Fokker E.II 69/15 Kurt von Crailsheim

[RAGIII]

Dirk,
An absolutely gorgeous cockpit! Your work is awesome from the painting to the details.
RAGIII

[Pete Nottingham]

Coming along superbly now Dirk, great job.

Cheers

Pete.

[Chris Johnson]

Very nicely done. My eye was drawn immediately to the turnbuckles on the bracing wires. I sure hope this is all visible once the fuselage is all buttoned up.

Cheers,

Chris

[pepperman42]

Beautiful work. Looking forward to the next step - just quit work and build models......

Steve

[gcn]

Nice work, I think the black background helps set off the model a treat.

[Des]

You have done a superb job on the cockpit Dirk, your attention to detail is excellent and well executed.

Des.

[mike in calif]

Dirk, Nice bit of work in the 'pit. Looks to be fairly complex when all the detail is added.

[dirk]

Thanks to everybody who has given me a feedback to my last post. You guys keep me hooked on building and posting...

@mike: The cockpit was far more complex tham I expected while looking at that small instrument panel at the beginning. Especially the bracing wires and the wires under th oil pump caused some fitting problems at the stage,when the the fuel tank was positioned together with the instrument panel between the side frames. The tachometer snapped off - a good occasion to take some pics of that instrument.

@gcn: I my opinion, the blackground serves well as a contrast to the wooden and metallic elements and especially during the work in progress.

Anyway, I wish you all happy eastern and some peaceful and relaxing days,

with greetings from Germany,

Dirk

[dirk]

Here are some pics of the fitting of the cockpit into the fuselage. First I glued the cockpit into the left half of the fuselage. Before this, I cleaned every part that needs some glue. The rear side of the cockpit shows some pins to help the cockpit to get into place. After some dry fitting, I found it more useful to cut the pins away on the right side. The fuselage comes together well after I sanded down the rear part of the right side of the cockpit where the wings are fixed. At about 0.5 mm have been sanded down. On this part of the build, dry fitting shows the excellent fit of the kit: even a coat of laquer has its effect on the fit of the halves of the fuselage. The glueing of the fuselage comes in two steps and is extremely clever engineered: The bottom of the fuselage has to be glued by using the lacing as a seperate part, that covers the seam...











Dirk

[Andi Little]

I know it's a ridiculous thing to say? But, all that lovely hard won detail disappearing into the deep dark shadows of the insides!!! It would/will grieve me to no end.

Suffice to say it all looks pretty darn amazing - double huzzahs from me.

[Adam]

I think, the feeling that these parts are there is priceless.

Adam.

[michael]

Fantastic stuff Dirk 

this will be a great reference for anyone building this kit.

michael

[Des]

Faultless workmanship Dirk, you have achieved a remarkable result with the cockpit, very well done.

Des.

[dirk]

Hi friends,

here are some pictures of my work on the cowlings. It takes a lot of time to reproduce those squiggles and it is also very interesting, how this pattern becomes more and more convincing to the observers eye the more of the surface is covered with the pattern. For the squiggles I used Vallejo Acrylics - one drop is all you need for ar about one hour of painting . By the way there is some risk in getting some sort of "snow-blind" in making the pattern on a very low contrasting surface. I will experiment with a finishing coat of alclad to reach a more convincing, unique look of the metal. While trying to overpainted some parts of the pattern a few days before, I made the experience that the underlying squiggles were still be visible.

[Chris Johnson]

I can well imagine that this task would result in some eye strain. It looks very realistic to me. I think you nailed it!

Cheers,

Chris