Hi,

Just found your blog ref the Flair Fokker DVii. I was in the process of writing an article to send to the magazine. Have recently finished mine - it took me 2yrs due to family commitments.I waited till it had been test flown before writing my account of the build.Then i am having probs accessing the pics i took, due to buying a new computer which wil not read my old discs - the curse of vista I think.

Back to the build. I spent a LOT of time on t' net looking for a colour scheme and learning a lot abaout the original.Ended up in The Red Baron's colours as he had a hand in the design. Could not face 'paining by numbers' the lozenge pattern.

I had to do a lot of re designing at the front as I was fitting a RCV 61SP ( the funny one).

Hope you have a big car as the model is a big @@@!***r when assembled. I made mine 'quuick fix for rigging and de rigging for transport. will put some pics on my page.

Incidentally it flies like a pussycat.

Ask if I can help in any way.

more power to your elbow. good luck.

Incidentally a fellow club member has just completed the Flair SE 5a that is fantastic too.

I drive a 406 coupe- which is long, but has some interesting foibles that can be a pain when loading stuff- basically not being a hatchback means it has a low boot.  I am resigned to having to transport it in 3 pieces- fuselage and 2 wings.

I don't know how often I will fly this- hopefully regularly, but we will have to wait and see.  I think I will be very protective re. weather conditions!  Fortunately I don't think the set up will take too long.

1. Connect receiver (at home)
2. Bolt on bottom wing
3. Bolt on U/C
4. Bolt on upper wing
5. Fly.

OK, not what you would want for a quick hour down at the field, but fine for a longer session.

Hi,

pics are now on site. don't know what i have done wrong but they are not in the album. seems they are in the'latest pics' section.

for transport I made a false top wing the width of the cabanes and screw it to the cabanes - easy to pick up. for the bottom I made a false wing and left the u/c fastened on at the back with quick release catches at the front. u/c pivots away to the rear whilst fitting the wing proper at the field. u/c is in place all the time. in addition i used two servos in the wing which just needs connecting.

false wings made from blue foam and covered with brown paper. sprayed with the first can i picked up - green.

If I can access the pics of this ( or re- take them ) will post on the web site.

best wishes

bob cotsford wrote (see)

Andy, one option for the bottom of the engine bay would be to cover it with wire or aluminium mesh, the sort used for car body repairs.  Once painted to match the model it should look ok in flight but still allow extra ventilation for the engine bay.

Well, back at work- so the build and the blog has slowed down a bit!  I really need to start buying some lottery tickets.......then again I can't even win the prize draw on here, so I can't really bank on a few million quid from Camelot either!

Taking Djays advice monday was more building and less typing.

I have been able to connect the tail for a while, but have been putting it off as I felt the plane was more likely to collect bumps and bashes with it on.  Well no more!!  Glueing the horizontal stabiliser & elevator into place was simplicity itself.  I marked up the fuselage and stabiliser to ensure it was perfectly square and cut off the solartex where the glue would be.  Applied the glue (30 min epoxy) and waited.  Half an hour later it was done.

The vertical stabiliser/rudder was slightly trickier, as I had to insert a hinge at the same time as fitting it.  Again, careful marking to ensure it was central, a drill through the back of the fuselage; and the test fit was easy enough.  I cut out the strip of solartex for the glue, and it went straight in.  Supported it to keep it vertical, and again a half hour wait saw it finished.

Once the tail was in place I knew the exact positions of the horns for the elevator and rudder.  This meant I could finish my half built push rods with the servo ends.  This was a fairly simple matter of connecting them to the horns, installing the servo tray, and measuring the exact length of piano wire needed to extend to the servos.

I then bent the piano wire 90 degress and cut it off.   Drilled through the wooden push rod, cut a groove from the hole to the end, fitted the piano wire into the hole and along the groove.  Tacked it in place with a dab of cyano, bound it and epoxied it in place.  The hardest part was working out how to feed the rods into the now covered fuselage!!  I ended up pushing them in through the hole in the firewall, which I thought was quite clever of me

Anyway, I was dismayed at the tangle of wires in the fuselage, so tried to tidy them up a bit, and labelled them all for future reference. 

I still hadn't worked out exactly where everything was quite going to fit, so I started measuring.  I came up with a crafty place for the switch- convenient yet concealed- right behind the mounting block for the machine guns.

