vossiewulf

Scratchbuilding the engine is considerably more difficult than the guns. I of course when the very hard road because some reason I don't know, and did it in aluminum. Even doing it in simpler materials is not easy and you'll need to be reasonably good at casting. I'll post some more info later.

If you don't want to total scratchbuild, you HAVE to replace the cooling jackets, they are iconic with respect to German aircraft of WWI and anyone who knows the subject at all knows what they should look like.
 
Here's a mid-road to take - these are the people I use to do custom photoetch as their costs are extremely reasonable and they'll work with you to get it right. In fact I used them for the exact purpose of creating Spandau cooling jackets, unfortunately in 1/12 which doesn't sound like much but it'd be obviously too big for your plane, or I'd send some that I still have. However I think I still have the artwork and if so it's a trivial matter to rescale it. They need vector artwork, one can do it in Photoshop where they are called paths, or Illustrator, which is designed from the get-go to do vector artwork but I find Photoshop easier to learn if you're not familiar with the process.
 
But in this case you wouldn't need to learn that bit if I can find the artwork. They have a minimum size so you won't get just two, I think I had 10 or 12 in the sheet they made for me. If you went with the smallest sheet size you'd be around 50 pounds shipped... maybe 60, or about the cost of one of the Gas Patch guns.
 
That said, unless you prefer to make the Spandau bodies with their exposed gizmology yourself, it would be a much better idea to use the Gas Patch guns if you can afford it.

Yeah, I wouldn't use those, this is where I have a problem with Model Expo aircraft and cannon kits - their insistence on using white metal where it's totally inappropriate. I took forever to do one of the cannon kits because it took many hours to file, sand, fill, and rescribe detail. I recommend either buying the Gas Patch versions or making your own, but as you see they had lots of complicated bits sticking out the right hand side and you either need to simplify those bits or be prepared to spend a few hours scratchbuilding accurate versions, if you do the latter use styrene sheet/plasticard.

Having scratchbuilt quite a few Spandaus including this scale, the accuracy of the Gas Patch version is quite good, only part that looks a little heavy and simplified is the ammo feed. Otherwise looks quite good for a mid-late production LMG08/15 version. 
 
Like all Maxims, it ejected the rounds forward from the lower receiver under the barrel. The long box on the left side is the fusee spring that controlled recoil, the little gauge in the middle is where you set it; back then it helped to have an easily adjustable spring to handle the greater variability of ammo. Can't remember what the top and min values where but it's set in the typical place, about 250 rpm. They were called Spandaus btw as many were made at the national Spandau arsenal and those have the city/arsenal name stamped on the top of the receiver. 
 
Also the cone on the end of the barrel isn't a flash suppressor, it's a muzzle booster to provide a bit more backward recoil energy, the WWII MG34 and MG42 had something almost identical. The Parabellum machine gun that observers used was also a Spandau/Maxim variant, just further lightened for ease of gunner handling and the internal mechanisms were lightened to provide the higher ROF a gunner needs compared to the fixed forward-firing Spandaus.

I always thought one of those would look awesome half and half, only half covered. But I also think it would be pretty challenging to keep everything straight if you do that. If you think you can control the differential stresses, think about that method as it would look pretty cool.

Yes, the two top stringers end one... I thought two frames short but there should be a piece that goes from a couple inches below the top stringer from that frame to the rudder post at the end of the fuselage, that forms a recess on top where the tailplane goes, and it should have a distinctly positive angle of incidence to offset the inherent tail-heaviness. But yes, you can see how assembling an aircraft out of steel tubes required a fancy alignment jig.
 
However, they also didn't have to get it quite as right as you do, very few WWI aircraft had fuselages that were fully cantilever and self-aligning, almost all had internal rigging wires with turnbuckles of some kind, and ground crews had to regularly go through an annoying process of realigning the fuselage through use of those rigging wires because once you got it straight, it immediately started to go out of straight again.

Great, looking forward to more pics. No such thing as too many pics of Fokker aircraft. Well at least the E series and the F.1/Dr.I and the D.VII, in between were some really horrible aircraft before they moved to the thick airfoil section.

I forgot to reply to last message and congratulate you on getting the parts finally. The wings are looking great, Anthony himself would nod approval  You're making great progress, hopefully you can continue with the fuselage, except for alignment issues it should be easier than the wings. 

Not sure I understand the crisis, but that looks like a Dr.I aileron to me. Very nice job leaping into unknown territory and making it across successfully.
 
