Eindekker questions

[Herb]

Is there a consensus on the most accurate 1/72 Fokker E.III kit out there? The Eduard mold has a fuselage that is noticeably longer than the Airfix subject, and neither has wings that conform perfectly to the Windsock datafile. ( I'm assuming the Revell mold is right out.) Thanks for your opinions...

 

Cheers

Herb

[wmcgill]

The best single reference is the quite new Windsock Fokker Eindecker Compendium part 2. 

 

Airfix is best, for an E.II and early production E.III (these are essentially the same as each other). The late production E.III had the magazine in the cockpit, not off the starboard side like the E.II and early production E.III.

 

The original Fokker E.III Windsock Datafile plans have major problems (reprinted not to correct scale and some details).

[Herb]

And I've got the older datafile, so there's my problem. Thanks much for the info!

 

Cheers

Herb

[72modeler]

Not my area of expertise, but I do have the 1/72 ICM Fokker EIII and EIV, as well as their Pfalz EIV, and they look very good in the box. You might try Scalemates for kit reviews. I also have the Eduard EIII and EIV, but have never compared them to the ICM kits. Not much help, I'm afraid.

Mike

 

[Brandy]

On 3/26/2020 at 7:55 PM, 72modeler said:

Not my area of expertise, but I do have the 1/72 ICM Fokker EIII and EIV, as well as their Pfalz EIV, and they look very good in the box. You might try Scalemates for kit reviews. I also have the Eduard EIII and EIV, but have never compared them to the ICM kits. Not much help, I'm afraid.

Mike

 

Their Pfalz E.IV is way off btw! Wings are too short and fuselage is based on Fokker E.III so wrong length, it also has too many openings in the cowling.

I haven't seen the others so can't comment.

 

Ian

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello

Ian is correct. Also, fabric sagging on wings and tail is overdone and ICM's rendition of Pfalz E.IV wings has S-shaped airfoil, which cannot be seen on any of aircraft's photographs. Cheers

Jure

[melvyn hiscock]

As an aside to the main points in this, but perhaps relevant, back in the mid 1990s, Eberhard Fritsh and I, on behalf of the Memorial Flight Association in France were allowed to go into the Science Museum early one morning to use their cherry picker to get up to the Eindekker to take some measurements. 
 

Around then there were various different sources of drawings and details, the earliest of which was the French magazine l’Aerophile from 1916. This had a drawing of the fuselage, with some dimensions and a wing profile with most of the measurements readable. I am a great believer of going back to earliest but the most reliable source, so if this had been in a 1916 kid’s comic (not that there was likely to be one but I’m making a point) then I’d be less inclined to take it seriously than if a serious journal had published it, such as l’Aerophile, who may have taken their own measurements. As for some reputedly reliable stuff that appeared in the 30s through to the 60s, and considering that only one original example had survived, and that original Fokker drawings had also not been discovered, anything that differed greatly from l’Aerophile had to be suspect, so it was a good chance to check out how accurate it was. 
 

Blowing up the wing profile was not that easy, the original is about 4in long and, as you start to blow it up, the thickness of the lines increases (I’ve just been having fun with this on my Neville Duke Hunter and that is only about 1/60 to 1/32, whereas we (or Eberhard on the long-suffering KLM Frankfurt office photocopies which, at that time, was doing at least as much WW1 work as anything less important), were trying to go from about 1/40 to 1/1! 
 

This was, of course, done in stages, measuring and drawing in the centres of the datums and the ’known’ outers. Anyone that tried to do similar, to whatever extent on the commercial photocopiers of the time will remember they did not always blow up evenly, so a certain amount of fudging was required. However we eventually ended up with a full-size profile drawn into a few sheets of a A3, taped together. Oh how we laughed when affordable and accessible plotters came along a few later. Oh how I laughed even more when we got outside and I had a parking ticket. I must get around to paying that sometime.... but, meanwhile back in the museum.

 

We laid the profile on the floor and I went up armed with various measuring devices and measured the published points first. This allowed us to check this first part which would allow other dimensions to be extrapolated. 
 

The largest difference we had from the photocopy to the original wing rib was 0.9mm, which, when you consider we measured no more that two original ribs (time and access), the aeroplane was, at that time about 65 years old and had been kept in a dry museum for a long time, the problems of making the full size drawing, and lastly, Fokker’s notoriously bad workmanship, were taken into account, that is pretty good.  When the extrapolated data was added to properly drawn ribs, with correct curves, much of that error disappeared. 
 

We could not access all the fuselage and tail but, again, l’Aerophile we’re not far out. The construction was typically Fokker with various tube sizes telescoped together, suggesting all were 1mm wall thickness. The area around the cockpit (and from memory up to the firewall), was 22mm changing to 20mm behind the cockpit and then 18mm towards the tail. The horizontal unstabilizer spar (remember this is an Eindekker) was also telescoped with thicker tubes in the centre. 
 

I am pretty sure the drawings we got that day have formed the basis of several other people’s ‘own’ drawings, which is life, but they did show l’Aerophile drawings of 1916 to be better than quite a lot produced later.

 

One final point on Fokker’s famous unquality control. Again, from memory, one spar is ash and the other spruce. I think the rear spar is ash, as the bendier wood makes more sense on the spar that does the warping, but on the left hand front spar, about 15-18 inches out from the fuselage, the grain suddenly diverts and shots across the spar between about 45 and 60 degrees. A definite accident waiting to happen.

 

Lastly I am pretty sure that our work ended up in Javier Arango’s fantastic EIII. To me this one looks about as good as it can get. He was also a fantastic guy, generous, very knowledgable yet able to listen, and also fun. He worked closely with Memorial Flight on a number of projects, some of which are still going on in partnership with his son. There is a thread on the interwar forum about when Neil Armstrong flew the Shuttleworth Avro 504 and in the late 1980/ early 1990s. Armstrong also did a series on Discovery Wings, at least one episode featuring Javier’s collection with interviews with him about them. When I visited his five hangars in his garden with its 1200m strip, I was sitting in his DVII (because I could)  I asked him about Neil, as you would wouldn’t you, and he said he was just the nicest, most humble man who was so pleased to not be spending his time answering the same questions about the moon. He then added ‘’Y’know what Melv, it doesn’t get much cooler than sitting in your kitchen drinking coffee with the first man on the moon!’ 

[europapete]

That's a cool memory Melvin, thank you for sharing.