Hi louis,

I've been travelling a bit so am pleased to see how much progress you've made on Voss' Tripe. It'll look great when you finally get it together with all the Copper State decals and stuff. I think you've got the stripes about right, although when I did my own model I made the fuselage forward of the cockpit more densely, almost solid colour and the other surfaces overall with a little more of the pale blue showing through. All a matter of interpretation and yours will look the business. Lots of luck with the deadline you've set yourself. Irma can't have helped.

All the best

Paul

But today I did manage some more progress...

I painted the remaining wing cabane struts and glued them into the bottom side of the upper wing.

Painted and installed the cable horns on the control surfaces. Then I installed the control cables that go to the elevator.

Repainted the prop. Next is the lamination painting on it, and the "AXIAL" prop logo decal.

I also removed some of the green streaking on the fuselage rear half. Then I retouched the brush "streaks". It looks more like the real plane now when you compare the model to original era photos of Voss' plane. I took your advice here Paul and I honestly can say it looks much better now. Thank you.

I painted the tail skid and installed it, (but you can't see it in these pictures).

I also installed the bracing wires on the under carriage: I used beading wire for this since it actually looks like a tiny cable since it's braided wire. You can see the cables in this picture below: These will need some more tweaking to get everything just right.

Finally I test fit the upper wing in place to see how much fiddling the upper wing will require. Hopefully not too much more to go...

Calling it a day. Comments are encouraged.

That's a very cool video. I have seen bits and pieces of it before, but never the whole thing at once. Its Fokker "F-103 / 17", which was the third of the pre production machines in the video.

Thanks for sharing this Stephen...

You probably got Louis Gardner all excited suggesting this was 103/17. It's pretty clear it's all about MvR and 102/17, the 2nd pre-production a/c. It's a great video clip anyway.
Paul

You're absolutely correct Paul. It is 102/17. I just went back and watched the video again... you can clearly see the serial number and I was able to capture a great picture of this 51 seconds into the video.

Thanks again gents ! (I don't know what I was thinking)

Thanks Paul,
That's some neat back ground information. From what I have read, this "mistaken identity" happened on several occasions to Allied crews, until the new Fokker Triplane became well known.

I vaguely remember someone on a TV show (about 20 years ago, possibly an episode of "wings") who stated they were the grand son of Lt. Bird, and that his grand father was embarrassed about being filmed by the Germans right after he was shot down. Lt. Bird supposedly spent the remainder of the War as a P.O.W., and spent the night with Jasta 11 as a guest of MVR. On the following morning he was taken away to spend the rest of the War in captivity, if my recollection is proper...

The bullet holes in the cowling that Anthony Fokker and MVR were pointing at in this video were supposedly from Bird's machine. Bird was lucky to have survived the encounter since MVR stated that he routinely fired at the crew and engine during combat.

This evening I managed to get the rigging completed.

Here's a picture of the cabane strut bracing wires and aileron control cables.

The landing gear sub wing bracing wires kept falling off, so I gave them a tiny amount of CA glue to hold them in place. Hopefully they remain where they belong...

Next I need to add the decals and finish painting the propeller. Then a little weathering / dirtying up and it should be completed...

As usual, comments are encouraged.

Thanks Paul. I also read somewhere that Anthony Fokker was wearing Lt. Bird's flying jacket and helmet in the video. Sort of added insult to injury. One can only imagine what was going through Bird's mind since he was on camera and in enemy hands.

Times have been very trying here lately and I have not been able to get much done.

My mom has dementia and things are not going well. That's all I want to say about this for now. If I was a drinking man ... I'd tip one or four, or twelve up right about now.

But I'm not. So I build my models instead ...

So tonight I had some "me" time with F-103. I fudged through installing the decals. Several of them splintered since they are old. Luckily I have managed to get them on the plane to where they look presentable.

Here's how it looks now.

I still have to finish painting the propeller and decal it. Then some light dirtying up and it should be done.

As usual comments are encouraged.

Thanks again.

Thanks Paul for the kind words... I have recently come to the point to where I finally realized that she isn't the same person anymore. It's a horrible disease and I agree with you that this isn't the dementia forum.

Back to the plane now...

I gave the whole air frame a light coat of thinned down "Future" to seal the decals...

Then masked off the various layers of the propeller. Once this was done I sprayed it in the secondary color to simulate the darker wood that was used in alternating layers on the real "AXIAL" props...

Then I gave the wood section a light wash of oil to simulate a wood grain. Next was applying the decals and painting of the prop hub.

The prop is ready to be installed now...

I hope to have this one wrapped up by later tonight.

Please stay tuned !

Comments are encouraged.