Fokker Dr.I by Torbogdan - FINISHED - Model Airways

[Torbogdan]

It is done! Basically all the internal bracing is done. There are four more (two on each side) where the cock pit is but those are added in a later step. I have also added the in step for the pilot and two handles towards the tail of the aircraft. That was step no 4 according to the instructions. It was a step in my taste, find three parts, polish them a bit, glue them in place and done! The will get a coat of steel paint to match the rest of the airframe.

 

I´ve started on the landing gear, which is the next step.

 

 

 

 

 

And now for something completely different...

 

At a yard sale I found a RC aircraft, I could not resist buying it. It was supposedly easy to fly. I have never flown a RC aircraft in my entire life but figured "how hard can it be?". Well after the first flight which lasted all of approx 4 seconds I crashed and the tail broke off. Well it will be easy to fix with some tape basically. It proves that I might be able to build a fighter but cannot fly it

 

 

 

[Torbogdan]

Almost all parts for the landing gear have been identified, just need to figure out what some "spacers" are. Can´t really tell if they are pre made parts or if I have to make them myself. Anyway I have started to spray paint the landing gear and wheels. I paint them red of course, I will post some pictures to see what you say about the color. I´m not dissatisfied with the color but not really content either... I feel it is a tad too "orange" and bright. But I want to use a spray can as it gives a much smoother layer than brush painting so I might stick with it. when it is dry I´ll post pictures of course.

 

So while I´m waiting for the paint to dry I have started a bit on the engine. Identifying parts and cleaning parts from flash with sand papper, sand disc on my proxxon and files. The parts have quite a lot of flash. I have found some pictures of the engine on the net so I know what the parts should look like which is lucky as some of the parts are almost indistinguishable from what they should look like. But with sanding they start to look rather ok. Feels like I´m chipping out a statue from a piece of rock. From a blob of white metal I slowly grind out the engine part

[Eddie]

Hey howya goin Torbogdan mate, great build so far mate.   

[Nirvana]

Tor,

all the running lines are nicely visible inside the fuselage.

As for RC flying, I gave it a try in my teens, joined a local club trying to learn and gave up.

I was best in crash landing. RC sailing is different, one axle less to think about. 

[Torbogdan]

A quick photo and as I noticed now slightly out of focus. The problem with taking pictures with one´s phone is that on the small touch screen on the phone the photo looks sharp, but on this page with a much larger picture you notice that it is slightly blurry.

 

Anyway, here are the wheels and the color. It is red, very red. It works, I would have preferred a slightly darker red but this will do. It will not be easy to find a darker hue of red in a spray can. 

[CDW]

Flying RC is like learning to ride a bicycle. You have some crashes at first, but then you catch on. Even after you've not flown for a number of years, it comes right back to you once you've learned the orientation and have developed some muscle memory for moving the control sticks. A great hobby, but getting harder to find proper flying sites for large flying models like I love to build.

[Torbogdan]

Engine so far. It has taken a lot of grinding and sanding to get the extra flash of the parts. There are some mould marks on the cylinders that I would like to get rid of. It is probably the two halves for the mould that was not perfectly aligned and tight enough together. 

 

I can´t finish the landing gear until I get my silver spray paint can back from a friend that borrowed it. Going to him tomorrow to reclaim what is rightfully mine! Unless he finished it... There are a few parts that needs to be silver instead of brass, thats where the spray paint comes in.

 

[Lucius Molchany]

It would be cool if Vossie could make some cylinders for you.Filling those seams without destroying the fin detail could be tricky.

[vossiewulf]

That's why I turned my own, one of the biggest nightmares in modeling is trying to make a rotary or radial engine that's cast in two parts presentable. 

 

One option is 3d printing at Shapeways, and here are some models you could use. If you don't know 3D work I would ask someone that you know whether they could help, to get them successfully printed you'd need to scale it to the correct size and also move some parts around for proper printing, and once received you'd assemble it like a small kit.

 

[Torbogdan]

Thanks for all the advice. I will use the engine in the kit for this model. One of my "worst" traits, is that I´m a bit impatient and like to build and finish things. It would delay finishing the model quite some time if I would try to manufacture the engine with a 3D printer. The engine in the kit is in no way perfect but it will do. If I would correct all the discrepancies in the kit I fear I would never finish it.

