Sunday, September 15, 2024

Der Blaue Teufel

I have been wanting to create a hypothetical paint scheme for a Fokker Dr.1 for a spell. I decided to order a few aircraft from Table Top Flights, including a Fokker. Mike at TTF I believe has gone to a new printer, because the quality, which was very good on my Ponnier and Ansaldo A.1s, has become even better. The material is a bit different - the previous planes felt like plastic in a way, and were easy to work with, but also left a few noticeable striations on the surfaces. The new material is more resin in feel, and perhaps then a tad more on the fragile side, but the prints are amazing. Extremely clean, with really very little prep work. The propellers do come on their own "sprue" but are easy to remove. There were just a couple of little nubs to clean off the plane, but beyond that, these are perfect prints! Unlike Shapeways that had a gritty texture, the TTF planes are smooth as a baby's bum.



So, back to the scheme - I have three pots of Foundry paints that I was going to use on some Franco-Prussian Bavarians - I am, after all, fond of my Bavarian ancestry - and so I am going to use one of them as the basis for a very basic all blue Fokker (code 73B Bavarian Cornflower Blue). And having seen a beautiful radio controlled blue and white Fokker (von Raben from Jasta 15) this past weekend at the Dawn Patrol Rendezvous, I decided it was time to start working on this project.

First up a picture of the plane in its basic form. I've clipped the propeller from the "sprue."


Then I applied two coats of the blue. It looks a tad darker in the picture than in person. The rudder will be painted white, and the external struts a brown color to simulate wood. Most likely I will go with balkenkreuz for the national insignia, and I have some Miscellaneous Miniatures Russian white skull and crossbones of various sizes I can add to the fuselage, and perhaps one on the top wing.


I think Der Blaue Teufel will shape up nicely!

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