Hi All,

I have been lucky enough to pick up an Eindecker III that appears to have been built by someone taking it very seriously. I think it is from the BalsaUSA 40 size kit but it is set up with functional wing-warping (their kit had ailerons didn't it?). The damage, as ou can see in the photos, is a broken wing. I am confident that I can fix this without too much of a problem though my buildings skills are still at a beginners level (repaired some of my planes and built a Hawker Tempest Kit).

I would like to find out whether this is from a Balsa USA kit and if so whether the manual goes in to detail about the wing warping set up. The plane feels pretty heavy also (has a Saito FA 65) and I wander if it was underpowered. I'll take some measurements tonight and also weigh it. Anything to look for to confirm the kit origin?

Any help appreciated.

Adam

Here are a few more pictures...

got your pm, i can help you. that looks like a 3 seabees e 1 eindecker with wing warping. pm me your number. i have softball tonight but i will be at the bayou city flyers meeting tomorrow night at 7pm at scobee field.

The wingspan is approx. 70 inches. This makes it likely to be the 3 Sea Bees, the Balsa USA has a 60" span. I have emailed 3 Sea Bees to see if I can get some details on the covering and paints used, also to see if there is some kind of manual that I can get hold of.

The BUSA Eindeckers don't use wing-warping and aren't nearly this scale looking. Like you'all say it's probably a Sea Bees model. Good luck getting it flying again. The EIII is a great intro to WWI RC.

dont know much about a real flying one but these are some pics of a Balsa usa Eindecker i purchased to make a static model. Being dumb and new to this i thought it i assumed it was to scale. it is definitely not by a long shot. so i kept the wing minus dihedral, made new wing tips and rebuilt from scratch the whole fuse, tail etc. the coweling is fiberglass built up using wood, the engine is cardboard and paper.

one more time..

That is very nice!! I am thinking more along the terms of fixing mine to be a static model as it is almost too nice to (risk a) fly.

I am a little worried that in rebuilding the wing it may make it more difficult to warp.

I contacted 3 Sea Bees to try and confirm that this is one of theirs and to hopefuly get a product manual for it. It will be a little while still before I get started on it.

Adam

i wouldnt fly it. it looks beautiful. but then i have never flown an rc. ha. good luck

from your pics id say it is not a balsa usa kit. the balsa usa kit actually had elevators and ailerons! not only this but the fuse around the cockpit looks different not to mention the metal coweling et all.
mike

Angelspushing, as someone who for years and years (most of my teen years) built only static models to hang on the ceiling of my bedroom, I can appreciate what you've done here! Looks really nice. You've done a particularly good job of weathering your plane. In fact, there's nice detail everywhere I look. Below are a few pix of my BUSA Eindecker "conversion." I too was shocked at how non-scale the kit was. I wouldn't even be so kind as to call it sports scale. It's little more than an Ugly Stick with some scalish trappings. Anyway, after building the wing(s) I also decided to do a scratch-build using the Joseph Nieto drawings from the NASM as a basis. So the fuse, full-flying rudder and stab, cowl and cowl cheeks, and undercarriage are all scratch built. And of course I cut the wing in two to allow for a full cockpit. The only reason I kept the wing was that I DID intend to fly the plane and figured I wasn't ready for a wing-warping aircraft and needed the alierons.

Anyway, here are the pixs including a couple of flying shots and one of my last hanger-queens built over 20 years ago. BTW, it's a shame to waste your obvious building skills on non-flying models. Come an join us in the scale RC community!!! There's nothing in the world like seeing the labor of your love rise off the ground and soar through the air!

And a few more...

Oh, and the hanger queen.

Wow, you did fantastic jobs on those!

I guess I will be contacting you for some help when I start fixing mine. Particularly in matcing the old covering and weathered finish. I think that my plane was covered with natural solartex, if it is an original Sea Bees I imagine that they will be able to help.

The only other kit I have seen mentioned is a Proctor. Did they make a 70" wingspan kit?

Cheers,

Adam

Arizona Models also has Eindecker kits in 1/12/, 1/6. 1/4, and 1/3 scale sizes but none of these are 70" I'd be pretty certain this is the SeaBees kit.

http://www.arizonamodels.com/fokker_e-3.html

So Angelspushing, how about providing us with a few details on how you did the weathering on your EIII. I like the way you highlighted the wing ribs (and half ribs) and the general overall "dustiness." How did you do the finish on your plane? What paints? Airbrush or by hand?

