2021 heralds the 10th anniversary of the Warbirds Aviation Modelling Group (based in Melbourne, Australia) and the 25th anniversary of the founding of its previous incarnation.
To mark this the club is having a competition to build the 1/32 Meng Fokker Dr.I.
This puts me out of my comfort zone as I haven't built a WWI aircraft, bi/triplane or 1/32 scale kit since the 1970s and my area of interest is 1/48 WWII aircraft and modern jets.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

I've done a bit of research on the web and this is where I've gotten to:

While this is badged as a Meng kit, it has its origins with the now defunct Wingnut Wings (WNW).
All the sprues match the test shots displayed at Scale Model World 2019 except for the engine sprue E (https://forum.largescalemodeller.com/topic/8670-meng-132-fokker-dr-i-fi/). I seems that Meng had to develop their own engine sprue.
The sprues include parts for nearly all Dr.Is from the first two pre-production aircraft that saw combat to the final production version, all in the one box. All bar 4 of the parts are featured in the instructions, a third propeller, a mysterious clear part and a second undercarriage wing (2 parts).
From their promotional material, WNW planned to release at least two boxings, Early and Late Dr.Is.

The schemes in the box include the second pre-production aircraft (F.I Nr. 103/17), two early production aircraft (Nr. 202/17 and Nr. 206/17) and one late production aircraft (Nr.425/17).

For the most part the instructions differentiate between each of the versions, however there is at least one error that I have spotted and three steps were it is unclear which version should have what option (or none of them) applied. There is also one difference in the early and late wings that isn't mentioned anywhere. I'm sure WNW knew what they were doing, but they don't seem to have told Meng.

I don't have an useful books in my library to reference, so I have done, and am continuing to do, a bit of research on the internet, which I will document here in the days to come.

Any assistance, questions, observations or corrections will be welcome.

Looking forward to this build, Michael.
Very interesting.

This will be a super build, Michael @michaelt!
Looking forward to it!

It will be interesting! Building a large scale WW1 plane is on my bucket list, so it will be interesting to watch and learn here.

What a great documentation of your research done, Michael.
Thanks for sharing that.
Also the instructions on the rigging are very useful.

You are a brave man, Michael (@michaelt). I never tackle anything with more than one wing, but 3 wings is crazy. But it you are going to jump off the deep end, this should be a good plane for it, as there is not a lot of rigging involved. Looking forward to the journey.

Second, I've made a start on the fuselage.

I've tried my hand at representing plywood for the cockpit floor and the curved panels on the fuselage sides.

I first sprayed Gunze H313 Yellow FS 33531 and then drew wood grain using various grey and grey-brown artist ang modelling fin felt-tip pens (first picture below).

I then toned it down with a light overspray of H313.

For the fuselage panels I mixed a 1/4 clear red + 1/2 clear yellow + 1/4 smoke colour to give a wood varnish look.

For the cockpit floor I used a clear yellow/smoke mix. I think this has come out a little dark, but can live with it.

The fuselage linen surfaces were sprayed a 1:2 H313:white mix. I need to add a wash to these surfaces as you can still see some of the varnish mix underneath (second picture).

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.