A Twin Tailed Fokker on Floats, the lighter side of modeling

Cigogne · 13 July 2005, 08:02 AM

Wow, looks great. With some of the Hollywood movies being made of WWI subjects there days... would be a fun one to see.

Aaron

GrzeM · 14 July 2005, 05:39 AM

Cooooool!!!!
Waht about forked-tail, four engined Gotha? In dark blue would look super cool!
I'd design it like this: wing, engine in normal nacelle, fuselage with the engine in the nose, nacelle with the gunner (made of the original front of the fuselage) , second fuselage with engine in the nose, engine in normal nacelle, wing. And many gunners, also in the top wing.
G.

greenknight · 14 July 2005, 06:12 AM

SteveS,

Thanks so much for sharing this imaginative and inspiring build! The naval lozenge really makes it a stand out. As you can see from the above posts you've gotten many wheels turning. I'm sure many, like GrzeM above, are now cooking up their own fantasy fliers.

Now if I could only find my old school notebooks filled with doodles of WWI "experimentals" inspired by the photos in Grey & Thetford's book....

SteveS · 14 July 2005, 03:45 PM

Thanks for the kind comments.

I managed to wiggle one arm out of my straightjacket to reply.

What made it fun was the fact that I wasn't bound by what's right or wrong. And also it cost about nil to build. Notice I didn't butcher the DML kits. I may be crazy, but not stupid!

The thoughts about the gunner shooting off the tail was interesting. I only quickly thought of that secenero. I guess I could have flipped the rudders up-side down and let them hang off the bottom of the fuselage. But I will lie and state that this was the first plane to incorporate Fokker's now famous "tail-interrupter gear".

Inspiration comes from all you good people here on the "drome".

Salute,
Steve

drIace · 14 July 2005, 05:05 PM

7 But I will lie and state that this was the first plane to incorporate Fokker's now famous "tail-interrupter gear".

Inspiration comes from all you good people here on the "drome".

Salute,
Steve[/QUOTE]

Hey no need to lie, just get your facts right, .....have a copy of the Tech manual & drawings right here, what you need to add to your model is a curved metal channel/track behind the gunners position on the fuselage deck and what looks like just a rod (that takes care or horizontal) and a tensioned cable ( for the verticle area of rudders) from the bottom of the machine gun, since my German is not too good, please bear with my simplified translation-- the tech description says it works by interrupting the firing only when contact is made by a combination when the rod hits the area of the track corresponding to the areas of BOTH rudders and the cable is in it's spool inside the gear box in the positions corresponding to the verticle areas (location of the MArk I & II gear box is shown inside the fuselage just below the track). A big ACHTUNG that ground crew is to test the "No shootem off rudder MArk II gear box" <the MArk I is for single tailed a/c which and was in use before the dual tail units were in service> connections before each flight and IF the track or cable are damaged in any way or disconnected for whatever reason, it must be re-calibrated and tested before field use against the enemy...

Bruno Stachel · 15 July 2005, 04:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveS

...this was the first plane to incorporate Fokker's now famous "tail-interrupter gear".

Great response!

RDosier · 15 July 2005, 06:10 AM

Really awesome build. I agree that the naval lozenge gives it an impressive character. Great Job!

Michael · 15 July 2005, 07:36 AM

Now what about something on the allied side?

Maybe just a new colour scheme. In response to the German lozenge scheme, the British came up with the Callard & Bowser scheme, which incorporated ovals of toffee brown, mint white, and liquorice black.