Fokker Dr.I Triplanes: When Good Planes Go Bad
Recently I had produced a lot of a Fokker triplane profiles. A recent count was 54 Dr.I profiles. I took break and worked on some new refined weapons, wing skids, high-light kit and assorted parts and While working adding newly finished parts upgrades to my Dr.I profiles based on an old but serviceable master file I noticed something was wrong. Not just wrong for one triplane, but for all of the current run of 54. I looked at the inverted V-strut and noticed it was on the wrong side of the machine guns. Finding the mistake does one thing, It lights a fire under me and gives me an excuse for a complete renovation . Here are a few of the new profiles from the Triplane Errata Project.
This was the bird which started the dominoes falling. I have to confess I have put off doing the iconic red and white Triplane. So many people have done their own version. I was afraid of a swarm of cliches to start creeping into my collection. Someone talked me down off the edge and I added them for the sake of completion. In the end it was when I looked and saw what was wrong.
Once I got the Red Barron sorted out and tucked away, I went looking for his next of kin. I've always liked his paint scheme better. Luckly I have my initial profile file to work from. Just add the new parts, tweak, save as a png to the drawings folder, save as thumbnail image resize, unsharpen mask, do some optimization to keep things snappy. To simplify I overwrite existing graphic with the new image so there is no need to change file calls in HTML. It helped sort out the steps to bare bones.
These are a couple of the new profiles from this week's crop. The easiest way to do this is working in batches. So far the count is a dozen in the can waiting to be turned into a pair of pngs. Baby steps, I'm still annoyd with the "I" struts. grrrrr. Ok that force me to to a refit sooner than later. Cheers I need a nap.
