Explorer1250

It all depends on how realistic you want to get and how much money you are willing to spend. Eduard's lozenge in last year's OAW ProfiPack didn't floor me at all. It's much better than Superscale's back in the day but not remotely as good as Aviattic, which is my personal preference. I would use Eduard lozenge as a basic layer for overspraying with a thin or slightly translucent coat of colour, so that the lozenge shows through just a bit. On the original aircraft the paint did not always cover the camouflage 100%. If you intend to make several D.VII's it might pay off to buy the plastic in the shape of cheap overtrees and then invest the saved money into some good lozenge stuff. Unfortunately shipping is quite high when ordering from Eduard directly. I know 'cause I did it. With the OAW ProfiPack Eduard avoided schemes that needed lozenge material for the fuselage and tail, this time some lozenge for the fuselage should be included. The choice of decals for the Albatros-built D.VII is not very surprising. Eduard chose to stay on safe ground and picked only well known aircraft. Degelow's "white stag" has been covered by Roden and Pheon before and I bet the Eduard decal does not match the Pheon decals quality-wise. Raesch's trident or pitchfork was done by Superscale decades ago. Noltenius' "Hertha" can also be had from Printscale. By the way, I think that the light coloured tail unit (which I take to be light blue or sky blue rather than white) was applied after Noltenius left the Squadron and the plane was inherited by some other pilot. Noltenius probably had just a yellow painted tailplane (no overpainting of the rear fuselage) and he cannot have flown this plane for more than a week or two. Beckmann's "wavy line" wouldn't be THAT difficult to paint by hand. Blumenthal's "Nickchen IV" is the one scheme that has never been done as decals before and it would be next impossible to DIY these decals or hand paint them.

Eduard did a much better job with the engine for the D.VII than they did with the Albatros D.V engine. But Mercedes- and BMW-engines only differ in the carburettor part, the crankcase and the cylinders are generic parts for both engines. The second engine that is included in the Eduard kit is the Austro-Daimler that is intended for the MAG-built version of the D.VII, release slated for December 2019. I consider the Roden engines nicer and more detailed than Eduard's, added to this Roden provides two complete engines with each kit. You can only build the Mercedes or the BMW from the Eduard kit (no spare for upgrading other kits).

I have to correct the statement I made in my previous post about the Eduard wings being overscale - they match the known figures really well! They didn't match some of the scale drawings in the Windsock Anthology series but it is not the Eduard wing that is overscale, rather some Windsock drawings are underscale! I gathered the dimensions of an original D.VII given in the L'Aérophile report of 1918 vintage for OAW-built D.VII 2009/18 (see Windsock Anthology 2) and compared them to the model's dimensions. I'm glad to say that both Eduard wings have the right dimensions! Even the MAC- , Revell- and ESCI-kits are very close, only the Roden wings are too short, they match the underscale Windsock drawing. I used a caliper -not a ruler- to measure the span on the kits. Paul's suggestion in post #5 of this thread "It takes about 2 minutes to file enough plastic away from the wing ends and fuselage sides, then it's fine" is actually not the proper remedy to cure the tight fit of Roden's lower wing. Better would be to cut the lower wing in half and insert a small strip of plastic to match the width of the fuselage. This way it's possible to get a little closer to the lower wing's proper span.

The kit is out now and my first impressions are: this is the most comprehensive and most finely molded WWI injection kit in this scale so far. I test fitted a couple of parts and fit seems to be quite good, as could be expected (though the lower wing is a bit too tight fitting with the fuselage). The wing trailing edges, the tailplane and the interplane struts are all commendably thin. There are two sets of fuselages included, one for a mid production OAW-built D.VII with the characteristic small bubble-like air vents and one for a late production OAW-built D.VII with oblong air vents. All five decal options are only relevant for the latter version, decals for the OAW mid-production version are apparently reserved for the Royal Class package which is scheduled for december according to Eduard's May 2019 newsletter. Propellers, radiators, engines, wheels, dashboards and even guns are included in multiple styles and are welcome additions to the spares box and could even be used to enhance Roden-, MAC- or Revell-kits that are left in your stash. As this is a Profipack edition there is also a small PE-sheet and masks for painting the wheel discs. When comparing the dimensions with the scale drawings in Windsock's D.VII Anthology it appears that both wingspans are just a bit overscale. The tailplane is spot on. Regarding the wings' upper surfaces I could do with less pronounced ribs as the Fokker's wing surfaces look smoother to me in photographs than Eduard's interpretation, but that's just my personal view. Eduard's newsletter also shows pictures of the built kit which suggest that the undercarriage struts are a tad too long. I'll have a look into that when I'm building the model. The often seen type of radiator with the two rectangular openings (cooling ducts for the ammunition) is only represented in a version with both openings located on the same level. More often than not these were on different levels. There is a large decal sheet with 5-colour lozenge material including lozenge rib tapes for the wings (only the wings because all of the decal options in the kit have their fuselages and tailplanes overpainted). The lozenge stuff looks a bit too lively in hue to my eyes but ask 10 people on this topic and you'll hear as many different opinions. I prefer Aviattic when it comes to lozenge but what Eduard provides will be adequate for many modellers nevertheless. What I'm missing though is a little bit of paler reverse lozenge for the cockpit sides. Eduard cleverly provides two versions of the dragon for Wilhelm Leusch's aircraft of Jasta 19 as all available photographs only show this aircraft from the left side and nobody knows whether the dragon was facing forward or backward on the right fuselage side. This aircraft requires light rib tapes (either blue or plain linen) which you will have to do yourself. Light rib tapes also apply for Franz Büchner's Jasta 13 aircraft. The lozenge rib tapes provided in the kit will be correct for Max Näther's Jasta 62 D.VII. The aircraft of Alfred Greven of Jasta 12 is a Fokker-built D.VII which can be built from this kit with a few minor corrections (sand away some access hatches that were unique to OAW-built aircraft). I don't know of any photograph showing one of August Raben's Jasta 19 D.VII's to be a late OAW-built specimen. He flew an Albatros-built machine (different pattern of air vents) at one time but I think this decoration option is not viable for this version of the Eduard kit. The instructions state that this aircraft was initially painted in red and dark blue (Berthold squadron) which I think is highly unlikely. It seems Eduard hasn't fully understood the personnel and materiel swap between Jasta 15 and Jasta 18 (actually an exchange of squadron names and diaries) when Berthold took command of Jagdgeschwader II. This took place weeks before the first D.VII's reached the front. There's no reason to believe that this aircraft was handed down from Jasta 15 to 18. By the way, Leusch's dragon and Büchner's lion (no longer thought to be a werewolf) of this kit are inferior to Lifelike's renditions. Finally we have a kit that builds into a nice representation of the D.VII out of the box, as all previous model kits had some shape or dimensional issues. It's certainly the best 1/72nd scale D.VII on the market by far, but still not quite perfect.

I have wanted a civil DA-42 for a long time and ordered this UAV-kit for conversion. Unfortunately the canopy is a solid grey injection moulded part, not a transparent one. But thr kit looks great otherwise with multiple options for engines and props. There will certainly come out several versions of this kit with different decal options. And hopefully some company will do a vac-form canopy...