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A different Fee - 1/72 scratchbuild FE 2d


pheonix

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Evening All,

 

I seem to have lost my mojo of late - if anyone finds it can you please pm me and I will send you my address so that you can send it back. Winter is never a good time for me and I seem to be suffering a bit from seasonal lack of energy. I have ideas for several possible projects but frankly I cannot get the motivation to start one. Instead I am going to try to pick up on a long term project which I have been tinkering with for too long - not quite a shelf queen but a stop-start affair which I have decided to bring to a conclusion sooner rather than later. Unfortunately I have temporarily mislaid some of the photos of the stages which I have already completed, so I am having to trawl through my photographic library to find them. (I had no idea about how many photos until I started to look for photos relevant to this project. Normally I create albums straight away but for some reason I failed to do so for this model). Updates will be a little sporadic as I

a. find the photos of the stages completed thus far,

 

and b. hopefully continue with the model until it is finished.

 

Many modellers have an FE2b in their collection - WingnutWings have produced two variants in 1/32 scale and Aeroclub produced a 1/48 scale kit many years ago. There is a vacuform kit, (rare I believe), in God's Own Scale, but I chose to convert an old Veeday BE2c and some parts from the Airfix DH 4 into an early FE 2b. If I had waited for a couple of years I could have used the Airfix BE 2c as the basis for the conversion. (The FE 2b and BE 2c had common wing components which meant that I only had to make the centre section of the wings for the FE 2b: alternatively wing parts from two kits could have been used). This was made shortly after I had returned to modelling after a 30+ year break about 7 years ago. The result of my efforts look like this:

 

49420419427_b151af31c8_c.jpg

 

49420419457_dd9dcbd3f0_c.jpg

 

This will be the subject of this scratch build:

 

49420428177_0f045bb67f_c.jpg

 

The FE 2d differed from the 2b by having a Rolls Royce Eagle engine in place of the Beardmore, a different radiator, modified nacelle, four bladed propellor and in the case of the subject I have chosen the Trafford Jones undercarriage (as shown on the cover above).

 

I have made the wings and flying surfaces, (and found the photos), in the usual way: 30 thou plastic card which had been immersed in boiling water in a 4 inch diameter pipe was the basis for the wings. These were cut to plan shape and the ribs added by cementing Evergreen 10 x 20 thou strip. This was lightly sanded to smooth the edges. The tail surfaces were also cut form flat 30 thou card.

 

49421511791_d175670617_c.jpg

 

49420442037_06b362c936_c.jpg

 

I have also made the nacelle parts using the push mould technique. I had hoped that I might be able to use an FE 2b nacele and modify it but that was not practical so I made a new set of moulds. This image shows how I had started to cut out the observer's cockpit:

 

49420219981_e7a0bf303f_c.jpg

 

More updates will follow in due course.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

P

 

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Fantastic project, I wish there was a decent 1/72 injected kit of the FE2.  Excuse my ignorance, but what is the purpose of immersing the wings in boiling water in a four inch pipe?

 

AW

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Andy,

 

My text was not clear: I immerse a sheet of 30 thou card into boiling water to bend it. I can the cut lengths of plastic to make the wings - this gives the slight curvature of the chord of the wing.

 

Hope that makes sense.

 

P

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Excellent!  I am currently reading Sagittarius Rising and C Lewis writes that FEs were worthy of some respect as fighting machines.  Not usually taken on by the “Hun” unless they had the numbers.  

 

I’ll follow along if there’s room.

 

Dennis

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Rob: Here is an image of the pipe that I use:

 

49426750001_a895f4d0b0_c.jpg

 

I place a sheet of A4 plastic into this tube (it could be another size) and press it against the sides of the tube with a long piece of 1/2 inch (1 cm) dowel. I have to press the plastic a little because it does resist conforming completely to the curvature of the tube. The curvature does not have to be complete - a small amount of mis-fitting does not matter. The plastic sheet looks like this when it has been extracted:

 

49426763761_e99433b185_c.jpg

 

You can see that I have marked out a top wing for an Otto Doppeldekker on this sheet.

 

I am indebted to Stevehed for this idea.

