Fokker F. XXXVI - 1/100 (2)

 

 
Time for wings. 

I glued a strip of sturdy paper on the wing skeleton over the place where the two wing parts will meet. This way they'll have more grip and glue surface. Careful not to press too hard, you don’t want to show the frame through the wing.  The wings actually were really thick on this big Fokker. In fact, it had one of the biggest wing surfaces of its time. While folding the wing over the leading edge, some wrinkles appeared in the (just a little) too sturdy paper. Drat! Expletive!

But Chris told in his thread on Papermodelers he used a little water to bend the paper at the leading edge. Water? Yes. Well, I had to give that a try. Never tried it before so what did I have to lose?
I poured some water in a little cup and dipped a Q-tip in it to apply it to the inside of surface I needed to fold over without a crease. Just a little, one quick streak over the complete run of the inside of the leading edge. And it worked a charm. Just calmly curve the paper and lay it, curved, to rest with a little weight on the trailing edge. It will dry in the new shape and from there is is easy to bend around the wing frame. Great technique! No wrinkles, and even nicer, it is actually just like plywood is bent, of which the Fokker wings originally were made.
Then I glued the wing’s trailing edge carefully, just the outmost edge of it, and shoved the wing structure slowly inside. Empennage is done later on with the same principle. 
With my first build I found the placement of the wing into the fuselage a little tricky. It is shoved between two bulkheads and the skin has a little of the curvature of the wing in it, so you know where the wing should go. (orange side down!) I reinforced the inside of the upper part of the skin a little to help carry the wing and not bending when it is pushed into place. That went all right. The second version had a better fit, too and didn't need any encouragement to go into place.

Fokker F.XXXVI - 1/100 (1)

Hi there. I realised what was wrong with my blogging stuff. The last years I only tend to post after I finished a model and that often can take a long time nowadays. I have many other things to give my attention to so I do not have as much time as I like for making paper models. And when I do, I often am not able to concentrate enough. Might be the isolation restrictions from these days (I have had my first jab this very week, though) but also the things I have on my mind. Anyway, I decided to start a build report although I already am in a much more advanced state in the build now. Let me take you back to April.

A second coming, this is. No one has seen the first one.Well, until now. It is not bad. it really isn’t bad at all. The shape is great, the parts all fit extremely well. It was the print quality that made me stop.
I must have messed up the settings. With printers these days, I always end up being like a Quixotic figure, fighting, shouting and cursing the damn machines. When the robots finally will take over this messed-up world, I will be put on trial for insulting them so severely, I am sure.

Anyway, Far advanced in the building process already, fuselage, wings and empennage finished, I looked at the original sheets on my laptop again. And I discovered so many detail that was missing, I immediately was disappointed in my build. I just couldn’t go on. There wasn’t any other option than to abandon it. Right after that decision, a moment of doubt followed, as always: Should I actually abandon the build? Start something new? That often causes disinterest, because of having to do all those steps over again. But no, this plane has something special. It is a wonderful shape, a very rare plane as a model - and it is Dutch. The design is very well executed and so i decided to try again. Quite unique.

More photos of this version in the previous post. I didn't destroy it, it now lives in the pile of abandoned and discarded models.

Fokker F.XXXVI - Some history first!

 

The silver and blue Fokker F.XXXVI PH-AJA "Arend" in flight. Photo copyright Wikimedia

In the nineteen-thirties, Fokker was one of the biggest aircraft builders in the world. Really hard to imagine nowadays, The Netherlands being such a small country, but Fokker really had orders from all around the world. However, his reign at the top would be over by the end of the decade.
When Anthony Fokker ordered his personnel in 1934 to start building the first of the F. XXXVI (36) aircraft, he didn’t know the CEO of the KLM, Albert Plesman, never intended to buy more than just that one. He was more or less tricked into buying Fokker’s latest plane, which - in his eyes- already was obsolete when it was drawn. Not because of its intended luxury, that was quite all right for the time. It was dubbed “The Flying Hotel” and actually was extremely comfortable inside.
No, it wasn’t the luxury. It was the construction itself. A hand-welded steel frame, clad with linen and a very large wing made of plywood. Oh, and non-retractable landing gear as well. Fokker’s biggest problem was he didn’t adapt to include  modern techniques in building his aircraft. His head designer, Platz, was a self made aircraft engineer. Good, but old-fashioned. And both of them couldn’t figure out all those new modern gadgets. Blown flaps, de-icing mechanisms, retractable gears, stressed metal skin, it all went over their heads. They really were wood, fabric and wire pioneers.

Plesman on the other hand already had fallen in love with the sleek aluminium Douglas DC-2. An all-metal monocoque plane, streamlined with retractable gear, modern cockpit and very sturdy.
The sole Fokker F.XXXVI with the registration sign PH-AJA and the name "Arend" (Eagle), was delivered and deployed on European routes, instead of Fokker’s intended role for it on the Dutch East-Indies line. But Plesman wanted to use those new DC-2’s for that. The success KLM-DC2 Uiver had in the famous Melbourne race was a decisive factor to do so, but also the much higher fuel consumption of the F.XXXVI.

The big Fokker F.XXXVI "Arend" pulled by a tractor over the ramp on Schiphol Airport, 1934.
(behind it you can see the beautiful Fokker F.XX "Zilvermeeuw", which in fact had retractable landing gear.)
Copyright Wikimedia

While Fokker’s factory kept going well with military aircraft orders because of the looming war, and Fokker’s business boomed like never before (because he had arranged the sole license of selling Douglas’ aircraft in Europe), Fokker himself got bored and frustrated. Afraid for the inevitable coming war, Fokker left the Netherlands around 1937 for New York. He died, 49 years old, of respiratory ailments of which he already suffered for quite some time. His ashes were repatriated and placed in the family grave at Westerveld cemetery in Driehuis.

The last aircraft design Fokker proposed to Plesman was in late 1939, he showed a sketch of a modern-looking, all-metal plane, with retractable landing gear and a nose wheel, called the F.XXIV (24). It has some resemblance to the Douglas DC-5. It wasn’t until about ten years after the war, the plane eventually developed from this sketch took to the skies: the Fokker F.27 Friendship. (FYI: The F.25 was an odd egg-shaped twin-boom push-prop business plane and the F.26 was a proposed but never realised odd-looking airliner with two jet engines (!) mounted below the fuselage.)

For those of you who like (a bit compacted and romanticised) historical drama TV-series about aeronautics, I can really recommend “Turbulent Skies” (“Vliegende Hollanders”’ in Dutch). An eight-part series with very high production standards and superbly reproduced imagery of the times between 1919 and 1940, in which the flammable friendship between Plesman and Fokker is shown. But also their families, the planes, the struggles, the journeys and all of that. Very well done and historically quite accurate. There are only a few things that are just plain wrong. But those actually are forgivable. And that is a unique thing for me to say because I am a nitpicker. But I really liked this series as a whole. Because in the end this is a good, well-told story with some very decent acting. Here's the trailer.

Now, the model. I will build a Fokker F.XXXVI. That will be in the next entry! What I already can tell you about it is 1/100. it has been designed by Chris Palmer and I think it is beautiful. So pretty, I decided to redo it after I already had the fuselage and wings together. More next time! (very soon!)

Here is a sneak preview of how it began. (Began? Yes. This was in April. (-; .. But that model looks almost done!  Yes. I know. But it isn't. By far. More to come!)

Oh, and never mind the hand bandage; I had some temporary issues with the joints in my hand...

Well, thanks for stopping by and until very soon!

--PK