Roden | Ro 601: Fokker Dr1
Reviewed by Tony Oliver
Overview
Aviation history abounds with ‘obvious’ famous aircraft and their equally famous pilots. Obvious from a point of view that you don’t have to be remotely interested in aircraft to have heard of a Messerschmitt 109 or a Mustang and the average person in the street has more than likely come across these icons of aerial combat if only from watching the History Channel.
Often in spite of an aircraft’s inherent problems the exploits of a select band of pilots ensure its place in the annals of history. The Fokker Dr.I conforms to this idea and is famous not for its incredible manoeuvrability or its superiority in the air war over the trenches, but merely from the fact that it was flown by Manfred Von Richthofen.
This aircraft is worthy of more than being known as the mount of the ‘Red Baron’ being both a supremely effective fighting machine and an innovator of aircraft design and construction.
It’s surprising from this historical context that the only other large scale kit of the Dr.I is in an odd scale and is now not only long in the tooth but out of production.
It’s not surprising from Roden’s point of view that the Fokker triplane was a safe commercial bet for a first large scale kit. That this kit is exquisitely detailed and to a common scale will hopefully mean that we will see some more large scale Great War subjects from Roden in the near future.
Small is Good
Even in 32nd scale, the Dr.I is a small and very basic aeroplane. Without huge amounts of detail to include, Roden have focussed on replicating the external finish, and the surface texture on the fabric covered airframe is superb. Although the images perhaps don’t show this too well, the direction the fabric was laid onto the structure is reproduced and includes restrained surface puckering and stretching around stress points on the fuselage.
Interior detail is refined and the tubular steel construction is replicated by fine moulding, although ejector marks on the fuselage insides will have to be removed.
The Oberursel URII is represented well with the cylinder banks split vertically. It might have been better for the construction to have been whole cylinder heads fitted to the crank, thus avoiding the problem of accurately joining the cooling fins which are very fine and closely spaced. But then this is a common problem with most injection moulded radial or rotary engines.
The few parts that replicate metal have a very slight roughness to their surface presumably due to the majority of the part being fabric and the cowling and upper gun decking will benefit from a polish with something like Mr.Surfacer.
Details include separate flying surfaces with optional elevators, separate wheel inserts and both Axial and Lorenzen propellers.
Also included are two forms of the LMG 08/15 guns. One pair with moulded cooling jackets, the other without. The moulded ones are really good whilst the latter is stated in the instructions as using an etched metal part but this was either missing from my example or isn’t included. As it doesn’t appear on the instruction parts list either, it might be something of an optional extra…Detail on the guns is good but one side suffers from a slight moulding sink. As with the engine there is probably room here for resin replacements.
Decals are printed onto a large sheet and include several forms of the national markings including iron crosses and later Balkenkreuze included to enable the four examples to be finished.
The sheet covers four of the triplanes' more well known pilots. Obviously a red triplane has to be included in some form with Richthofen’s partially red 477/17 supported by Kempf’s striking ‘kennscht mi noch?’ (Remember me still?) also of Jasta 2 are here whilst the other two examples are the all black Jasta 7 machine of Carl Jacobs and the very distinctive black and white striped machine of Ernst Udet. Incidentally Udet inherited this machine with its ‘die optische taeuschung’ or optical illusion markings from Hans Kirschstein of Jasta 6. Udet added his personal red ‘LO’ marking to the aircraft.
Conclusions
Roden’s smaller scale kits are well known for quality and accuracy and this foray into 32nd scale is no exception. Hopefully the success of this kit will see more Great War aircraft being kitted and I suspect there are plenty of modellers out there who would jump at the chance for some new large scale subjects such as SPAD’s, SE’s and Albatros to name but a few. Even the largest Great War aircraft take up little more room than the average quarter scale kit, its about time WW I fans had a little more to choose from.
Highly recommended.
© Tony Oliver 2005
This review was published on Saturday, July 02 2011; Last modified on Wednesday, May 18 2016