Eivind Lunde

After almost 6 months of postponing and procrastinating I finally finished it. No updates on this, just posting the pictures that proves it didn't become a shelf queen, even though it came close: I had planned to try my hand at making a laminated propeller, but in the end I just couldn't be bothered. I Googled for a simple looking Dr.I propeller and found one in Poland, that I don't think is a good replica since I have never seen a period picture of a light wood Axial Berlin propeller, but who knows. It was certainly easy and quick to paint, so it is what it is. In retrospect I enjoyed the kit, but it's not my best effort. Minimal rigging, but the painting of the Fokker stripes was tiresome so I'll stay away from those schemes until I find a quicker way of replicating them. As with all the Eduard WW.I kits, the ricketiness of the airplanes of the period can make them a bit annoying to build since it is hard to line up things, but that's hardly Eduard's fault. Time to look into the stash again then.

Looks like a great kit, but I'm still miffed that ICM doesn't replicate the rivets. You can argue and say that the rivets theoretically wouldn't be visible to the human eye in 48th scale, but I would say that this is incorrect in real life. Anyway, rivets makes the kit seem more detailed and real, so I'm hoping they will start adding them soon.

World War I aircraft are rickety pieces of machinery at the best of times, but I nevertheless find Eduard's assembly to be pretty annoying. The guns have no firm mounting points, only relying on flat plastic spots to glue them to the fuselage, which makes it fiddly to get them aligned in all 3 dimensions. Maybe one should blame Fokker for this, but I do think it could have been solved better with a bit of thought. I mean, would a square peg here and there have killed them? I guess I have to treat it like a ship in a bottle from here on out, hoping to not accidentally touch the gun assembly and tear it off. Other than that I added some spark plugs and wires to four of the cylinders, which is the only ones you will see anyway, and finished the engine. I see there's a bit of cleaning up to do on the right hand one, but that's quickly done.

Gave the engine crankcase a dark grey Flory wash, the cylinders a black and the intake pipes a brown one. Dead chuffed with the results, especially the copper intakes which are now almost identical to pictures of the Oberürsel engine. Not much will be seen behind the cowling, especially since the UR.II engine moved the intake pipes behind the cylinders, but adding the spark plugs and cables will add some visual interest.

Fantastic work! But didn't the Packard built Merlin's have fewer bolts on the back of the engine due to Packard trying to make it quicker to build and easier to maintain? I read somewhere that they reduced the amount of bolts to half around the auxiliary connection end, but made them thicker to compensate. I'm not saying yours is wrong, only trying to get the story verified by someone who obviously know.

Been a while since this project has moved forward, but I finally did a bit of work today. Since almost everything is now ready to glue together, except engine, guns and propeller, I decided to do some weathering before I commit to glue. Dabbed the fuselage with a sponge dipped in Flory Dark Dirt to remove the brightness of the white decals and introduce some slight, almost imperceptible, variations to the fuselage colours. The few pictures that exist of this plane shows that it is not worn or dirty, so it's better not to overdo it. Kind of difficult to resist, though. Thankfully the Flory washes are very easy to work with in that regard since they are water based and comes right off with a moist Q-tip, so you can redo every overdone mistake you do. Wiped most of it off and went over with a short stiff brush to add some extra dirt along the bottom, where it is most visible in the pictures. The end result is a bit dirtier than it looks, it toned the white decals down nicely at least. You can also see the main weakness with the acrylic oil paint and sponge technique along the slight ridge in the fuselage profile. When the sponge goes over the ridge the ridge squeezes out more paint from the sponge and leaves you with an uneven, broken, line. It's not too bad, but it is irritating. Proper oil colours and using white spirit as thinner would have been better, as I just learned that white spirit is a less aggressive thinner than turpentine and would have given more time to get it right before it would have affected the clear acrylic layer on top of the fuselage colour. Drilled some holes for the spark plugs in the engine and sprayed it Vallejo Chrome, and the intake pipes Vallejo Copper. Both will get some Flory washes to tone the colours down a bit and make them more realistic looking. I hope.

Lifting off the masking is always a nerve wrecking moment, hours of work and immeasurable amounts of mojo can be destroyed in seconds. I had a feeling that the olive brown didn't adhere well to the glossy surface needed to make the Fokker stripes, and unfortunately I was right. But one of the great things with this hobby is that there's always, well almost always, a solution to fix problems during construction. So with a bit of luck the rearmost chip will be hidden by a decal, and the others could be touched up and covered in mud or grime during the weathering I guess. We'll see. Front part of the fuselage looks pretty messy, that could have been avoided using oil colours I guess. Top wing came out well, I thought. The decals are pretty thick which I guess is the price to pay for them being opaque, but settled down nicely with some strong decal solution. I would advice anyone planning to build this kit in this version to remove the weird quality control inspection glass square seen touching the M in KEMPF, as it should be closer to the leading edge and will potentially create problems with the decals.

