On one of my periodic browses through my decal archive, I came across the innovative Gunsight Graphics Fokker ‘Streak’ camouflage decals which I’d purchased way back when—in '09—and decided in might be prudent to check if they were still viable. (I store all my decals well sealed, so I wasn’t really worried, but…well, stuff happens.) So out came the Roden 1/32 Dr.I, and the Eduard and Part etch sets I’d accumulated, and we—my multiple personalities and I—were off.
Build was pretty straightforward and trouble-free, with mainly the Eduard aftermarket to dress up cockpit and guns, with a bit of tubing, stretched sprue and EZ-Line thrown in to round out the detail. Various online reviews of the kit suggested the gear struts were a bit too long, making it sit ‘nose-high,’ so I clipped them a bit until the ‘sit’ seemed to more-or-less match assorted photos. Rigging, such as it was, was EZ-Line.
For whatever reason, the ‘half-red’ scheme on Richthofen’s 152/17 is the one that has always appealed to me. (This a/c, which he flew in the March 1918 time-frame, was the one which—if memory serves—actually survived the war and ended up displayed hanging in one the Berlin Museums…only to be destroyed by Allied bombing in WW2.) The Gunsight Graphics decals worked splendidly, put down over my own CDL mix from Tamiya acrylics. Minimal touch-ups were required, and went down virtually undetectably with a thinned glaze of a matching color. Photos I’ve seen of the fairings around the middle wing/fuselage join tend to show evidence of uneven color application or perhaps in-service retouching, so I made that area a little blotchy. I lightened the red color around the upper wing crosses to simulate thin overpainting of the original white surrounds and subsequent fading. Richthofen being Richthofen, I assumed the a/c would have been kept in pristine condition, so weathering was virtually non-existent (though I realize I should have dirtied up the wheels and tires a bit).
Decals were a mix of kit-supplied and ‘spares,’ with the one persistent problem area—just visible in the photos—a bit of silvering under the fuselage weight stencils that simply would not go away, despite repeated slicing and re-treating. Ah, well…
Anyhow, great fun…and my first Dreidecker since building the old Revell ‘big boy’ several lifetimes ago. (I do have the Eduard ‘double’ kit in 1/48 waiting in the stash, however, so more three-winged fun awaits.)
Hope you enjoy the photos.