Global Scale Modeller

Better late than never! My entry:

FOKKER E. III

In May 1915, the Fokker Aircraft Company Limited in Schwerin fitted their unarmed M5K reconnaissance monoplane with a synchronised machine gun firing through the propeller disc.

The Dutchman Anthony Fokker, then 25 years old, demonstrated the Fokker E.I in front of a Military Commission and immediately received a series production order. The aircraft's success was due exclusively to its innovative armament.

On the 1st of July 1915, Lt Kurt Wintgens (Flight Section 6b), shot down the first enemy aircraft in an E.I.

Over a short period of time the German pilots on the Western Front earned themselves the name, 'Fokker Scourge' with their Fokker monoplanes.

From August 1915, the Fokker E.III was the first German Fighter aircraft to be produced in large numbers. Fokker had to continually expand its production capacity in order to satisfy demand. Altogether about 340 Fokker E.I, E.II and E.III were built.

The massive use of Fokker E series aircraft had a great influence on the conduct of the German air war on the Western Front. Pilots such as Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelke created the first operational tactics for the use of fighter aircraft mainly with the Fokker E.III. Flight manoeuvres such as the Immelmann Turn are today still part of the Fighter fraternity's repertoire.









Just the odd bit of flash......



Made a start last night, so i'll post a progress report later

So step one was the Rotary Engine assembly.... it needed a trim!







Engine assembled....



Next up was to paint the pilot (complete with the obligitory Revell hole ) after he too had been cleaned up.....





The seat and cockpit area assembly. Lacking any detail whatsoever....



The Engine Cowling, before and after.....




Ready to assemble......



Not the greatest fit. A gap behind the engine were it joins the fuselage. Some filler will fix it. Which I remember to do... AFTER painting!



Rotary Engine painted.....



Engine Cowling added.....



That gaps still there!



Paint went on really nice....



Now I remember the gap!



But all's well that ends well....





And thats where I'm at. Not the greatest of kits by any stretch of the imagination, but its a fun little project. Theres some rigging involved at the end, which i'm not looking forward to but i'll give it a bash.

Thanks for looking, and see you on the next update!

Nice and tidy work mate and great progress.

Deacon wrote:Nice and tidy work mate and great progress.

Cheers! Thanks for stopping by

nice progress , what you going to use for the wires, thread or soild wire or ? .

martin57 wrote:nice progress , what you going to use for the wires, thread or soild wire or ? .

Thinking of using stretched sprue..... thread might be a tad fiddly on such a small model

Evenin' all. Just a small update. Managed to squeeze in half an hour between nightshifts and get the landing gear on. The landing gear framework took some careful cleaning up, not so much because of the ever present flash, but also because it was very brittle.....









A little more info on the Aircraft:

Specifications:

General characteristics

Crew: 1
Length: 7.2 m (23 ft 7 in)
Wingspan: 9.52 m (31 ft 3 in)
Height: 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 399 kg (880 lb)
Gross weight: 610 kg (1,345 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Oberursel U.I 9-cyl. rotary engine, 75 kW (100 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed: 140 km/h (87 mph; 76 kn)
Endurance: 1.5 hours
Service ceiling: 3,600 m (11,810 ft)
Rate of climb: 3.333 m/s (656.1 ft/min)

Time to altitude:

1,000 m (3,281 ft) in 5 minutes
3,000 m (9,843 ft) in 30 minutes

Armament:

Guns: 1 × 7.92 mm (0.312 in) LMG 08/15 machine gun offset to starboard, synchronised to fire through the propeller.

Operational history:

The E.III was the first type to arrive in sufficient numbers to form small specialist fighter units, Kampfeinsitzer Kommandos (KEK) in early 1916. Previously, Eindeckers had been allocated singly, just as the E.I and E.II had been, to the front-line Feldflieger Abteilungen that carried out reconnaissance duties. On 10 August 1916, the first German Jagdstaffeln (single-seat fighter squadrons) were formed, initially equipped with various early fighter types, including a few E.IIIs, which were by then outmoded and being replaced by more modern fighters. Standardisation in the Jagdstaffeln (and any real success) had to wait for the availability in numbers of the Albatros D.I and Albatros D.II in early 1917.

Turkish E.IIIs were based at Beersheba in Palestine while others operated in Mesopotamia during the Siege of Kut-al-Amara.

Surviving aircraft:

The only known surviving original Eindecker, bearing IdFlieg serial number 210/16, was brought down in the Somme area in 1916 by the British and then evaluated by the War Office until it was transferred to the London Science Museum in 1918. It is currently on display fully assembled, but with its fabric covering removed to illustrate its internal construction.

Managed to get quite a bit of work done on this the last couple of days, so here goes:

Painted up the main landing gear and added the rear landing assembly:



There is a decal for the red stripe but not the white so I decided to paint them both on:




Next up was the tail rudder. This needed to be painted white before adding the decal. Is it just me that struggles using white paint? Never seems to go on well....



Plus I had to cut and carve the rudder to make it fit properly.



More decals added:







Machine Gun and prop painted up. I also dry brushed metallic silver on the machine gun:






Next up, the dreaded 'rigging'. I decided on using stretched sprue after watching a short video by the excellent Hamilkar Barkas on the very subject. So lighter in hand, I had a bash:




So far so good!

I then cut to the required lengths:



And with superglue, cocktail sticks, a fine detail brush and a deep breath.......

I was bloody well shocked that it turned out ok!





And the underside rigging:



Really pleased with the way the rigging turned out. Never attempted it before and it was even my first time stretching sprue!





So just the propeller to add and some finishing touches like painting the rigging. That will probably be as daunting as attaching it!

Cheers!

That's looking great, mate! I love those decals against the green, they really set it off nicely

UKguyInUSA wrote:That's looking great, mate! I love those decals against the green, they really set it off nicely

Cheers mate. The decals were pretty thick to be honest, but lashings of micro sol soon sorted that

Considering the kits from 1981, not been a too bad a build. Thanks again for stopping by

Not long finished this little bird, so here's how the final stages went. Had to be really delicate painting the rigging so not to snap it:





Decided to make a little base, trying to represent a muddy airstrip: (The wife hasn't noticed the missing coaster..... yet!)







And finished:



More pics in the 'Final Reveal'

Good work in this scale

AchtungPanzer wrote:Good work in this scale

Thankyou very much!