Roden

1/48 Fokker D.VII OAW (Early)

Kit Number 0420

Reviewed By Don Garside, #30235

Let me say right off the bat that this is a great kit, but not an “easy build”.  You’ll need that extra bit of patience and creative modeling skills for this one… and frankly that appeals to me.  First off, the instructions are a bit vague on the placement of some parts.  You know the kind where there are lots of lines with arrows pointing to the “general” location of a part.  I know that real men don’t need instructions but they do come in handy sometimes.  A good reference was a big help in the building of this kit.

As modelers, we’re used to things like locating pins, slots, grooves or inter-connecting things, to help parts fit together right?  They are almost non-existent with this kit.  For example, the point at which the cabane struts connect to the top wing and fuselage are like TINY!  They look absolutely fantastic and realistic, but are very weak until all the struts including the wing struts are in place.  In fact in an effort to strengthen the wing struts, I drilled out the very shallow holes already present in the wings a little deeper, BIG mistake!  It only made the top wing sit way to close to the fuselage.  It was a bit of a hassle to fill them in again to just the right depth.

The engine compartment was the main source of “challenge” with this kit.  Dry-fit every step of the way.  One piece in particular, #3F simply did not fit.  This is the top of the engine cowling.  While many Fokker D.VIIs flew without this cover  in place to improve engine cooling, I was bound and determined to make it fit for the purposes of the review.  After much sanding and scraping the offending  part #3F finally admitted defeat and stayed put and fit well.  By the way, if you decide to use the cowling top, you’ll hide the engine bearers and cowling braces that you worked so hard to get to fit right.  In fact I used scrap pieces of plastic to get the engine to sit right, and saved the bearers and braces for a future D.VII project.

The lower wing was the next %@#&*ing “challenge”.  Once you glue the top halves of the lower wing, to the bottom half of the lower wing, the lower wing would not fit onto the fuselage.  Once again scrapping and sanding the inner edges of the lower wing was necessary to accomplish a good fit.  Not a difficult task, but tedious.

Now for the good stuff, every piece in this kit is exquisite.  All the subtleties  and characteristics of the D.VII are there.  The top wing is absolutely perfect, far superior to DML, and of course Monogram (ex-Aurora).  All control surfaces are positionable.  Cockpit is great, but could have used a throttle and a seat harness (but at this price $16.00 mail order, $20.00ish hobby store, that would be a nit-pick).  Spandau  guns could only have been better if they had photo-etch cooling jackets, but you can’t really see ‘em under that top wing anyway.

Hope you like decaling, ‘cause if you choose two of the three  options offered in this kit you’ll be applying at least 127 of them!  Most of that being the Lozenge pattern and rib tapes.  I would highly recommend using a gloss coat on top of the Lozenge pattern before applying the rib tapes.  By the way the decal options include one of Udet’s well known LO! striped top wing, a nice blue and white machine of Jasta 12 as flown by Lt. Hans Besser (no relation to Joe Besser), and a very cool looking gray and green machine of an unknown unit (which I believe to be of Jasta 5).  The decals are delicate but not brittle, use plenty of caution here.  You get plenty of extra Lozenge and rib tape in case of error.

Oh, I almost forgot, when you are all done with this kit, not only will you have the best D.VII available in 1/48 scale, but you’ll have 2 extra props, 2 extra axle wings, 2 extra sets of wheel covers, a pretty fair amount of 4 color Lozenge and rib tape decal and most of a BMW 185 H.P. engine (or was it Mercedes?) left over for you  WWI spares box.  I love it when that happens.  I would heartily recommend this kit to anyone that enjoys a bit of a challenge and/or modeling WWI aircraft.

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