And if you're interested, here's an interesting a thread on the Aerodrome from 2001 discussing the early Dr. I wing failures that killed Gontermann and Pastoris and very nearly Lothar Von Richthofen also. But the best summarization comes from my friend Dan-San Abbott who has passed away now. The reason I bring it up is that the main cause was weak attachment of the ailerons leading to flutter, which is a type of positive-reinforcement resonance specific to aerodynamics that's been the cause of death of many a test pilot.
 
Gentlemen:
 
The wing failures occurred when the early production Fok.DR.I aircraft were put into a turn. The ailerons had an over long balance which started to flutter as it rolled into a turn. As the flutter progressed it caused a structural failure in the aileron spar. The rib to aileron spar joint was not adequately reinforced. The fabric was tacked to the ribs. When the aileron spar failed it caused the fabric to rip away from the wing structure thus resulting in a total failure of the upper wing.
The corrective action was reduce the chord of the aileron balance, to reinforce the ribs with battens, add a box rib at the end of the aileron cut-out, larger rein-forcements to the rib-aileron spar joint, and stitch the fabric to the ribs. The chord was increased from 980mm to 1000mm on all three wings. There was not a failure of the upper wing main spar. This is just skimming over the corrective action details.
 
Blue skies,
Dan-San

The hell with email addresses, call their customer service line and tell them you've been waiting weeks for an answer and you're not going to drop this call until you speak to someone who can help you. And good luck

Looks great, and that's a real bummer when you're on a roll and then forced to stop because of a problem not of your causing.
 
Are the strips solid or plywood?

Remember the Oberursel UR.II is a license-built copy of the Le Rhone 9J. Until you get the book, google those and you'll find some good photos.

He's Swedish and an airline pilot for one of the major carriers as I recall. You should look him up, he's based someplace in Sweden and has a D.VIIF now along with a series of other aircraft he's built.

Get this version of that book. Getting a bit pricey as it looks like both are out of print, so don't delay. There's a similar book on the D.VII that you should also get if you intend to try a DVII. You should also be able to find copies of them at Abe Books.
 
Also, the best WWI aircraft plans are from Jim Kiger who lives over near me, I bought his entire WWI Aero collection plus I have a complete set of his plans in 1/16th scale for future use. They are so detailed that you can and several people have built full-sized accurate repros from thiem. 
 
Jim is also shutting his business down soon as he's in his 80s, so it's also time to buy these if you have an interest.
 
Edit, sigh, first link I put in was wrong, amending.

One more present for you - a full scale, fully production-accurate Fokker Dr.I with Oberursel UR.II rotary engine built my Mikael Carlson, being flown to its absolute limits. Until 2009 no one had seen that since 1918.
 
And I'm not kidding, watch as he enters the first barrel roll into split S at 0:45, he's too slow on entry and it stalls and departs into an incipient spin all of 300 feet and he does a very quick and amazing recovery to keep from dying. He loads at least 6Gs on at one point too in a high speed max turn over the crowd. He's also built a production-accurate D.VII now.
 
 Mikael Carlson flies the Fokker Dr.1

Other finish things- first if you decide you must do Richthofen, he flew at least six different Dr.Is, only two of which were all red - the rest mostly had tail and upper wing red but the rest was left in the standard streaky green/brown. He was quite successful in 152/17, that would be my choice for a Richthofen Dr.I.
 

 
Also if you see World War I in color they have a nice video of Richthofen getting ready and then departing in an all-red plane. Not only was that plane not red, it wasn't even a Dr.I, it was one of three F.I prototypes Anthony Fokker took to the front for combat evaluation, one each went to Richthofen (CO Jasta 11), Werner Voss (CO Jasta 10) and Adolph Ritter von Tutschek, who was the CO of Jasta 12. It's not hard to know this since they film Richthofen standing next to the markings on the fuselage that says Fokker F.1 102/17. The film was made by Anthony Fokker, he wanted a film showing Richthofen climbing happily into a triplane, he then took the film around to other units and showed it to them so they would start requesting Dr.Is.
 
That would be an interesting thing to do, model the F.1 instead of Dr.I. Differences were visible but fairly minor, the leading edge of the tailplane was curved rather than straight like the Dr.I, the aileron balances had a somewhat different shape, and there were no wooden skids on the lower wingtips like the Dr. I. Those were added after testing because it had relatively tall and narrow landing gear and were notorious for ground looping, and the skids prevented most of them from requiring actual repairs.
 
Tutschek's was 101/17, and Werner Voss was killed in 103/17 in an epic 20 minute dogfight, him alone vs. 6 aces of No. 56 squadron SE5as, McCudden called it the most masterful flying he had ever seen.
 
