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Although the model is really nice, I decided to improve it a little bit by adding details that give the appearance of fragility unique of WWI airplanes. Also, I chose a very colourful machine, the one flown by Ltn. Ulrich Neckel while he was CO of the Jasta 6 in the last months of the war.

Building

I decided to follow the instructions starting with the construction of the engine. The Mercedes engine is a little work of art - I just added some copper wire and a couple of home-made decals for the engine’s data plate. Once finished, the engine looked so nice that I decided to leave one of the cowling panels open. Perhaps Roden should start selling those engines separately because many of use would buy them to replace the Mercedes engines of other kits.

The second thing I did was begin to work on the interior. The kit comes with the tubular structure of the inner section of the fuselage halves, but the D VII’s came from the factory with lozenge fabric covering the whole aircraft. This would be visible on the sidewalls of the cockpit. Because the kit does not come with an “inverted” lozenge decal, I made them by hand. I scanned the kit’s upper lozenge decal and applied the “mirror” tool of Corel Draw to “invert” the lozenge, then lightened them to replicate the look of the lozenge from inside. With this ready, I printed the “inverted” lozenge using Expert Choice’s decal paper for Ink jet printers. Unfortunately, I found that placing the decals on the kit’s tubular structure was very difficult, so I removed the tubular structure and replaced it with stretched sprue.

I painted the tubular structure light gray (Gunze H-61). I am not sure about this color, but some sources state that OAW machines were painted light gray so I used the Fokker D. VII of the RAF museum as a reference.

I made the cover for the fuel gauge with thermoformed plasticard because Roden did not include it in the forward cockpit cover piece, instead making a little hole in it to allow the fuel gauge to pass through and be glued to the fuel tank. I do not know why Roden did not include the cover, because all of the pictures of real D.VII’s I saw showed the cover.

With the fuselage halves glued, I started the most difficult part of the building: the nose-engine assembly. I began with the side cowlings; after seeing several pictures, I found that Neckel’s plane had less louvers than others. Removing them, I also discovered that the starboard side cowling had three louvers where they should have had four (shown in the picture).

To solve that, I carefully removed one of the “extra” louvers and glued it into its new position, next to the line of three louvers. I cannot blame Roden for this mistake because Albatros publications’ “Fokker Anthology” drawings made the same mistake - Roden probably used them as a basis for the kit. The “fourth” louver is clearly visible on many starboard pictures of OAW mid-production Fokker’s. The cowlings were sanded down from inside and rescribed, simulating the “interior” of the louvers and access doors. Following the instructions, I assembled the engine mount and then attached it to the engine. With the engine assembly ready, I stuck it to the main fuselage. This required a lot of test fitting and sanding.
About the radiator, I found that D.VII’s of the same batch had different types of radiators, but the most common version did not have the “cut out” in the upper part, so I filled it. Then I glued a mesh (taken from a filter) and the “shutter” to the inner part of the radiator, necessary because I wanted to leave the side-cowling door open and the inner part of the radiator visible. The last thing I did on that section was drill and paint the exhaust pipe.

The wings were easily assembled - I only sanded the inner edge of the upper half of the lower wings down a bit to prevent an anhedral position once glued to the fuselage. I did not attach the ailerons or the control horns to the upper wing because the positioning of the lozenge is different from the rest of the wing.

I also did not attach the lower wing to the fuselage because it was easier to paint the stripped scheme of the fuselage without the lower wing.

The next step was applying the lozenge decals over the wings. To aid in getting the lozenge decals to lie down, I gave the upper and lower wings several coats of Tamiya gloss white, enough to give the decals something to stick to. Also the white enhanced the colors of the decals. I left the wings to dry for a couple of days and then applied the lozenge decals. I followed the Fokker D.VII anthology vol.2 drawings for the application of the lozenge. With the lozenge ready, I applied the rib tapes (even over the edges of the wings). It is important to remember that you must cut them because they were printed in the same carrier film. I used Gunze decal solution to pull down the decals, especially over the wing tips. Next I painted the lower wing’s footsteps silver.

Without doubt, applying the lozenge was the most tedious work of the building process; it took me almost three days.

With the wings ready I made the holes for the control wires and rigging with a 0.3 mm drill.

Some things to note about the struts is that they are thin enough to look accurate, and just strong enough to do their duty; but be careful with these during construction, because they are delicate enough to break easily.

I chose a different propeller, an Axial propeller (Part B3) than the one stated by the instructions a Wolff Propeller (Part B4); I decided to do this based on a picture of Neckel’s plane. It appeared that the propeller was not made of laminated wood, but instead had a coat of a dark varnish (something observed on many German propellers). Because of that, the propeller was painted in a “plain” color using the following technique: first, you have to know of what kind of wood the propeller was made of. With the wood chosen, paint the propeller with a light brown or tan color - only practice will tell you the exact color to choose. Let it dry for a day or two, then apply several coats of a non-acrylic enamel gloss varnish (I use Testors). Let it dry, then use a wood tint, which come in different shades for different kinds of woods, to stain the propeller. For this model I chose oak, because late in the war, the blockade of Germany by the Royal Navy deprived manufacturers of imported mahogany, leading to the use of native woods such as oak, elm and ash.

