Wingnut Wings 1/32 Fokker DVII F

By Karim Bibi

I present to you Wingnut Wings' Fokker DVII/F finished in Gotthard Sachsenberg's beautiful yellowbird scheme...

This is only my second great war build after the Albatros and im just loving every moment of it, so much so, that the wingnut wings stash has grown to 18 kits since September. I just find the aircraft, era, colorful schemes, and men that flew them so interesting.

The research involved and the reading are also a big point of interest to me. I'll give you a quick resume on the gentleman first:

Gotthard Sachsenberg initially started out as a sea cadet in 1913, and when the war broke out he got transferred and assigned as an observer on two seater with MFA2. He then underwent pilot training and started flying Eindeckers with the same division. When MFA2 got changed to Marine feld jasta 1 (MFJ1) Sachsenberg became commander of the unit. He scored his first aerial victory in May 1917, and went on to score another 30 victories until the armistice. He survived both world war one and world war two and died in 1961 (summary drawn up from my sources which are hopefully correct).

Well, now that we have introduced the pilot, let's introduce the kit.

Being only my second wingnut wings kit after the Albatros, I found this kit to be a bit trickier to build. Tolerances are much smaller for things to fit correctly in place and the internal flight control rigging is quite challenging. Another aspect of the build that was quite challenging was that this scheme required a lot of decaling, and I used multiple producers of decals for different areas and that meant that I each type reacted differently to different setting solutions in order to conform well. To be honest, there isn't any real catches on this kit that an average modeler cannot overcome, you just need patience.

I completely plumbed the engine following reference pictures I had at hand. I added all the wiring in the cockpit for the instruments and the gun synchros. I made the spark plugs by sliding 0.3 wiring into 0.5 OD Albion tubing and cut them to length and put them where the spark plugs should be. I also tried something new for the ignition wiring. I noticed in all the photos that the end of the ignition wiring had a sort of terminal that looks flat and sits on top of the spark plug. To do this I braided two 0.1 wires to give it the braided look and then inserted that into a short cut of brass tubing. I then used flat smooth long nose pliers to flatten the end of the terminal and drilled a 0.3 whole into the flat part of the brass, et voila! looks just like the references, and it sits well in place on the spark plug. for the ignition harness tube I used brass tubing that I cross drilled and painted in a salmon color. The magnetos also got their share of wiring which was bundled and inserted into the tube. I added the front plumbing and also a couple of pipes. The connectors I used are actually electrical wire sheathing. I also added to the engine frame some sort of canister that connects to the engine and then has a tube that goes back towards the firewall (I couldn't manage even with all the digging to find out what it was so if anybody knows please let me know!). The engine case got the salt chipping treatment on top of gray that had been polished with UVDR chrome pigments (a first for me and I must say I am very happy with the UVDR metallic pigments!). Trying to get the yellow paint not to look uniform was also a challenge that was overcome with preshading, postshading and mottling different yellows during the painting process (instructions call out for flat yellow but I didn't really like how it looked so I made my own mix by adding a couple of drops of orange to the mix). For the 4 color lozenges I use Aviattic products and I must say they are wonderful. I use their product line every chance I get... I also selectively used HGW's superset for the build and Gaspatch's resin LMG 08/15 Spandaus. Those are little gems, and to be honest I still havent figured out if they are cast or 3d printed but they are so darn clean and sharp I would recommend you try them out.

A quick factoids of the build:

References were Squadron/signal publications Fokker DVII in action, the Wingnut Wings manual (a source in itself) and the Internet.

© Karim Bibi 2016

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This article was published on Friday, December 16 2016; Last modified on Friday, December 16 2016