Dancing Wings 770mm Fokker DR.1 Build

[GrahamC]

It's been quite a long time since I've posted a build log anywhere, but having got my hands on the Dancing Wings Fokker DR.1 kit from Banggood, I decided that it maybe it was time to take some photos and share some reflections on the experience of building the triplane.

The kit arrived in time for me to bring it away on holiday. I don't expect to be able to finish it while away, for reasons which will become apparent, but suffice to say that relatively few tools have been required so far.

This is my first experience of a kit from Dancing Wings, and, lets just say, that it's been an interesting one so far.

The instructions, which have to be downloaded from Banggood, suggest starting with the fuselage, but I thought I would get the horizontal stabilizer built first. The kit does come with a plan for the wings and stabilizers, so the relevant section was cut out and the parts identified and removed from their sheets.

The laser cutting in pretty good in general, with just a few places on the thicker balsa sheets where the cut had not quite made it all the way through. 

Edited By GrahamC on 03/10/2020 15:37:36

[GrahamC]

Building the stabilizer turned out to be very straightforward. The fit of the parts is really very good indeed, and just the tiniest tweaking with a sanding stick was required to make everything go together exactly as it should. So first impressions of the kit were that it was impressively accurate and went together well. Then I decided to make a start on the fuselage....

[GrahamC]

When I turned to the fuselage, that's where the fun started. Most of the fuselage parts in my wood pack were labelled and the instructions provide you with a labelled diagram to show you where everything goes, but there was no similarity at all between the part numbers on the wood and the part numbers in the instructions. The fuselage turns out to be an impressively accurate 3d jig saw puzzle!

Again the fit of the parts is impressive.

So far, I've only had to tweak one part in order to get it all to fit together. It does look to me as though I should have had two slightly different fuselage sides, the only difference being that the push rod exits for the elevator and rudder are at slightly different heights and match the rear most former in the fuselage. My two fuselage sides were identical requiring the rear most former to be tweaked. I'm hoping that doesn't mean further problems further along in the build.

That brings me to the bigger problem that will limit how far I can get with the kit for the time being. The accessory pack provided clearly doesn't go with this kit, and instead I'm missing quite a few items including the carbon strips for the fuselage, the model engine, the model guns, the correct undercarriage, the aluminium cabine struts and the correct accessory pack. I've logged into the Banggood Customer support area and reported it, but not yet heard from them.

[john Bains]

Hi dont know if you have got any further with the build, i have almost finished the 1550mm version ,all the bits were there but did come across a few problems  dont know if the 700mm one has them as well ,on mine the forward cabane struts were 13mm too long ,which threw out the top wing incidence by about 8 degrees I added a ply strenghtener to the rudder base and support struts to the tail as there was a lot of flex in it and i built a battery box in behind the dummy engine which helps with the C of G which was wrongly given as measured on the top wing not the middle wing . Im almost there with the build a few final tweaks and I hope to maiden in the next few weeks.

Cheers

John