The next step is applying the tint to the propeller using the technique of "dry brush" with long brushstrokes. Use a big flat brush for big surfaces and a small one to make the grains, then coat the propeller with acrylic satin varnish. This is not an easy technique, and you will need a bit of practice and patience to achieve good results.

I decided not to apply the axial logo decal to the propeller, because this particular plane did not carry it.

Markings and painting

As I said, I decided to build the machine flown by Ltn. Ulrich Neckel, an 30 victory ace and one of the last recipients of the famous Orden pour le Mérite.

Painting this model can be summed up in few words: masking, masking and more masking. First, I painted the fuselage with Tamiya gloss white, then I started the tedious process of masking it with thin strips of Tamiya’s tape.

I want to explain why I painted the stripes straight over the fuselage during the construction. I used the Albatros productions’ book Von Richthofen’s Flying circus, which carries a profile and a plan view of Neckel’s plane, and followed the kit‘s instructions. Both sources state that the stripes over the upper surfaces were diagonal, but I was not convinced because, if the stripes were diagonal, the stripes over the cowling could not be aligned, and pictures of Jasta 6 planes show aligned stripes. The other option was that the stripes on one side of the fuselage join the previous stripe on the other side of the fuselage, but the resulting angle was clearly not correct. So the only possible option is that the stripes run straight across the upper surfaces. With that in mind I did a little experiment: I painted Tamiya masking tape black, cut it in the same sized stripes I would use on the model, and I put them straight across the upper surfaces. I took a picture from the same angle as the pictures of the real plane, and I found that they were very similar (shown in the picture taken from behind the model) . I made the decision to paint the stripes straight over the upper part of the fuselage. At this point, somebody at the Aerodrome forum told me that Greg Van Wyngarden had arrived at the same conclusion in his Fokker D.VII Aces (Part 1) book.

Roden states that the wheels’ covers were painted in the striped scheme on both sides, but I painted the cover leaving the inner side of them black based on pictures of other machines of the same unit.

I painted the tires medium gray because it was the most common color for WWI tires (especially German tires); the black tires, seen on many early planes in museums, are generally from later production, after the addition of carbon-black became universal.

With the fuselage and wheels stripes ready, I painted the nearest part of the forward cockpit cover with gray (Gunze H-61) and the rest purple, made with a mix of white (Gunze H-1), Light Blue (Gunze H-45) and Flat Red (Gunze H-13). Next I cut Tamiya masking tape to represent the geometric forms. I applied them to the cover and then I painted it with Gunze H-302 green (FS34092). I let it dry and then removed the masks, revealing the underlying purple. I painted the axle wing with the same colors.

The problems began with the application of the masks, because I had already applied the lozenge and rib tapes on the wings. Unfortunately, even with several coats of Gunze gloss varnish, part of the lozenge and a couple of rib tapes were lifted with the mask. Fortunately Roden provides extra sheets of lozenge and rib tapes, so I used them in this case. Also, I had problems painting the very thin black line around the fuselage crosses, because it was so thin.

I weathered the model using pastels and sprays of a highly thinned mix of brown and black paint. The last task was to apply a coat of Gunze Matt varnish.

Final construction

With all the components ready I started the final construction.

I used the kit’s machine guns but I replaced the plastic jackets for etched ones from an Airwaves set. I also added the empty cartridge, chutes and the machine gun’s leather pads. Next, I attached the blast channels over the upper cowlings.

Prior to installing the upper wing, I glued the machine guns, tachometer, and the windshield (made with a little piece of thermoformed clear acetate) in place.

Then I stuck the upper wing in position, and, in doing so, found that is better to install the outer struts “N” first. Next, I attached the “N” struts to the lower wing and then to the upper wing using cianoacrilato. Do not forget to check the alignment and the incidence of the upper wing. I did this without problems but I found some fitting problems with the inner struts, and had to shorten some of them.

With the upper wing in position, I attached the most delicate parts: horizontal stabilizer, vertical fin, rudder, rear tail supports, upper wing mirror, tail skid, step, landing gear and grab loops. These were made of copper wire (remember that OAW machines had them turned upwards) and were painted before installing.

Next was the rigging. It was accomplished with a very thin plastic thread, an easy task because the D.VII’s had very few wires.

With the rigging done, I coated the model with Gunze satin varnish to finish the model.

Conclusion

The model was really fun and interesting to build. The parts fit well and there were no major problems during the building process. My only complaint is the decal register.

It was challenging for me to paint this plane, so I hope you like the results.

References

Fokker D.VII Antology Vol. I, II, III. Albatros Productions.

Richthofen’s Flying Circus. Albatros Productions.

Fokker D.VII, In Action. Squadron/Signal Publications.

The Fokker D.VII. Profile Publications.

Fokker D.VII, Kagero.

Kaiser Aces, Kagero.

Fokker Aces (part1), Aircraft of the Aces 53. Osprey publishing

Fokker Aces (part2), Aircraft of the Aces 63. Osprey publishing

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