 

P

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Dennis,

 

You are quite correct to quote Lewis re- the FE 2B, (his book is extremely interesting and I recommend it to others very highly). The FE 2b still has a lingering reputation in some quarters as being a death trap which is simply unwarranted by the historical record. When it came into service in the summer of 1916 it was more than a match for the Fokker and Pfalz monoplanes which it encountered, as it was heavily armed and slightly faster. It was also more manoeverable than the monoplanes and could absorb much more punishment. It was at least as important as the DH 2 in ending the period of the "Fokker Scourge" in 1916 and helped the RFC gain air superiority for the battle of the Somme. It was not really until the Albatros scouts appeared in late 1916 that the Fee met its match, but then defensive tactics were adopted which made them harder to shoot down. Skilled pilots of the calibre of von Richtofen could them down but usually when they were isolated, not in a group. (von Richtofen was no fool: he did not usually attack the enemy unless he thought that the odds were in his favour). However due to the lack of suitable faster tractor fighters in the early months of 1917, the RFC continued to fly FE 2b's long after they had really become obsolete as front line day fighters/observation aircraft on the Western Front, and then losses began to mount alarmingly. Sadly it was this later period that critics focus on and remember and it was this partial view which distorted the truth for quite a long period of time. The DataFile no 147 quotes the first hand experiences of crews: in one of the examples quoted the crew states how their aircraft was badly damaged yet the pilot was still able to get back to the landing ground. Other examples show that their machines were both liked and valued by their crews, at least until the spring of 1917.

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Quote

 I am currently reading Sagittarius Rising 

I've read this it's a great book, although I found his accounts of his time in China less interesting.  You should try reading Open cockpit or no parachute by Aurther Gold  Lee or one of the best aviation books I've read  "duelling above the trenches" by Dan Sharp.

 

The FE is amazing btw, you must complete it.

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Oooh lovely. No surprise to see another pusher on your bench either! I have the vac kit (in fact I had 2, but the newer one found a new home in return for, if I remember correctly, an Otto Doppeldecker!)

 

Ian

PS Days on the Wing by Willy Coppens is also a great read!

Edited by limeypilot
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4 hours ago, limeypilot said:

Oooh lovely. No surprise to see another pusher on your bench either! I have the vac kit (in fact I had 2, but the newer one found a new home in return for, if I remember correctly, an Otto Doppeldecker!)

 

Ian

 

Right oh then Ian, an Otto Doppeldekker next followed by the Fee!

 

You will probably remember that I scratch built a Doppeldekker a few years ago - the build log is at https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=6328.0

 

P

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On 1/24/2020 at 1:24 PM, limeypilot said:

The Taube is next, then I really MUST finish the Muromets. After that though....

 

Ian

Do I hear the sound of vaccilation...?

 

Looking forward to seeing the Taube and Muromets: both will be first class models as usual.

 

P

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evening All,

 

Did I write that my mojo had gone on a wander? Well it does not seem t have returned in spite of Bandsaw Steve's attempt to whistle it back...!

 

However I have pottered around a bit and at last have something new to show. The cockpit assembly is now finished - it is simplified from the original as I do not have the patience to fiddle any more with cut-out windows for the pilot and holes in the pilot's seat. Anyway most of that kind of detail is lost in this scale when everything is assembled and besides I do want to finish this before the turn of the next millenium.

 

Here is the cockpit - the wood effect was obtained with oils (mix of burnt and raw sienna). All of the parts are made from 20 or 30 thou card bent and filed/sanded to shape.

 

49493647531_e42557ecb2_c.jpg

 

49493647581_058ff6217e_c.jpg

 

The engine has been a headache. I also forgot to take photos of the assembly sequence (I am having problems remembering even more important things at the moment), but what matters is that it represents an early Rolls Royce Eagle, which was a 12 cylinder V with lots of pipes and paraphernalia on the top. Fortunately the DataFile on the FE 2d provides a drawing and there are good photos of kit Eagle engines from WingnutWings, so I did my best to replicate most of the details from those sources. This is again simplified - it could not be otherwise in this scale, and given that it will be largely hidden under the top wing and few people know what it is supposed to look like, I am satisfied with what I have achieved.

