And again here appeared another article in one of our German aviation periodicals. Although all text is in German language, we thought that we should not hide this nicely looking atricle away from our foreign readers and visitors.

The magazine in which it appeared is called "Flugzeug Classic". 

Feel free to download a complete PDF file of the article by just clicking on the image below. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do although the text, - as mentioned - is not in English.

Für weitere Informationen und viele Detailfotografien während der Bauphase schaut Euch doch auch diesen Link an:

Lots of stuff was done during the past months. The Engels E6 (Fokker E.V/D.VIII reproductions) are close to be almost finished now.

As a matter of fact we will finally put fuselages and wings together for test fitting on October 28th. The following week the planes will be leaving, heading towards thir new home. Finally things like engine instellation and covering will be done at he place of the new owner. 

Three black and white images of the machine gun instellation.

Alexandra and me are illustrating how a person fits into the frame.

The three frames side by side. Jannik is checking out the cockpit of mine. His Alexandra build pedal triplane waits.

Rudder and fin completed and wrapped with fabric.

Proud owner of one of the three D.VIIIs.

Rudder is covered also now.

Control cables during splicing.

Complete instrumentation of vintage instruments for one of the Engels E3 projects.

"Turtledeck" and plywood side fairings are in place.

Engine is test fitted to the engine mounting frame and the frame is test fitted into the fuselage.

All three engine mounts for the rotary engines side by side.

One of the new made stabilizers.

Elevator and stabilizer put together and during test fitting to the fuselage.

Spliced bracing cable on the undercarriage.

One of the three undercarriages awaits its plywood covering.

Covering of aircraft parts with new reproduced printed camaouflage fabric.

Für weitere Informationen und viele Detailfotografien während der Bauphase schaut Euch doch auch diesen Link an:

A huge step forward was done with the project Engels E6. The fuselages of these Fokker D.VIII reproductions are very well in progress.

The wings are also completed now and have been fittedt to the airframes.

Wings in the holding pattern.

Pulling in the bracing wires in one of the E6 fuselages.

Completely braced fuselage frame of an Engels E6 (Fokker D.VIII).

For the initial test sitting no seat was required at all. The bracing wires served well for that propose.

But with seat installed it was twice as much fun!

And then it was the turn of the grown ups.

View into the business office of the E6.

View over the weapons.

On the side line the drawings for the Engels E5 (Rumpler C.IV) also made good progress. In the meantime the major upper wing components and the entire under carriage have been brought to paper.

Complete instrumentation of vintage instruments for one of the Engels E3 projects.

Für weitere Informationen und viele Detailfotografien während der Bauphase schaut Euch doch auch diesen Link an:

Safety belts and undercarriage parts in the making.

Brackets for the attachment of the leap seat belts..

Completed belt brackets.

Above: Way of attachment of seat belt brackets to the belts as done at Fokker.

Bottom: way of attachment as done on post war Swiss D.VIIs.

Test loading of the rivited bracket/belt joint. This thing here weights 120kg /~250lb

Detailed trials with the entire belt/seat system will be carried out at a later time.

Deep drawn axle guides for the undercarriage axle boxes.

Welded axle boxes for the undercarriages of the Fokker D.VIII and the Dr.I.

Pieces for the undercarriages.

See this link for more detailed step by step images of the making process:

Further details and pieces of the seat parts are in progress.

Reinforcement angles that go to the front bottom of the seat flor and serve also as border frame for the upholstery.

The very first of the seat belt brackets in its parts...

And finished after brazing and soldering.

Some of seat frames, seat shels and controls of the various projects going on here at present.

See this link for more detailed step by step images of the making process:

The new seat mountingframes are all done now except for the paint.

The plates for the back rest attachments of the seats are cut from rounded steel sheet.

The curve suits the shape of the back rest.

Some finished plates.

Fokker D.VII.

Fokker Dr.I

Fokker E.V/D.VIII

Result of 4 days of work (14 hours each).

See this link for more detailed step by step images of the making process:

At first I want to take the oportunity to express my thanks and apreciation to all of my friends at "The Aerodrome Forum" for their very kind and unbelievable support. Manfred Thiemeyer (Acer) und Dan San Abbott have repeatedly exceeded any form of civilized behaviour, indeed.

The form of support shows in a tremendously way how fruitless their attacks and attempts have been to discredit my work.

I never have expected this scale of support from so many of you nice fellows out there.

Thank you!

Seat frame adjustment clambs before, during and after welding. One set is already completed.

The seat shell bucket fit perfectly in the new home.

The very first two of the new number of seat mounting frames are finished. These are for the Fokker D.VII. One of these is for the new plane of Oliver Wulff.

