Eduard's Profipack 1/72 scale
Fokker E.III

by Rian Jones

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I discovered a real gem of a kit one day while scanning the inventory at my local hobby shop; Eduard's Profi-Pak 1/72 scale Fokker Eindecker III. The price had been marked down to $5.00. I picked up the box and saw that the kit included photo-etch. I had never built a model of a rigged airplane and thought that one wing would be easier than two, there is a full scale replica of the Fokker Eindecker at the San Diego Aerospace Museum that I could use for reference, and for $5.00, I could give it a go and throw it away if I didn't like the results.

The kit contained two trees of crisply cast injection molded plastic parts; photo-etch detail parts and an Express Mask as well as decals for aircraft of Ernst Udet; Gotthard Sachsenberg (Kreigsmarine); Lt Banfield, Austro-Hungarian Navy; and Lt Buddecke, Turkish Air Service. The plastic parts are well detailed and there was no flash. The photo-etch replaces many of the plastic parts and I ended up scratch-building some of the details based on the photo-etch parts. The decals were nicely printed, in register, and went on with no hassle.

I constructed and painted the entire model before I rigged it. I found that advanced planning on where to begin and end the rigging was helpful and kept the wings symmetrical. I must admit that there was some trial and error, but in the end, I was successful and pleased with the results. I used .004 mono-filament invisible thread for the flying wires and scratch built the turnbuckles from strectched plastic tubing and fine wire. The kit parts for the under carriage were very fragile and I ended up scratch building most of the under carriage from brass and plastic rods.

Tamiya acrylic paints were used for the finish. I painted the overall airframe and wings in 50/50 Buff/Flat White. Then I taped off the areas where the stringers would be under the fabric covered wings and fuselage and shot another coat of 75/25 Buff/Desert Yellow. The machine gun barrel is heat treated stainless steel tube. The cooling jacket and details on the MG are photo-etch parts included with the kit. The kit decals were used to depict Ernst Udet's aircraft.

I was really pleased with the way this model came out. It received the "Best 1/72 Scale Aircraft" award at the San Diego IPMS annual contest in June 2008.

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Images and Text Copyright © 2008 by Rian Jones
Page Created 13 December, 2008
Last Updated 13 December, 2008

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