Starting the Fokker D.VII kit

I had picked up this kit back about a year and a half ago at the Toledo show, with the original intention that I’d start working on it last winter. Of course, I hadn’t quite finished the BTE Venture kit at the time, and that dragged out and I didn’t get that project done until early this summer.

Well, the Venture currently resides somewhere out in the middle of the cornfield southeast of the club field. Ever try looking for something in a cornfield? It sucks. That plane took me about 5 years to build (all my own fault, it’s really a great kit, I’d love to get another one down the road). So now it’s time to start working on the Balsa USA Fokker D.VII kit. The plan here is to finish this in a much more reasonable period of time. I’m kinda hoping for getting it finished over the winter, but we’ll see. With two wings, I may still be writing about this 9 years from now :).

So, the first step is I needed a decent building board. The last plane I’d built on the kitchen island, which worked ok (Cathy would argue with that though), but really wouldn’t be adequate for this plane – the top wing when finished on this plane is about 88 inches, the island just isn’t big enough. So I visited the local Habitat ReStore outlet, looking for a hollow core door that was nice and flat. Found one there for five dollars, and then picked up a couple of ceiling tiles at the hardware store. Presto, a nice building surface.
Hollow core door with ceiling tiles on top of it for a building board
Then I pinned the top wing plans down to the board.
Top wing plans on the building board

Pictures for this build will be available at the photo section of the website.