Also, the cowl scrolling also looks pretty scale. I made my cowl out of a thin aluminum camping pot and used an electric eraser to do the patterning. I think I like your effect a little better. You also have some nice detail like the rivets holding on the cheeks and the factory ID plate. I had been meaning to get around to adding this level of detail but suddenly time got very very short (I had to return to Japan). This was my first ever scale RC plane and the very first RC plane I ever built for that matter. My only real concessions to flying were to keep the alierrons and a couple of degrees of dihedral (almost unnoticeable). And of course to make sure the balance was right.

Abufletcher,

i posted more of the pics at the "show us your best scale pics" thread or whatever its called on this site: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/Best..._509567/tm.htm.

well, in regards so scale painting; thats the only thing i had experience in as im and 'artist' in the sense that, well, i do 'fine art' and have experience with brush and paint. So this whole thing was artist's oil paint and brush including the emblems. First the plane was brushed with primer and painted with primer. To weather the plane i first sanded down the emblems a bit to look weathered then hand rubbed bits of burnt sienna/grey into areas, then sprayed the whole surface (everything) with a very thinned-down grey to give allusion of a scale plane [ you know, that formula where atmospheric haze dulls the colors and contrast the further away object is]. Then went back over with hand and brush and rubbed in more 'dirt' using more brown sienna with a little yellow ocher. After that i made some oil stains with brush at selected areas and let dry matte. Then in the end added some 'fresh oil' runs and drips from the spinning engine spray etc using high gloss alkyd medium with just a tint of brown to look like engine oil. When this dries it stays totally glossy like it’s still wet. Now, this thing needs no fuel proofing so I could get away with all of this.

The Cowling was covered with layers of aluminum paste then sprayed with a type of modern faux real silver metalizer used for plastic models. it comes with aluminum powder which you rub on which i used fully on the engine itself to look really shiny. then i made a whole bunch of little grinders out of nails with bits of sanding sponge taped to ends and put in drill and went to it.

It was all very tedious. Like I said, it took allot of experimentation with samples of the fabric and also cowling to finally settle on a technique that looked best. Pain in the butt and 2 years after the painting i don’t quite recall exactly the whole process but I think I covered it pretty much. would have have better effect with an airbrush but never ended up getting one of those. even my 1/48 models are painted by hand. i know, i know,. but i never thought id get this far into this!

I ran out of energy to finish 2 years ago as i then realized the wings should have been under cambered. Oh well. All I had to go by was little 3-views in one of those data file books. the books with the Fock Wolf Eagle logo. There were now pictures in real close-up so i had to guess on how for instance the rear tail skid configuration looked like as well with the control horns for the entire tail assembly and details of the main undercarriage, and compass, and top deck etc, etc, etc,

Mike

Mike, I very much like the idea (suggested by a couple of others here at RCU as well) of thinking of the finished model as a canvas to be painted on. This is particularly apt with these early birds that were fabric covered. You've done a lot of the things I was actually thinking about doing but felt I didn't have the artistic skills to acoomplish at this time. Mine EIII is finished a little more conservatively. First the plain white areas (actually a mixtures of white, black, and raw umber) were masked off and spray painted with a detail gun. I just couldn't trust myself to get the lines straight. Next the outlines of the early-style Patee crosses were drawn on with a soft pencil (following thick card patterns I had printed out on the computer). These were then painted by hand both because I figure the original was also hand-painted and becasue masking would have been a nightmare. What all the basic markings were in place, I set about dirtying it up a bit. Using a very thin wash of the black I used on the crosses, I added rainstreaks on the fuselage and wings. I'd sort of slop the wash on over the ribs of the wings and then roughly wipe it down. Also I daubbed a slightly thicker wash is the area aft of the undercarriage to attempt to replicate the stains left from dirt repeatedly thown up on take-offs and landings. Finally after all the weathering, the aircraft ID and parts numbering on wings, fuse, and tail, were done with custom-printed water-slide decals. And then because it DID have to be fuel-proof I sprayed the whole things with MinWax Polycrylic.

