling only attaches to the top of the fuselage not the sides and the cheeks don't touch the firewall so rather float in place. In order to avoid messing up the future paint job trying to align this later, I taped cowling to top of fuselage and glued cheeks to cowling sides. This created a perfectly fitting but removable cowling. I'm sure SH could have engineered this better.

Also you can see the additional wing supports I installed below cockpit floor before assembly to try to give some strength to this very weak area of the kit. More of this later as I've just managed to snap the stupidly fragile lower wing centre section and am signing off so I can have a good swear - I'll explain why later.

Sandy

PS underside is only roughly sanded as there wll be more work required when, (if), lower wing is mounted.
You can see lack of any undercarriage mounting indication from SH.

[macsporran]

Hmmm. So. The lower wing is not a good fit on this kit and requires much fettling to get it fit into the under-fuselage slot in a convincing manner. Either the fuselage is too wide or the wings are too close together. Whichever: a good deal of trimming is required of both wing and body to get it to fit and, as mentioned previously, the centre section spar is a very fragile moulding anyway. Result. Snap. Two separate wing halves, which might not necessarily be too much of a problem but here it is a disaster.

It's a disaster as the whole wing mounting setup on this kit is very ropey. Normally I would secure the cabane struts and mount top wing, then hang the lower wing off it - as in my previous Roden and SH Nieuport builds. However here the cabane struts are two puny little inverted 'V's at the front and a very fragile, upside-down 'U' at the back for the wing-warp mechanism - with no mounting holes or points to use as guidance. If the lower wing were reasonably robust it could help support the structure but, with a broken centre section that ain't going to happen.

If I can get it all together I'll be able to run fishing line right through both wings and make the rigging functional to add strength, but my fears are it will just collapse as I try to set it up.

I've now tried gluing the centre section in place but I'm failing to get any strength in the joint with lower wings just sagging after attachment. I will have to reinforce somehow within the narrow space available. Actually I could see right at the beginning that this joint was going to be a problem, but I didn't think I'd snap the damn thing to make it ten times worse. Bugger, bugger, bugger!

If I were starting again I would just fill the fuselage trench and mount steel pins right through for the (detached) lower wing halves and treat it like a vacform. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

... and now, on further study I see there is no rigging to brace the upper wings from falling forwards - there are no crosswires on the struts, presumably not to impede the wing warping. How the hell did this thing stay in the air. All of the stresses on the airframe must have been handled through those puny little cabane struts. What a deathtrap!

A beer and a break I think.
Sandy

[macsporran]

After a wee pause for reflection, let's go again. The wing is a problem but I won't let the little blue bu**er beat me!

I've reinforced the fuselage slot, inserting more plastic card and applying much liquid cement. When it's time to mount the wing, hopefully this will give a solid enough base to epoxy it in securely in place. I will use structural rigging - ie fishing line right through the wings to hold it all together - 'just like the real thing' as Airfix used to say!

So, cockpit masked, Halfords white rattle-can primer applied, undersides rib markings in pencil, Halfords 'Ivory' sprayed on underneath. Masking for Eisernkreuzen fields attached and some pre-dirtying of areas behind engine splotched on.

The one extant photo of D541/16 (pre-blueing) shows the usual oily muck splattered over cowling and fabric, so I'm flicking thinned black and brown paint from a brush onto fabric areas before applying the blue colour. I'm working on the assumption the ground crew would have wiped the plane down a little before painting so the blue didn't just slide off. In my representation, they will have wiped the metal areas fairly thoroughly.

Onwards and upwards.
Sandy

[macsporran]

I want the serial number to show through a little, so rather than applying over the white primer - and perhaps losing it completely under the blue coat, I decide to apply a little blue first of all. Now when I spray the topcoat I can mist the serial without leaving a pale halo around it.
You'll also see I diverge from Osprey's assumption that the white fields would be covered. I've masked mine to keep a white field. Also the metalwork.
(I also sprayed on a little blue as I'm dying to get an idea of what it will look like when finished!!!)
Sandy