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Preview

Meteor Productions has supplied the following information on decal releases for Roden's 1/32 scale Fokker Dr.I triplane:

The 1/32 double-sheet set of Dr.I/F.I decals for Manfred von Richthofen and the single sheet set for Klimke (anchor), Tutschek (black rear fuselage), and Lothar v. Richthofen (yellow rear fuselage) are at the printer now and should be available at or before the IPMS Nationals.

The Richthofen sheet covers ALL the the triplanes he is documented as flying in combat*, including 102/17, 127/17, 152/17, 161/17, 425/17, and 477/17. Several of these airframes are portrayed in both their early and late markings/painting configurations, allowing the modeler to build any of MvR's combat triplanes from any time period.

The Klimke anchor markings on CED32067 may raise a few eyebrows among folks who've seen the artists' interpretations in color profile form.

The anchor is almost always portrayed with a non-parallel vertical shaft ("shank") and huge fillets where the anchor rope ring meets the shank. This looks cool, but is in fact incorrect.

There are no photos of this plane that show clearly the shape of the anchor on the fuselage sides; in fact, only one photo even HINTS the anchor was applied to the fuselage side. A fairly good photos shows the anchor painted on top of the fuselage and horizontal tailplane.

This photo CLEARLY shows parallel sides to the shank and possibly tiny fillets where the rope ring attaches to the shank. We've assumed, in the absence of photographic confirmation, that the fuselage anchors were the same shape as the tailplane anchor, and that's what we provide on our decal sheet.

There are a bazillion crosses on all these sheets, and it's important the modeler not presume we merely added a bunch of extra crosses that they could have gotten out of the kit. In each case, the cross was carefully matched to the cross actually painted on the specific airframe, including the partially converted (and photo documented) crosses on 425/17 and 477/17. In fact, a few of the kit decal crosses are OK to use, and we tell you which kit crosses to use.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

In EACH case, we supply COMPLETE, and accurate stenciling, including verified construction number stencils, etc., for that specific airframe. This has never been documented in one single source before, and certainly has never appeared in decal form before.

We also, for the first time ever in decal form, supply a correctly worded and formatted weight table decal (NOTE: the weights for each airframe were in fact different, but we cannot read the actual numbers on the photos for most planes, so we've done just one weight table decal to fit all airframes).

The real hero of these sheets if "Eagle Eye" Mike Lampros, a bonafide Fokker triplane expert, who did the vast majority of the research. Mike is the guy who pulled together from all the published sources the stenciling data, the photos, etc., etc.

* there are two Triplanes documented as flown by Manfred von Richthofen that are not included:

• 114/17: He flew this ship a couple of times, but not in combat. It was eventually lost due to wing failure (he was not flying it at that time).

• 525/17: It is documented that MvR flew this plane one time to visit Jasta 5, but again, not in combat.
  
   

Thanks to Cutting Edge Modelworks for the preview information and images

Text and Images Copyright © 2005 by Meteor Productions
This Page Created on 23 June, 2005
Last updated 22 June, 2005

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