 

I built the sump block from laminated card, the cylinders from rod and the pipework from stretched sprue and wire from a telephone cable.

 

49493647406_cc7855d5db_c.jpg

 

49493647451_a3d0ed96dd_c.jpg

 

I completely forgot to put in a scale for both, but the engine is approximately 5/8 inch (1.5cm) and the cockpit assembly is 7/8 inch (2cm), which means that they are a bit small. To help I have photographed the cockpit against the fuselage moulds and you can see that I have also added the engine air louvre panels on the sides of the fuselage.

 

49494168787_70ef45ef31_c.jpg

 

More when I have joined the fuselage halves and done a good deal more filling and sanding.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

P

 

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Yes Stuart, I am still following the build, but his seems to have become stalled. I do hope that it gets finished because it is truly a magnificent piece of modelling.

 

Thanks for the encouragement Ian - I too am hoping that it will return one day. Actually things have been a little better in the past couple of days, but that has happened before and then all goes away....

 

P

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evening All,

 

I made the radiator from 30 thou card. I scribed two pieces of 20 thou card to represent the shutters.

 

49549880866_7934146dd0_c.jpg

 

The cockpit sub-assembly was added to the fuselage parts which were joined and the radiator added behind the cockpit. The lower edges of the nacelle moulds are rounded whereas on the original machines these were square. I used a method which I learned from another modeller who made vacuforms, (and whose name I cannot remember), which was to glue a piece of stretched sprue along the corner which I wanted to modify.

 

49550107462_f6ca660077_c.jpg

 

Filler was then plastered into the gaps formed between the sprue and the side and bottom of the nacelle: when this was dry I could sand the filler back to form a square corner. Unfortunately when I did this I found that the bottom of the nacelle was slightly assymetric so I have had to add more filler to the bottom to try to build up one side to balance the other. This has now been completed and the nacelle is complete. The lower wings were glued to the nacelle sides and a gravity tank which had been made from laminated card and sanded to shape was added to the top wing. I have also drilled holes for the struts in both wings.

 

49550107307_78198ce100_c.jpg

 

49550107362_cc79d01430_c.jpg

 

I have also made the wheels from two discs of 60 thou card and tyres from 40 thou rod. I wound the rod around a paintbrush handle and held the rod in boiling water for about 10 seconds, drew it out and waited for it to cool. The diameter of the coiled rod is smaller than the discs so that when a piece of rod is cut off it will clamp firmly to the disc and hopefully not leave any large gaps.

 

49549391943_2874c98dea_c.jpg

 

49549391873_78c64e66b8_c.jpg

 

The wheels are ready to have axle holes drilled in them:

 

49549391818_baa795e4d1_c.jpg

 

The next stage will be to use the end of a round file to make grooves in the trailing surfaces of the wings so that I can epoxy the booms to them. I will make the booms from florists wire. More on that next time.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

P

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Mojo low?

 

My suggestion is go and build something completely different. Something you’ve never done before & maybe in a different scale to what you generally work. This is part of the reason my model collection is starting to look a bit - ummmmm - eclectic! 🤔

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Sorry to hear of the low-mojo Mr.P but relishing your output. 

Can be a hard time of the year mentally in Northern latitudes regarding light levels and weather so hope you're doing ok.

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Thanks Steve. I may be following your advice with the next project - not sure yet but it will certainly be larger in every sense!

 

Yes Baron, I think that it is the constant rain and dull weather which is having a depressing effect. I have certainly improved since the shortest days and for a time was better....until that is the problems started with the model!!

 

P

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Fantastic work. I don’t recall the FE2b getting any bad press from the aircrews the BE2c did and in fact was nicknamed the quirke and crashing one was seen as a service to the pilots. (Most planes of the era were dicknamed, eg RE8 was Harry Tate, DH9 was the nine ack etc) Yes I read a lot of wwi books :) 


I find my mojo departs me when I set myself too many modelling skill challenges, sometimes I just need to do something straightforward e.g I’m presently shotgunning Airfix vintage classic armour all oob and I’m finding it great fun and a great restorative.  I am also scratchbuilding a Sopwith snark and a Schneider ca1 and the enjoying them too. 

Edited by Marklo
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