1:48 Fokker Dr I

A machine built for a short time and famous for ever

Production of the Fokker triplane lasted under a year and a few hundred were built, that is a fraction of the number other types of the same period put into service. Even so its outline remained the most recognizable shape of the air war up to 1918. The machine excelled in a turning fight and in the hands of an experienced pilot could exploit a rate of climb that faster biplanes did not have. Modelers appreciate on it the opposite of what applies to later aircraft: no complicated glazing, but many areas of covering where everything stands or falls with the paint.

The scope

The set holds two masks intended for the national markings. There is no glazing to mask on this subject, as the cockpit is open. The remaining work therefore lies entirely in the paint: in the shade of the covering, in its aging and in how precisely the markings sit on it.

A thin coat instead of a heavy one

With sprayed markings the thickness of the coat decides everything. A heavy layer creates a perceptible step once the film is lifted, on which every later step catches, above all a wash and a dry pigment. The solution does not lie in a different paint but in a different number of coats: instead of two dense passes, four or five very thin ones go down with a short flash-off between them. The covering power will be the same, but the edge will stay flat. If a step does arise even so, it is evened out before the final clear coat by light polishing with the finest abrasive paper, but exclusively in the direction of the longitudinal axis, so that the marks left fall in with the texture of the covering. Anyone who hurries this step and sands across gets a mesh of scratches, which a matte coat will emphasize rather than hide.