There are a lot of things I had read about and thought about doing but didn't trust myself to do on this model. For example, I experimented with the idea of pre-shadowing to highlight the structure but my results didn't look realistic to me. Also I tried various techniques to create realistic looking oil stains on the solartex but with little success. Ideally this oil should bleed from the inside out and that's impossible with the Solartex because of it's rubberized surface. Your oil stains look quite nice.

Anyway, this being my first scale RC model and the first model I've EVER attempted to weather, I think I did an OK job and learned a ton. Maybe I'll play around with the finish on the ARF I've just ordered -- I somehow can't stand the thought of a shiny new plane! Thanks for all your input.

BTW, here a link to a page with more info about my EIII (final photos and in flight photos).

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_19..._1/key_/tm.htm


I just finally ran out of time and had to stop working on it. It had it's maiden flights around the middle of July and by the end of July I was back at my job in Japan (university prof.). Wish I had had the time to add some of the ammenities to the top deck that yours has. this was complicated a bit because my top deck had to be removable to able to get to the innards!

arbufletcher,
is that covering on the coweling et all? is it a covering with those burnished marks already on it? did you make the cheek cowles? they were a challenge for me along with the top deck between the windshield and the top pylon as these are compound curves. one real nice thing i discovered is that one can attain the most beautiful scale wheels just using cheep williams bros. wheels (which look passable by themselves but look just like the real thing if you carefully attach solortex over them. i just tacked it down evenly around the perimeter and in the center leaving the middle areal free floating when its hit with an iron. then you can lightly dry-brush over that and gently pick up the 'spokes' underneath in the textured plastic of the williams bros wheel. looks just as good as a super expenxive wheel like from arizona models or something of that calibre.

arbufletcher,
PS, thats a sharp plane.
i know what you mean; why would someone want a shiny, new plane. ug! where's the characture?

nice photos you took. looks like you went over them thouroughly in photoshop with the Levels etc. is that one the actual sky just with a solor lens flare added?

nice stiching on the bottom. i did not notice this too from the puny 3-wiew drawings i was using so added them at the end after finally seeing a closeup. i just used paint. oh well. i wish i had images of EIII like these when i started but at that time no one had anything.

heres a good example of the paintjob befor the 'weathering'. all emblems and lettering were outlined and then hand painted. looks pretty ugly in this 'shiny, new condition i must say.

Mike, the BUSA cowl was so hideously non-scale that I knew right away I'd have to do away with that. After a lot of looking I found a cheap aluminum camping pot in the right diameter and cut that down with my handy-dandy Dremel tool. It's about 1/4" larger than scale but much better than the WAY too small BUSA cowl. The cowl cheeks were, as you say, a major pain in the ass! What eventually worked for me was to carve balsa blocks to shape and then pull hot styrene sheeting over them. I then covered the styrene in FliteMetal -- which is also a royal pain in the ass to work with. The sides and the top deck are covered with aluminum roof flashing from Lowe's. All was then polished and then the burnishings added with a borrowed electric eraser.

As references I was working from two outstanding sources: 1) the scale drawings by Joseph Nieto available from the National Aeronautics and Space Museum and 2) an eBook documenting in detail the EIII replica in San Diego done by Fokker Team Schorndorf.

I like the look of your wheels a lot and will use this technique of upcoming projects. One problem though. On the EIII the wheels weren't actually fabric covered like on other WWI planes but actually had wheel covering made of sheet metal. That's what I tried to replicate using the roof flashing.

On the photos, they were all taken with my CoolPix 5000 and then brought into PS for a thorough "cleaning." I used PS CS's shadow/highlight feature to good advantage. The static shot of the plane in the air was a bit of luck and a bit of planning. I had my two sons hold it up against the sky (those are real clouds) yet before twilight (best time for photography). I added the spinning engine and propellor in PS using rotation blur and the machine gun fire with one of the Alien Eye Candy filters. And of course the somewhat cheesy sun flare.

Here are a couple of construction photos.

And a few more...

wow, nice you found an aluminum pot of almost same size.. didnt know the EIII wheels had metal covering. as for the photos they look real real good. im using an older cool pix 995 and ps CS too. the thing with digital is the lack of tonal range and in this case using a reflector to bounce on a partially overcast day everything looks great but the sky of course is totally overblown to white. your skys dont even look real. nice blue.
Is that a williams bros kit for the engine? or just the cylinders?
mike