 

Anyway, I´m working on the engine, all the cylinders are in place and its going fine so far. The reason that I started on the engine was that I needed the silver spray to start putting together the landing gear. Well, the silver spray is salvaged so I will stop with the engine and finish the landing gear!

 

No pictures today but some pictures by the end of the week will follow!

[Torbogdan]

Landing gear and engine. The brass rod at the rear of the "wing" will be repainted. The paint was scrubbed loose as the fit between the rod and the hole was too tight. The wheels have a small access hatch on them. I outlined it in black but it did not turn out particularly well. I will repaint that as well.

 

As for the engine it says that the push rod for the valves should be 1.6mm thick brass rod. 1.6mm in 1/16 scale seems awfully thick. Checking with pictures on the net they are nowhere that thick. I will use much thinner brass rod instead. Probably .8mm. That looks much nicer. The 1,6 mm looks very massive.

[popeye the sailor]

you've made some great progress since I last looked in.   the fuselage looks great!  love the rigging!   I kinda laughed with your plane disaster.....I could tell you a few stories with my balsa planes.  my best flyer was a Guillow's Fokker D VIII - rubber power.  even after the band was spent,  it would glide for quite a ways {story  'bout that one}   I had two worst one,  but the one with the shrotest story was a curtis P-40 warhawk,  that flew straight into the trunk of a tree........ouch!

 

great job!   keep up the good work!   

[CDW]

I think you have done a fantastic job cleaning up those cast metal engine pieces and assembling them. That will turn out to be a very respectable representation of the engine.

The landing gear and wheels look super as well.

[vossiewulf]

Ditto, I'm surprised you got it looking that good, still at a loss to understand why they use the worst casting material possible for such important castings.

 

Anyway, that should look pretty good and I don't think anyone else is going to do better than that. I hope you have enough patience to order some of Uschi's metal powders, they really work well and you have three different metals at least there between the casing, the cylinders, and the exhausts that were copper.

 

It's an Oberursel UR.II which is a license-built copy of the Le Rhone 9J, so pics of either will do fine for detail reference. 

[Torbogdan]

I havn´t bought anything from Uschi but have plenty of other material of equivalent quality from my "paint and weather" storage. I´ve built lots of plastic models so have quite a lot of different materials. 

 

As for the white metal I can only agree. It is not a good material at all. Injection molded plastic would be great but is, for what I know, very expensive (to produce the moulds). Resin would be very good (and fairly cheap) as it also gives very good detailing. White metal feels like something from the 1970:s and with quality and detailing from the -70:s...

 

Last evening I noticed I had done a mistake,  I have mounted the landing gear struts backward! It is not noticeably from the picture but two of the struts are shorter. These should be to the front according to the instructions, mine are to the rear... Sio I hade to carefully pry them lose and will reattach them (correct this time) later this weekend. Luckily I used superglue which although strong is kind of "brittle" when gluing metal to metal so I could separate the pieces without damaging them (well a little paint was scuffed but no more).

 

So yet another remainder, read the instructions first, then dryfit then check instructions again, then check against drawings, the dry fit again. Redo this one more time and then glue. If this hade been plastic and liquid glue I would have been in big trouble...

 

 

[vossiewulf]

"Let he/she who hath never assembleth a model pieceth wrongly casteth the first CA bomb." Book of Vossie 

 

You know what's worse than assembling a piece incorrectly? It's thinking your piece is incorrect, tearing it off, and then realizing that the piece was fine and it's your brain with the problem, and now the piece (that you have only one of and/or took four hours to make) is destroyed. A... friend told me about that happening to him. Yes, a friend who... lives far away and has no email address. Yep, that's it. Yes indeedy.

 

Speaking of the gear, are you going to do the bracing? There should be an X-brace crossing from forward gear/fuselage joint down to the lower forward gear struts.

 

[Torbogdan]

4 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

"Let he/she who hath never assembleth a model pieceth wrongly casteth the first CA bomb." Book of Vossie 

 

You know what's worse than assembling a piece incorrectly? It's thinking your piece is incorrect, tearing it off, and then realizing that the piece was fine and it's your brain with the problem, and now the piece (that you have only one of and/or took four hours to make) is destroyed. A... friend told me about that happening to him. Yes, a friend who... lives far away and has no email address. Yep, that's it. Yes indeedy.

 

Speaking of the gear, are you going to do the bracing? There should be an X-brace crossing from forward gear/fuselage joint down to the lower forward gear struts.

