Projekt Eindecker: WnW Fok. E.I (Early)

[KiwiZac]

Simply beautiful work Dutch, that cockpit is gorgeous!!

[NigelR]

Lovely attention to detail, we know it's worth all the effort.

The cockpit consumed untold hours, and could have consumed half again as many more

Schrodinger has you firmly in his grip........

[Dutch522]

Thank you all for your encouragement. I've said it before, but the feedback is hugely important in providing motivation.

- PrzemoL, again, if my E.I comes out half as good as your build of Wintgens' high-wing bird I'll consider it a smashing success...
- Fredrik, the question of how I did the finish on the fuel tank has come up before, but honestly I don't remember what I did to achieve it... it was a base of Testor's Copper in the little old-fashioned square bottle, but then I most likely went over it with multiple washes of Dr. P.H. Martin's Bombay India Ink, which I probably wiped back with alcohol. I'm doing either an E.II or E.IV next, so I'll make a point to record how I go about it.
- Ben, thanks, in my "day job" I'm a landscape painter, so the variations of color you mention pretty much come as second nature. And it's one of the things I admire so about your paint work as well!
- Gary, no need to take notes on my work, just go back and read your build thread and the article on Immelmann's E.II in MAI, since they're two of my main sources of inspiration! (But thanks, that was a great confidence-booster)
- Zac, thanks a ton. And if you happen to bump into Jamo at the aerodrome next time you get back there tell him his photos of the E.III have been invaluable.
 - And Nigel, that might be the reason it's been taking so long to make any progress on this kit; half the time when I go down to work on it, it's simply not there...

Dutch

[Dutch522]

It's been over a month since I posted anything on this thread, but the odd nature of Projekt Eindecker dictates that the models themselves actually have to take a back seat to the decal design process... which is full of a host of built-in delays. But I thought this picture was worth posting simply because it shows four generations of production Fokker monoplane fuselages, the Wingnut E.I, E.II/III, E.IV, and the Mikro Mir E.V (which is not part of the Aviattic decal project, that's something I'm building on my own):



And yes, I'm aware that the E.II/III fuselage wasn't made of wood   ...but I use whatever random sheets of material I have at hand to cut my pre-production test decals—in this case it was the dark walnut veneer. It does look pretty sexy, though, kind of makes me want to do an A-H seaplane with a mahogany hull...

Dutch

[NigelR]

Good to see some progress here. I'm looking forward to those Eindecker decals, the early test shots of them look very nice.

[macsporran]

Phew! Glad this one (!) is progressing. Those interiors are superb.
Looking forward to decal application.
Sandy

[William Adair]

Looking great! It's especially interesting to see all of the fuselages together. I didn't realise how long the E.IV was 

[ondra]

I almost missed this thread. Great progress so far, I will definitely follow the builds.

Cheers.

Ondra

[AngryJazz]

Very intriguing to see all the fuselages next to each other! Loving the project with decals 

[RAGIII]

The project seems to be progressing even if it is slowly moving forward. The fuselages together do present a unique vision as to the progress of the designs.
RAGIII

[Dutch522]

Again, I haven't really made much progress on the E.I—the components of the airframe really need to be unattached in order to test-fit the tailored decals—but the process of creating the artwork is nearly wrapped up so hopefully I can get back to actually building soon. I thought I'd share a couple of photos of my son Curt's latest project, though; inspired by the Eindecker obsession that's gradually taken over a large part of my life since last November he started a 1:72 E.III of his own a couple of weeks ago. He'd sent me pictures, but when he brought the model down to show me his progress it was really surprising to see how small the Roden kit was next to the Wingnut version after we put them side-by-side:





I was particularly impressed with his engine, with the scratchbuilt pushrods and additional bolt detail. I'll be glad if mine comes out looking half as good...

Dutch

[NigelR]

A family that builds Eindeckers together stays together, or something like that..... Lovely work in braille scale, and I'm keen to see your EI moving forward......

[lone modeller]

Please could you ask your son to make a few rotaries for me? That is really impressive.

Stephen.

[Dutch522]

Thanks, Stephen & Nigel, Curt's really putting a lot of time and effort into that build. And my younger son, Connor (also a WWI modeler) is in the planning stages of a trip to NZ for next spring, hopefully to include a pilgrimage to see the TVAL collection and the 1:1 E.III.

In any event, progress on Projekt Eindecker, though slow, is in fact being made. I got a package from Aviattic last week containing the first of the actual decal sets (E.I Early), as announced in their last newsletter (with my long-suffering test hulk at bottom):
 


It was weird having the final result in my hands after spending hundreds of hours on the computer designing them, printing out templates, and then cutting and fitting the test decals. It's a painstaking process, to put it mildly; I've done graphic arts since the days when we used razor-blades, rubber cement, and photostats, but never in all that half-century have I ever spent eight months on a single project, nor had to work at tolerances of 1/128"/0.25mm... what's that they say about old dogs...??

But at least now that the E.I decals are here I can proceed with my build. The motor is OOB:



... although it's not 100% finished I'm pretty happy with it. I've also been experimenting with sworling effects, these are some of my early efforts, which I'm definitely not satisfied with, but I have a couple of ideas that I'm looking forward to trying.



Amazingly, even though I've been concentrating on this one type (and basically one kit!) since last November, I'm still enjoying myself immensely.

All best,

Dutch

[macsporran]

Wow, the production line is in full swing. A very ambitious project but you are handling it magnificently!
Sandy