Gary, thanks… you’re very right that a “simple” kit like this does not necessarily lead to an “easy” build. In fact I’m learning a ton but wondering if there’s a limit to how far down the rabbit hole I can go making this kit more accurate. I think I’ll do a modern Airfix kit next just to see the other end of the spectrum.
Thanks Trabi! I hope it looks as good under paint. Also thanks for the kit pedigree page. It looks like this kit was based on the early Dutch D.XXIs, as it seems to perfectly match the example in the walkaround found here:
http://aircraftwalkaround.hobbyvista.com/fokkerxxi/fokkerxxi.htm
Compared to the Finnish-built D.XXIs (which FR-98 is), there are several immediately-noticed differences: the rocker arm bulges on the cowling; the “rear window” behind pilot; the stbd-wing-mounted landing (?) strobe light; wingtip nav lights and ground-crew handles; MG locations. My references for these details are the Wikimedia pics of FR-110 at the Aviation Museum of Central Finland and period photos snagged from the web and the FDF’s WWII archive, SA-Kuva, found here:
http://sa-kuva.fi/webneologineng.html.Also of course using the photos and color drawings in two Osprey books:
Finnish Aces of WWII and
Fokker D.XXI Aces of WWII.
The period photos are obviously best but few are from the Winter War period, which is the scheme I’m building FR-98 in, so I have to use all the sources together to form a best guess in some cases.
Anyhow, got some good bench time this weekend. I cut out the rear window and cut off the elevators and rudder with a jeweler’s saw.
The Wikipedia page for the D.XXI has a great vector drawing of the plane (Dutch version), so I printed one off at 1/72 scale and measured/calculated the appropriate dihedral, and then taped the model in place and wicked some cement into the seams. Having the plan to lay the model out on was cool but not really necessary. It is nice to note that the overall wing and fuselage shape is very close to the drawing.
Nice fitment of the wings on the bottom here… top wasn’t much better.
Filled and flap/panel lines scribed. Also filled in one extra MG port on each wing.
Rudder and elevators re-installed. I saw several photos of the D.XXI parked with the elevators depressed, and thought it looked neat (check out that cool airfield camouflage – treetops suspended above the plane!).
Horizontal stabilizer struts had to be fabbed out of styrene rod after both the brittle kit parts broke during sanding. Worked out better, actually, as the kit parts were too short. Measuring the new ones was easy as I just stuck them into the holes in the fuselage and bent them to fit, cemented in place, and then trimmed.
The kit skis are extremely basic with no details at all, but luckily there are plenty of good photos to look at. There are even some great SA-Kuva photos of the skis being installed/maintained in the field. The actual skis had a plywood base or “sole” and aluminum housing.
I scribed some panel seams and added detail to the “knee joint” of the skis, and then glued a thin “plywood” sole to the bottom of each which will of course be trimmed down once the cement sets.
I painted the engine (pretty basic -- I opted to not dive into engine-making just yet) and installed it into the cowling, as I needed the cylinders as reference points for where to put the rocker arm bulges.
For the bulges, I sanded a rod of styrene stock into a teardrop shape and cut thin slices off the end, then glued the slices to the cowling in line with each cylinder. Those were some small parts!!
I had to set them onto the wet cement and then coax them into place with a toothpick. Final shaping of each bulge was done with a sharp knife (after photo was taken).
Used some clear PVC sheet to make the rear window glass. Man, PVC does not like to be glued. Took about five tries to get one glued in place with CA, and even then the curing CA frosted the inside. Luckily, some clear lacquer on a toothpick dabbed inside flowed neatly out over the window and cleared it up.
The canopy was pretty ugly (scratches and crooked panel lines and surface defects) so I wet-sanded with 1500 grit and hit it with gloss lacquer. Really shined it up nice (not that you can tell from the photo) but it remains to be seen how well it’ll hold up to my handling during masking and painting. The shape isn’t great but I didn’t square it up before sanding/lacquering so I’ll have to live with it.
That was not very much fun. I hope it doesn’t peel up the clearcoat – I may not have waited long enough for it to dry before I began masking. We shall see.
Next up are the wingtip lights and handles, and I think I need to put the landing strobe underneath the starboard wing, but I need to check my references again. FR-110 has it, but it might have been added after 1939. I also have to make an exhaust pipe, which is missing on the kit entirely. Once that’s done, I’ll install the skis and hit the whole thing with a thin coat of light grey to help find defects in scribing/seams/etc, and then I’ll be on to the dark green over light grey paint scheme.
Have to say thanks to all the members of this forum as all my ideas/solutions have come from other threads here. Even down to the cement and paints I’ve bought, which are such a huge improvement over what I used to use. This water-thin Tamiya cement is magic stuff compared to the Testors tube I used to fight with.
And lastly, here’s a fun pic I found in the SA-Kuva archives of a young Finn WWII modeler.