 

 Does he live in Sweden? Cause I also have a friend who did that... My friend glued the pieces wrong (right) broke them lose. Had to scratch built new pieces and glued them in place, incorrectly again... But being stubborn made yet another pair of landing gear struts and added them correctly but  the left piece where the right should have been and vice versa... After that the model (I mean his model) went into the closet until the local exorcist can cleanse it... My friend finished by saying, "and we shall never speak of it again"...

[thibaultron]

A note: Amazon has the "Fokker Dr.I: The Aces’ Aircraft (Legends of Aviation 3D)", 2nd edition hardcover, listed as in stock for about $30 today! I just ordered one

[vossiewulf]

Yeah wow, order it while you can if you have any intention of ever building a Dr.I model. The book has 70 or so pages of nothing but various angles of a very highly detailed and mostly correct Fokker Dr. I 3d model and leaves almost nothing to doubt.

[Torbogdan]

It seems like I ordered the last example! I went to Amazon and it said one item in stock so I immediately hit the buy button...

[Torbogdan]

The parts for the propeller. Important to glue them in the correct order and correct according to the other pieces. It would be difficult to scratch build if I mess this up

Engine. Assembled and primed black. I always use Games Workshop black primer. Very good primer. Gives a thin smooth layer to which paint adheres very well. It is expensive compared to other black primers but I would not use anything else. I especially like that it dries "very thin". Some primes coat details and "smothers" small details, this primer does not. Of course you still have to apply it correctly but doing that it will give excellent coverage and showing details.

 

Now I will start painting the details. I will also, dry brush and wash the engine to make it look much more realistic. 

 

[Torbogdan]

All the subassemblies so far! I have gotten to the moment when I realize "this one is going to get finished!". Even though it is still quite a lot of work there is no doubt it will get finished. Some time as I work on parts and put them away when it is finished and start on the next subassembly it can feel a bit hopeless. But when I put all the subassemblies together... I get the feeling that all I need to do is glue them together and it will be finished, it is a very nice feeling. I start to see a light at the end of the tunnel and it is not the headlamp of a train it is sunshine

[vossiewulf]

Congrats Tor, glad you are very happy with it, that's the only thing that's important in the end.

[Torbogdan]

Firewall in place and dry fitting engine. I have more pictures but have trouble uploading them. Anyway the engine is done with all washing and drybrushing and "aging". Turned out nice. In this picture it is not done, I finished it after dry fitting it here. I have also started to paint all the little instruments that goes into the cockpit area. I do deviate a bit from the instructions but I´m waiting for the book I´ve ordered. The instructions are ok in the kit but I sometimes a bit fuzzy so to speak. I hope the book will give some nice pictures or drawings where all the wires go and how all the "little things and instruments" are mounted and where. So while waiting I´m doing all the small stuff.

 

I hade to improvise the cables running from the engine, it was not enough wire in the kit so I used some scrounged up copper wire, it will be painted of course. I´ll do that towards the end when it is in its correct position. 

 

I have also started on the propeller. I have sanded it to its general shape so to speak. But same here, waiting for the book and hope for some nice pictures on its final shape. I feel it is much easier to remove wood from the prop than replacing it, so I´m careful and only want to do the final sanding when I´m sure about its shape.

 

 

[CDW]

Really looks awesome at this stage. Very realistic.

Does the jig your fuselage sits on come with the kit or is it something you fabricated for the build?

[popeye the sailor]

looks very nice      I've been toss'in around the idea of posting my Guillow's Dr 1 project.   not as much detail as yours though.   super job!

[Nirvana]

Tor,

That engine looks like it is as good as ready for firing up, the "purr" from those engines are amazing.

[Torbogdan]

2 hours ago, CDW said:

Really looks awesome at this stage. Very realistic.

Does the jig your fuselage sits on come with the kit or is it something you fabricated for the build?

It came with the kit. The kit was well supplied with jigs that made building the model (so far) easier, very good by the manufacturer. 

[Torbogdan]

I´m continuing building small parts for the model. Working on the ammo cans and spent cartridges can. Compass and tachymeter is done. they turned out very nice. Now I just need photo bucket to cooperate so I can post the pictures of all the "small parts".

[vossiewulf]

Remember to hook up spark plug wires! That's not hard to do. Plugs at top left of cylinder, wires were bare wire going down to a distributor at the rear center hub.

 

Pushrods are hard enough to see under a cowl to skip, but they're also not hard to add.