1/72 Revell Fokker DVII

Gallery Article by Greg Kerry (chinagreg) on July 21 2015

 

      

This is my little homage to World War One. The Fokker is the very old Revell kit, an example of which I first made many years ago when it appeared as Goering's all-white machine. Now the decals are different and the parts are a bit dodgy but it still makes up into a good basic model. Most interesting thing is that Revell supplies the underwing lozenge patterns as black and white outline decals only - expecting us to paint the various colors in. It seems like a very cheap option but I quite liked the idea . . . until I started the painting and found the four-color pattern slowly transforming itself into a slightly irregular five-color. Originally, I'd had the idea of using the plane in a nose-dived stance with the underside on prominent display. After completing the lozenge pattern I decided it didn't look so great - so a collapsed undercarriage, belly landing was the final choice. Painting was by brushed Tamiya acrylics with artists acrylic washes to dirty it up.

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The RHA team is the equally vintage Airfix kit which I bought in a moment of pure nostalgia; a mistake really. The plastic is very soft and the aged seams very difficult and tedious to clean up (with a heated paperclip). And now there are similar products available from newer manufacturers which I believe must be far more user-friendly. The animation of horses and riders though is quite good, but the detail on the guns especially is abysmally lacking; I corrected this a bit with card and sprue.

The base is an old Chinese presentation box; groundwork is glue-soaked tissue and real dirt. Originally, my idea was to use a British plane flying close to the ground kind of accompanying the charging gun team. But WWI subjects are thin on the ground here in China. When I visited my local model shop I could only find two such subjects: both Revell Fokkers - a DVII and a Triplane. So that was that.

Greg Kerry (chinagreg)

Photos and text © by Greg Kerry (chinagreg)