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Fokker F.I 103/17 - Werner Voss 1917 - FIN!


Out2gtcha

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Well, I needed a bit of a MoJo pick me up............something simple, small and that I did not have to add a lot of AM bits or resin to, so here we are with a Meng F.1.

I am not putting the Tigercat down, but working on this in parallel so I don't get burned out. From what I can see and have read, this will be a great fitting little kit.

 

I will be doing Werner Voss's F.1 103/17 as it appeared in his final valiant battle against James McCudden and 6 other aces in  'B' Flight of 56 Squadron on 23 September 1917.

 

This will not be a super detailed or slow build (I hope) but rather a quick enjoyable one. I've got more AM than I thought, but will not be using it all. 

Not a TON of plastic in the box, and assembly seems straight forward

 

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Couple bits of AM I found that will all be easy to add, but I will not be using the rubber tires:

 

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Can anyone confirm this is the correct engine?  Looks like it might be more detailed than the OOB Meng kit.

 

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Also will be easing paint and decaling by doing everything in a single fell swoop, with some lovely Aviatic decals. I will be doing the cowl face with some masks created on my Silhouette:

 

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They seem right on with what I can tell Voss's kite appeared like in 1917:

 

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First job up is one of the two things wrong with the Meng offering that I can see, and my kit had both; warped wings (all 3 to one degree or another) and a broken forward cockpit/cowl piece. 

The wings were worse off the sprue than on:

 

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Being under quarantine, and it being -15F to 5F outside lately, I've gotten into tea. Usually a coffee guy, but started having tea for a change, so while heating up some water for tea, prior to boiling it, I used that to warp the wings back into shape. Took all of about 10 min, and gave the peppermint tea a nice plastic wang. Pretty straight now, and really wasn't a huge deal. You can also see the broken part on the middle wing as well:

 

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First up for Voss's F.1 is to remove the stacking pads, fill the skid holes, and fill some of the depressions left on the leading edge sprue gates. I'm also going to be masking the leading edge off and sanding down a bit of the rib/nail detail, but not all of it. 

 

I also snipped off and cleaned up a lot of the first steps to the cockpit assembly:

 

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So far so good!  Things are progressing quickly, and Im hoping this build to be very enjoyable. We shall see.........

 

Cheers! 

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That's the right engine.

For the rigging, I would try finding WNW's detail pictures of the Dr.1.

I think the only exterior rigging is cross bracing of the landing gear and the upper wing, and the aileron wires going from the fuse to the upper wing.  Interior rigging would be cross bracing of the fuse sides.

'Check your references'

:)

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Nice project, Brian!  As a fellow user of food/drink as a modelling aid, can I ask - did you use the steam from the kettle, or a nice warm bath to ease the warp out of the wings? I ask, because I have two of these things in the queue (plus a Roden).  Glad to see it's a redeemable flaw :)

 

Following for sure!

 

Cheers,

John

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Thanks all!

3 hours ago, Sepp said:

Nice project, Brian!  As a fellow user of food/drink as a modelling aid, can I ask - did you use the steam from the kettle, or a nice warm bath to ease the warp out of the wings? I ask, because I have two of these things in the queue (plus a Roden).  Glad to see it's a redeemable flaw :)

 

Hey John,

I boiled up more water than I needed for tea, then put the remainder in a medium sauce pan with high sides and put it back on the stove for a bit.

Right before it started to boil when its quite steamy, I removed it from the heat. I then took each wing and gently dunked each, 1/2 at a time, in the hot water for about 15 - 45 seconds. 

Right after removing the wing from the water I gently bent that wing half the opposite way it was warping for about 5 - 10 seconds. Immediately after holding this position, I held each wing under cold running water as I let go, and the wing came back to what is effectively neutral.

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Nice collection of AM stuff for your F.1 Brian.

 

http://www.wingnutwings.com/ww/productdetail?productid=3161&cat=4

 

If you check out the WnWs site and look at the instructions for any of their Fokker D VII kits you'll find a good guide to rigging the interior control lines. 

The F.1 had exactly the same configuration. It also shows a bit of the fuselage bracing wires which essentially run in a cross hatch pattern with a turnbuckle at the top or bottom. The bracing wires were a loop rather than a single line if that makes sense. You'll also notice the unbleached linen wrapped around the cockpit's upper fuselage frame which is nicely represented in the kit.

 

Cheers,

Wolf

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6 hours ago, Out2gtcha said:

Thanks all!

 

Hey John,

I boiled up more water than I needed for tea, then put the remainder in a medium sauce pan with high sides and put it back on the stove for a bit.

Right before it started to boil when its quite steamy, I removed it from the heat. I then took each wing and gently dunked each, 1/2 at a time, in the hot water for about 15 - 45 seconds. 

Right after removing the wing from the water I gently bent that wing half the opposite way it was warping for about 5 - 10 seconds. Immediately after holding this position, I held each wing under cold running water as I let go, and the wing came back to what is effectively neutral.

 

Thanks for that!  

 

Looking forward to watching the build :)

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First order of business was to remove the sprue gates nubs and fill some of the voids left on the wings. I also took down the middle leading edge seams on all 3 wings, but have not touched the seam/nail head detail..........yet.

 

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I also got the two fuselage halves clipped off the spue and applied some Mr Surfacer to the inside where the wooden triangle eventually will be. I had to shave down a couple of mold gates in that area, but it was easier than filling ejector pin marks. The upper one will be hidden and not see at all:

 

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I also took a small drill bit and hollowed out the side fuselage tubes so they actually looked like tubes. They were fairly narrow in the middle

 

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Next I wanted to add some life to the end model, so decided to put some droop in the elevators. VERY easy things to do, as I just scored the lower horizontal stabilizer to elevator join on each side very slightly with a #11 blade, and used two pieces of small balsa wood to clamp both elevators at the same time and ever so slightly bend them down (stab is upside down here):

 

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Putting all the main parts together, Id nearly forgotten how itty bitty this thing will be!

If anyone is interested, the fit so far, just dry fitting everything together, is most excellent.  Very WnW like in fact. 

 

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Now it was time to assemble the Vector resin engine.

 

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Well folks, I took out the OOB engine................then I took out the Vector Oberursel.........The Vector engine still had a tiny bit of flash to remove in the middle of each cylinder. Then I started looking at the OOB engine and how it fit. 

 

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While I had the engine out,  I was thinking if there was a way to wire up the engine, as the OOB part actually had some minor spark plug detail. However, I soon found the fine EZ Line I had was still WAY too big to look even remotely scale. 

So I actually found a use for the "fine" size Uschi rigging, which is normally way too thin for 1/32nd stuff, but in this case, seemed perfect for the spark wires. I employed a copper colored Sharpie pen to color the black Uschi rigging. Worked a treat:

 

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Its just setting together above, but lets just say it fit so well that when you put the two halves together the middle seam damn near just disappeared. So that was it, I just decided to save the Vector for my Micro Mir Fokker D VIII.

 

For now, it was time to forge ahead with OOB engine. After a few hours last night, and another hour or so tonight to get assembly completed, wiring done, and adding some bearing and shaft grease, along with some caster oil weathering the Meng OOB engine is complete:

 

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All for tonight gents. I'm going to jump back into the cockpit tomorrow, so hopefully that should proceed quickly and will be getting ready for some paint on the inside of the fuselage sides so I can apply the Aviatic interior decals.

 

Cheers! 

 

 

 

 

 

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