Roden's "Old Squarenose"

The first of Roden's promised series of 1/48 Fokker D-7's rolled in to my local plastic emporium yesterday. Initial impressions are good but--- The kit builds an early production Fokker built D-7, the one with the exhaust pipe exiting through an opening in the right cowling panel. The Roden people have promised a run of 6 different variations of the D-7 and from the extra parts in the kit that is probably what we will get. There are going to be some leftover goodies for the spares box out of this kit. The kit includes two engines, a Mercedes and a B.M.W., and three different types of propellers and there are three different types of landing gear axle wings. This to accommodate the configurations of the different license manufacturers. Markings are for Hauptmann Rudolph Berthold, Hermann Goering, Goering's buddy Bruno Loerzer and Lt. Hugo Schaeffer of Jasta 15. There are sheets of decal included for the famous (and contentious) German Hex camouflage fabric. I think they will be usable, but this is an area where everyone has their own opinion of the correct colors. Laying the fuselage, wing and tail assembly parts over the Fokker D-7 drawings in the Windsock data files' specials on the D-7 shows the parts to be dead on. There is a sort of rough finish to the parts that I suppose is to look like fabric, probably will need a bit of 600 grit to smooth it up if decals are to take O.K. The effect of the stretched fabric surfaces on the wings and fuselages is quite subtle, not as excessive as the older DML "Knights of the Sky" series kits. I see one potential problem with this kit. There are quite a number of very small parts on several sprues that are also very delicate. Removing them from the sprues without breaking them will be A BITCH! The forward cowling and engine sub-assembly uses many of these and assembly is going to be a challenge. This is probably done to eliminate the use of photo-etch, but I wonder how successful it will be. This kit evokes the term "over engineered" on inspection. This is a trend I have noted with these W.W.I kits lately. The Eduard Sopwith Camel also has a large number of very small, delicate parts that will be a challenge to get off the sprues intact. This is definitely not a kit for a beginner. Still, this looks like a kit that will repay great care in assembly with a nice example of one of the most colorful combat aircraft of all time.

Bill Shuey

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William H. Shuey
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