Here's something quite close to what I believe 103/17 looked like, and I've been in more than one argument about this. In fact you can pretty much start a bar fight at the Aerodrome instantly by walking in and saying "HEY GUYS IM NEW AND I THINK VOSS' COWL WAS YELLOW". Seriously, violence ensues.
 
The F.1 prototypes were painted overall in the standard German underside light aqua blue, and then covered with a streaky green'brown like Dr.Is but with a much, much thinner paint that turned it into more of a wash than a layer of paint. McCudden called it "silvery blue" and other No.56 squadron pilots all called it blue green.
 

 
 
The reason for the bar fights is the photo below, the other cool thing about 103/17 is this face Voss had his mechanic paint on the cowling. Now the cowlings for 101 and 102/17 were green, and this certainly looks green. However, in WWI they used orthochromatic film that often turned what was known to be light yellow into a very dark color like we see here And when his unit flew Dr.Is they did so with yellow cowlings, but that was after his death. It was odd enough that he painted a face on a combat evaluation aircraft, it would be downright odd to start customizing it with your unit colors when the manufacturer is taking it back next week Also Voss' mechanic said he didn't remember doing anything but painting the face.
 

 
 
And here is every known photo of 103/17.
 
Another very good one to do would be Josef's Jacobs' witch of the north Dr.I. He has the most kills by far of any pilot in Dr.Is and flew it longer - he operated his with 130hp Clerget rotaries from Sopwith Camels along with British propellers, which made it probably 4 or 5kts faster than a standard Dr.I. He had all the troops near where he was station looking for engines and props, offering a case of champagne for undamaged versions of either. He had a D.VII in the same markings, he would take that if they were going to be operating above 10k or so, at low alts he continued to take his Dr. I and would be a sole triplane leading a flight of D.VIIs.
 

 
 

She should be very pretty with the radical French hull form. Wasn't this one of the non-Sané designs? I seem to remember there was one guy who particularly favored the angular hull forms. I have Boudriot's book on French frigates, I should go look it up.

Done with deck except for clear coat. Starboard side fought tooth and nail to go off the rails, starting when I managed to put a big belly sweep into the first nibbed plank that's supposed to be all nice and straight. I had to make wider planks and then taper the rest of them on the starboard side to slowly remove that bend over four planks, lots and lots of fitting and sanding. But it looks reasonable now.
 
 

A few more strakes on including the tricky first nibbed one.


This wasn't easy as most of the plank is a cutout into the margin plank. Now had I planked a deck before, especially including straight-run nibbed plank ends on bow and stern I might have noticed that there was a chance that the nibs would interfere with the scarfs. But I hadn't so I didn't and we have a less than perfect location for the scarfs considering where the first nibbed plank ended up.

And overall.

 

The best way to cut those plates cleanly and this is also true of photoetched brass, is to cut them on glass. Get a small piece of 1/8 tempered glass with nicely rounded edges and it's a perfect surface for making those kinds of cuts. Also, both cutting the metal and running into glass is hard on Xacto edges and they're expensive, so the best thing to do cost-wise is to buy a nice cheap pack of 100 single-edged razor blades and use those for thin metal cutting. 
 

An excellent example of a Linus Battlei, probably of the species Franconium LXXIV.
 
And Tiziano gets the singing of angels also, like Amalio, as it's the only proper music to match his work
 
 
 

I was just thinking that Popeye could probably make an awesome steampunk clipper. No really, that would be awesome. We just need to explain what steampunk is
 
I think the best simple explanation though is imagine that H.G. Wells thought up jet engines and all sorts of powerful machines (that would be powered by steam, since those were the engines of his time) and flying vehicles and what they would look like and how they would work if that were the case. Re-imagine what followed Victorian/Edwardian England if Nautilus became the pattern for an amazing range of new machines.
 
Generally good fun right up to the point where they start taking themselves a tad too seriously, but that could be said about almost anyone. Including ship modelers



 


 

Yeah, I keep running into those things, totally obvious in retrospect but look fine to the untrained eye up to that point.
 
I have an S10, but I've always used Android. It's pretty consistent across all UIs so once you get the pattern you won't have any problems with anything.
 
As for your new camera, for some reason the shots of you making the gaff have a very narrow depth of focus, almost like you have a tilt-shift filter turned on. However the longer shot of the ship itself doesn't seem to have that problem.

That much joinery, all of it completely flawless... I'm still going with Amalio being an eight-armed alien. Maybe 12 arms. And at least 16 eyes.

Or use steam, you can even do it in the microwave, just wrap the wood in wet paper towels and nuke it on high. Then pin around a form and let cool.