"Not many parts in this kit" I said, "This will be done quickly" I said (to the cat). But finally most, if not all, of the busywork has been completed, with every part finished in Fokker striped top sides and a kinda turquoise light blue underside. This has been celebrated with a test decaling of the left aileron to make sure the decals are not translucent, which they are not. Thank God for that. The kit is basically modular, so I can finish each piece by itself and then just put them in place. Just like Lego. Still got the engine and propeller to do, but things should pick up the pace from here on.

It does look chordwise in the picture I used for reference and it is shown like that in the Eduard instructions as well. I can also see several replicas having them like that. But in another picture which could be the same plane it seems more diagonal, so I don't know. If I were to do it again I think I would go for more diagonal streaks. But talking about streaks, they are now done. It took a long time, most of it spent waiting for the paint to dry, but it almost drove me nuts anyway. I got better at it towards the end when doing the fuselage when I found out that my fear of thicker paint stripes creating an uneven surface for the decals seems to be unfounded. This lead to fewer passes and more of the underlying colour showing through. Would I do it this way again? Probably not. The sponge technique worked fine, but I think I would have used acrylic oil colours or real oil colours to give more time to get it right. W&N oil colours needs like 5 days to dry, though... Just need to find a way to blend in the metal panel in front of the cockpit and spray the underside colour before I can start adding some decals, as an award to myself for all this menial work.

And here is the middle wing finally done. I did it as a proof of concept, to see if the technique would provide an acceptable result. And I think it did. It isn't perfect by any means, but it is good enough for me as a first try. I sprayed it with gloss floor polish and used the glaze + paint + sponge way of making the stripes. It took a loooong time with many layers before it looked acceptable. A good thing with using many layers of thinned paint is that you end up with a smooth surface for the decals. I think thicker paint could have made an uneven surface., but this looks shiny and even and should accept the decals very well after a sealing round of acrylic floor polish. As I wrote in the post above, pictures of the DR.I I'm building (Kempf had two, or at least two versions of the same plane) shows the streaking of the middle wing to be almost 90 degrees on the leading edge, while the top being more diagonal. EDIT: Or am I being fooled a bit by the perspective of the picture here? 🤔 His other plane, the one with the black outline on the rudder, had all diagonal stripes. Anyho, the colour I used was the AK Interactive Japanese "Ohryuko Nana Go Shuko" (olive brown) colour. It is much greener than it looks in the picture, the Samsung S22 Ultra phone I bought because the reviews raved about the camera quality isn't much of an improvement on my old S8+ and an overall disappointment in that regard. Is it the right colour? Nobody knows. This is a topic as hot as the RLM 83 discussion, so I dare anyone to prove me wrong.

Thanks! I have done some research and you are correct about the angle of the streaks, but that is not true in every case. The second wing on Kemp's DR.I was actually painted almost at a 90 degree to the leading edge, but the other wings was at an angle as you say. I have thought about the Aviatic decals, but while they would give me the perfect finish I think it is a bit like cheating . I will have a go at it myself first even if it doesn't end nearly as well as the Aviatic decals, but may use them another time.

Quite a while since my last update, some of it which has been spent on thinking about how to do the striping. I thought I had the answer with the oil paint solution, but since I use water based acrylics it would be a problem to mix it with the Vallejo without having to mess around with lacquer based gloss paint to protect it. Another problem is that the cowling and lower undercarriage wing should just be olive brown without any stripes, so I'd have to find a way to spray the oil colours to get the colour right. I'm sure it can be done, but I'd rather not have to do it. And what would you even use on top of the oil paint to seal it and the decals? So I tried some experiments using Vallejo and AK Glaze to retard the drying time, and it worked great. Using a piece of sponge I found it easy to recreate the stripes, and the glaze gave me a surprising amount of time to adjust the angle and amount of paint. Never mind the colour or the rough surface in this horrible closeup picture, it's only a proof of concept and it will take several passes to get to the effect I want. So no excuses now, I just have to give the wings their colour and a gloss layer on top and take a deep breath before I start the main job.

That was what I thought as well. It's like Al Pacino in Scarface when he says "Say hello to my little friend!", it looks like a friendly attempt to introduce someone if you just look at the words, but given the context you better dive behind something! Kempf had 4 confirmed victories so he wasn't an ace but still a more than competent pilot, so he could boast a little.

Thanks

To get some idea what awaits me when I will start painting the streaking I sprayed a thin strip of Evergreen in the light grey linen colour and gave it a gloss cote from a lacquer based spray can I have, to protect it. Using W&N oil colours I found after some tests that one part Sap Green to three parts Burnt Umber gave me an believable Olive Brown greenish-brown shade. Further testing showed that having my hand at 90 degrees to the strip was the easiest way to keep the paint strokes straight, and also that oil paint takes a looong time to dry completely as my fingerprints show. Only thing was that I found it impossible to get the thicker and darker streaks on, as the oil paint comes off so incredibly easy with just one brushstroke so it was impossible to get enough colour on. So I waited for about 5 days until the paint seemed dry enough for a second layer and painted over to get the darker brush strokes. So of all the different techniques for making the Fokker streaking camouflage out there, oil paint will be my way for now. I just have to find something that can cover the oil paint in a semi-gloss shine for the decals and protection.