The pictures are blurred because I had to get close to make it show up at all, but it's very convenient, yet very unobtrusive.

I have plenty of options for the receiver, but still have to decide on the position of the onboard glow LED.  It sort of makes sense to be somewhere I can see from the front. 

The final thing I have done is to try work out how best to run the aileron leads into the fuselage.  Depending on lengths of the extension leads I have a lot of possibilities, and I will generally try conceal them a bit with the top wing.  To test various combinations I needed to assemble the plane- for the first time in a while, and even if I say so myself- it's looking good.

That's a 6 foot dining table it's sat on, so it's not a small plane!  Obviously the big thing missing is the undercarriage and the wing covering.  Both are waiting for this lozenge fabric turning up from the states.  It was ordered at the end of September, and I am getting concerned it has got lost somewhere.  If it doesn't turn up soon the build is going to have to come to a dead halt. 

you can tidy the wiring using spiral wrap from maplins

The receiver will have to be moved from plane to plane- unless I ask santa for one!  So I am quite restricted in what can actually be tidied up.  I think I will use some of those wire bag ties to keep the throttle and onboard glow leads under some kind of control, but apart from that they might have to be free range!

 And we have broken the 10000 barrier!

Unbelievable!

Well. I'm now a bit stuck. 

I have been patiently waiting for this lozenge fabric to turn up, but ran out of patience yesterday and e-mailed them.  I got this response:

It's preprinted in 1/6 scale.

There are plenty of non-red Fokkers out there for the D7- as you can see by the pictures I posted earlier in the blog, but virtually all have the lozenge wing.  There were 4 possible options to do a lozenge wing as far as I could see:

1) Linen solartex, then hand mark and paint the lozenge fabric.  This seemed like a very difficult option.  The pattern is difficult although there are templates around.  I don't have an airbrush, so would have had to either buy one or used aerosols, but colour matching could have been difficult.  I didn't know how it would look brushed on.  I also felt it would turn out quite expensive, as I would need a lot of paint colours to mix.

2) Preprinted linen solartex.  According to Flairs instructions they sell linen solartex which is predrawn with the lozenge pattern, but I couldn't find any- even when I spoke to Flair themselves.  So this stuff might be the stuff of legend!  Although it would make things easier than option 1 there would still be the painting difficulties.

3) Arizona models do a preprinted 1/6 scale lozenge fabric, and apparantly Fighter Aces have now been given distribution rights in the UK.  They were saying that they would be selling it at £12 per foot.  although they hadn't started when I was looking.  £12 per foot worked out at 6 feet needed in top and bottom colours........£144+ postage!!!!  This was far too expensive.

4) Wildmann graphics was the option I took.  OK, so it's proving more awkward than it should have, they offer the best solution in my opinion.  Although their website makes no mention of it, they do sell 1/6 scale (they only mention 1/4 scale) and it's $70 (think it was $65 when I ordered) a roll- with each roll being 2m (6 ft 6 to give a comparison with above).  Postage was expensive at $50, but the total was about £100- although this will obviously vary with exchange rates.

I didn't see that option 1 would save me that much money, and thought the finish would be poorer.  Option 2 seems little more than a rumour.  Option 3 hasn't started yet, and seems expensive- it really gets me made when we can be expected to pay £-$ equivalent prices- although the exchange rate might make that a reality soon anyway!  So realistically option 4 was the best.

Inwoods had some of the preprinted solartex, I bought mine from there, didn't use it as my first fokker was all red, the one fokker built for Manfred von Richthofen but which was never used.

Like you I have another kit and the mods I'm making to this one will be to replace the engine mounting timber with a nylon one, each of the wing ribs that the struts attach to are going to be 1/8" birch ply and all the struts will be 10 x 2 alloy strips from B&Q.

Like all the others, I think she flies like a puddy cat, mine has a laser 80 for power.

BTW, if you have close fitting joints on your tailplane etc and you used cyno I wouldn't worry about the joints breaking.

BTW forgot to say great blog, really helpful.

Incidentally, your servos, If you mount them athwartships like you have at present you may find there's significantly more "play" than if you mount them fore and aft.

Well, every day is the same.........go home................look for a nice packet of lozenge fabric/note from the postie saying they couldn't deliver a nice packet of lozenge fabric.................... watch TV in a huff.

 I do hope it hurries up