My Fokker DVII Project

[womenfly2]

That is very interesting. Nice clean way of attaching to the rim.

This brings up some questions:

1. Was the wheel covers really attached that way?

2. Also did they use pinked edge reinforcements back then?

3. What is an "This is his E. VIII at the Fort Rucker Museum." ?

Love your build Jeff. Been following since your first post. Excellent!

WF2

[Leatherhead]

Womenfly2,

Jeff is referring to the D.VIII replica Roger Freeman built some years ago. It is currently located at Ft. Rucker.

Here is a pic of it.

d8_right front view_1 pictures from friends & fun photos on webshots

[Jeff Brooks]

Originally Posted by womenfly2

This brings up some questions:

1. Was the wheel covers really attached that way?

2. Also did they use pinked edge reinforcements back then?

3. What is an "This is his E. VIII at the Fort Rucker Museum." ?

WF2

1. I am not sure if this in fact the actual way Fokker did their wheel covers, but it is the way Roger did it, and that is good enough for me.

2. I don't know

3. Okay, Okay ... maybe it is a Fok. E V at the Fort Rucker Museum.

[womenfly2]

Thanks Leatherhead and Jeff. I thought it was just a typo.

I do like the way RF did the covers, beats clips and screws.

Leatherhead: The picture is fantastic! Looks like a 1/3 size scale model in stead of full size.

Would it not be cool at some time to have Jeffs and a few other D.VII's in line with two or three E.V's at the end as in some pictures.

WF2

Any videos of RF D.VIII flying?

[Jeff Brooks]

Originally Posted by womenfly2

Would it not be cool at some time to have Jeffs and a few other D.VII's in line with two or three E.V's at the end as in some pictures.

WF2

I would love to see a whole flight line of DVII together! Pavel's, Troy's, GWFM's, Bill Kahl's (out of Syracuse), Buck Tonges's all at Dayton! Awsome!
Then I say, Bring on the Brit's and let's dogfight!

[joegertler]

In regard to the fabric wheel covers, maybe Dave Watts still has a couple with the original fabric. We took in 3 large shipments of WWI German and Austrian WWI wire wheels, between 1970 & 1988. at least a dozen or so had the original fabric (or most of the original fabric,) still on the wheels. As I recall, the fabric rings had a thin piece of (spring steel?-as it was not soft..) wire, sewn into the outer edge. There was also a re-inforced edge, smaller, access hole for the valve stem. There was also a wire re-inforced hole in the center, around the outer wheel hub,for the axle stub to go through. Still looking for some better photos, as they were well before digitial images.

[Makhpiyaluta]

Jeff,

Joe is right about a steelwire ring wich was inserted in the fabric and wich slides exactly over the hub. It's the method I used for ours also. Ask Pavel the hubdrawing I've send him it's shown on it. I don't know about the rimside but I did it as you but without the drawstring and we used Seconite instead of linnen.

Willem

[Jeff Brooks]

Thanks for the help Makhpiyaluta & Joe! very helpful!

I have taken the shock cord off the landing gear and measured them. I plan to add the lengths to the operator's manual I am writing for my plane. Both cords were initially pulled tight as I installed them. After removing them & measuring them, they're lengths were very close to one another. I made a template that will allow me to easily reproduce replacement shock cords without too much trouble.

['14-'18aviationcollector]

Originally Posted by womenfly2

2. Also did they use pinked edge reinforcements back then?

WF2

Hi womenfly2,

I have had this discussion with many experts. The best information I was able to find was provided by Bob Waugh. He believes that pinked edge reinforcements were not used during the First World War, and I tend to agree that they probably weren't. I am not saying that I know for sure, just that the best answer I was able to obtain was that no, they were not used during the First World War, at least not on aeroplanes. I believe that pinking shears did exist, but that they were not used on WW1 aeroplanes. Others such as Bob Waugh I am sure told me that the patent had not been applied for until after WW1. I have never looked into this, but I have only ever seen one piece of evidence that pinking shears may have been used during WW1. I have a piece of fabric from a DH10, which I purchased on eBay. It has pinked edge tape at the rear of the bay where the aileron is hinged to the mainplane, and a frayed edge tape underneath the pinked edge tape, suggesting that the frayed edge tape (rib reinfordcing tape) was applied first. I am not sure if this fabric was applied during the war or not. I just assumed that it was applied post WW1, due to the fact that it has a mixture of pinked and frayed edge tape reinforcement. The colour certainly does look like PC 10, but then again, so does the dark green that was applied to the top wing of the Australian War Memorial's Pfalz D.XII, and I believe that this colour was applied after the war. The fabric it is applied to has pinked edged tapes, and was not stitched to the wing, which indicates that it was for static display only, and almost certainly applied after WW1. I tend to believe that there would have been a surplus of PC10 and other items left over from WW1, so I don't believe that all extant PC10 samples were necessarily applied during WW1.

Pinked edge tapes on WW1 German aeroplanes are more easily documented in my opinion. I am not saying that they were not used, but I have never seen any evidence that pinked edged tapes were used on WW1 German aircraft. I have never been lucky enough to see any samples of WW1 German plain fabric, which were varnished earlier in the war, and painted later in the war, but the many examples of lozenge I have seen and often had the opportunity to study have all been remarkably consistent. Typically, all reinforcing tapes such as patches for aileron, elevator and rudder horns, struts and presumably wheel cover valve openings, rib tapes and leading and trailing edge reinforcement tapes were cut with straight edges and were not even frayed. There might be examples which were frayed, but I am not aware of any.

I hope this helps!

Cheers, David.

[gipsymoth236k]

Well...

As posted elsewhere, I have an original Nieuport 28 C-1 fabric covered aileron, and it indeed has very small-edged 'pinked' rib tapes over the aileron ribs...

Also, this original Fokker Dr.I rudder from 588/17 (w/n 2258) has frayed tape edges around its fabric reinforcing patch of the top hinge...

Regards, Gary Sewall