Wingnut Wings’ 1/32 Fokker D.VII (Fok) “Early”
by PeteR BarkerI
t is no exaggeration
to say that Wingnut
Wings (WNW) is solely
responsible for my return
to modelling after a gap of
some twenty years (which
were filled with the joys
of parenthood). About five
years ago, a chance purchase
of a magazine that covered
a build of their awesome
Eindecker saw me thoroughly
hooked once again.
Since then, I’ve constructed
many Wingnut Wings kits
and there is always a thrill
in seeing, and then opening,
their lavishly printed boxes.
It feels like a special occasion!
This latest incarnation of the
D. VII does not disappoint;
the box is full to the brim
with plastic goodness, and a
pleasure to behold. The only
question in my mind is, “How
will I cock this one up?”
The instruction book is
up to its usual standard, with
comprehensive assembly and
painting guides, along with
myriad period photographs,
most of which are of the
aircraft whose markings are
on the decal sheets. These
decal sheets are, quite simply,
magnificent. They include,
apart from crosses, stencils,
instrument dials, and the
like, lozenge camouflage in
several different flavours.
They also include the streaky
stripes that feature in two
of the six options. They are
printed by Cartograf, whosereputation goes before
them. Experience suggests
that they will present few
problems in their application.
WNW kits always come
with four or five build options,
which means that several
unnecessary components,
not required for the option
you choose, appear on the
sprues. I generally remove
these first in order to avoid
becoming what we older
people call ”confused”.
This kit is particularly
generous with its options
(due partly to the various
guises in which the D. VII has
been previously released),
all supplied on eight grey
sprues, one clear, and a sheet
of photo-etch (PE). There are
microscopically more amounts
of flash on some of the sprues
that one might expect from
WNW – a legacy of the age of
the moulds, perhaps? Nothing
terrible, but not quite up to
the standard I have seen on
their more recent issues.WHERE TO START?
My construction began in two
areas, neither of them the
cockpit. The first thing I did
was to stick the wing surfaces
together, mainly to give them
a good long time to dry. I’m
glad I did this since I noticed a
moulding shortfall on the trailing
edge of the upper surface of
the top wing. It was only halfa millimetre or so, but it was
certainly there. A swift email to
Dave at WNW, and a replacement
sprue was soon on its way. Since
WNW is based about as far away
from the UK as it can be on this
glorious planet, it wasn’t going to
be in tomorrow’s post, so I settled
down to other aspects of the build
while I waited for it to arrive.BARCODE
Th e Fl yi ng
FOKKER D.VII (FOK)
14 • NOVEMBER 2017 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
014-19-FEAT-FokkerBarcode-1117.indd 14 16/10/2017 15: