Scale Aviation Modeller International — November 2017

With the seat painted in an

appropriately “leathery” way, I

painted and added the etched brass

belts. The whole cockpit assembly

should come together perfectly,

provided you haven’t been too

generous with the paint. The

parts are engineered to such a fine

degree that more than a micron or

two of paint will make things very

tight, particularly when it comes

to joining the two fuselage halves

together. I found this out the hard

way some years ago, so ever since

I have been very careful, and I

have had no such problems again.

After the fuselage halves were

joined there was only the top seam

to clean up, as the one on the

underside is concealed beneath

a separately supplied strip of

stitching. You do, however, need

to fill the gap between the front of

the fuselage and the first cowling

panel on each side, since in this

incarnation it should represent a

continuous fabric panel from nose

to tail. These joins proved almost

impossible to obliterate totally, but

given the colour scheme and where

they are situated, I’m pretty sure

they will stand up to reasonable

scrutiny. So stop looking, please!

With everything smooth,

I masked off the cockpit and

engine bay and primed it,

making the rest of the model

ready for the stripes to come.

SOME WHITE PAINT AND

THEN SOME BLACK

Prior to applying the first colour

to the fuselage, I pre-shaded what

few lines and crevices there were,

along with a random ”mirror

wave” pattern in black to give

some texture to the white to come.

This gave a pleasing mottled effect

when the white was applied.

Then came the masking

for the stripes. This I achieved

by copying and enlarging the

relevant part of the instruction

sheet to the correct size, and then

laying and cutting Tamiya tape

on it to fit the pattern exactly.

With the masking in place, I

sprayed the fuselage with a very,

very dark grey; you could see it

wasn’t actually black only when

I sprayed another black ”mirror

wave” over the top. The photos in

the instruction sheet show this

16 • NOVEMBER 2017 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL

FOKKER D.VII (FOK)

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