Today my attempt is to finish all other mounting frames for the Fokker D.VIIIs and C.Is. Next Saturday I will finish up my fery own Fokker Dr.I seat mounting frame.

The frames of the D.VII, the D.VIII and the Dr.I also differ slightly, but I will show side by side images when all are done.

See this link for more detailed step by step images of the making process:

Meanwhile two Fokker D.VII upper wings are almost complete. There is still some work to be done on them, but this has to wait until warmers days, since we do not have heat at the assembly shed.

Hand shaped sheet metal panels for the pulley inspection frames in the upper wing.

Hartmut posing with the new made undercarriage legs for his Fokker C.I.

Alexandra is also progressing well on Janniks new pedal plane.

One of the first main wing fitting for the attachment of the upper wings of the Fokker D.VII

Hartmut Sammet of Samet LTB, obviouisly satisfied with the quality of the wing structure.

Wing fittings under preparation.

Mounting of the wing fittings to the wing spars.

Pedals for the various aircraft I am working on.

Bronce bearings and attachment clambs for the mounting of the torque tube and control stick.

Different types of control sticks and torque tubes. (from top to bottom: Fokker D.VIII, Fokker D.VII, Fokker Dr.I.)

Intereim fitting of the controls to a Fokker D.VIII fuselage frame.

All parts will receive a anti rust primer and will subsequently be painted black.

The very first of the compression tubes for the Fokker E.III wing structure is built as well.

New seats for the various planes are being manufactured.

All is handcrafted, of course.

Finished aluminum shell buckets await their further processing.

All tubings for the seat mounting frames are prepared.

This is Janik. A young man who suddenly stood in my workshop and expressed interest in early aviation building. He asked whether he could learn something from me and I agreed. Now he is building himself a Fokker E.III rudder as a start! :-).

One of the seat mounting base frames prepared for welding.

And during welding.

This illustrates where it will go in the end.

See this link for more detailed step by step images of the making process:

In the meantime however we have finished the main wing spars for four upper wings of the Fokker D.VII.

Here we see a nice comparision of the two upper wing spars side by side.

Alltogether eight of these spars have been finished until today.

With the plane the cross sections of the spar are trimmed to fit the ribs exactly.

The wing tib bow is planed down by hand as well.

Thie is a detail shot of the rear plate that reinforces the joint of the wing tip bow.

The very first upper wing is almost complte. All that is still missing is the metal fittings and the nose planking.

More wing details.

Test fitting of the first spar brackets.

The weapons also arrived already and have been test fitted.

The very first of the three Fokker D.VIII fuselages also is welded up in the meantime..

For more detailed information on these projects feel free to follow the below link:

The start was made with the making of the front spar of the Top wing.

The very first spar during planing and just before closing.

The entire interieur of the spar is painted with clear boat varnish.

All the scarf joints are made in a ratio of 1/20.

In the meantime the side frames for the three new Fokker D.VIII monoplanes have been welded up as well. 

Jannik celebrated his fourth birthday on Saturday. The whole past year through my dear Alexandra was working on a very sweet pedal plane for him as a birthday present.

The "Nose Art" and the entire paint selection and combination was purely his idea!

It is unbelievable how much he likes his new "toy". I think this is his best birthay present ever. He hardly gets out of it any more.

Alexandra now decided to offer to make such planes. She even has idea for further planes such like a Fokker D.VII with real steel tube fuselage and fabric cover. Or even a Me 109 made from real sheet aluminum. In case of interst contact her for more detail at: Lansky@aquarell-galerien.de

Achim

For more information about our various projects, feel free to look here as well:

Last time we have seen some images of the test covering of the Fokker Dr.I rudder. The linen fabric we had reproduced was handled without problems.

Now we have covered the tail feathers of our reproduction of the very early Fokker built D.VII. This is the plane that still stands for sale at highest bid once completed. By now we have decided to cover this plane completely and let our other one uncovered to grand insight into the structure as long as possible. This will certainly benefit to some of the visitors that show up here occasionally.

The undercarriages of the new planes also are in good progress now..

This is no courtain! No, this is going to be the envelope of a stabilizer.

Alexandra is examining a piece of vintage Fokker D.VII cover to make sure we will reproduce all seams correctly. In this very case she is looking at a long seam that joined two pieces of fabric at the rear of the stabilizer..

Here we have the "nun-courtain" being test fit to the structure and pinned in place before finall sewing to the structure.

Alexandra and my hand stitching the fabric to the wrapping underneath. 

The closing seam at the front of the elevator. The entire bag is sewn with the machine, except for the front which is hand closed this way.

To protect the stitching, another strip of linen is glued on top of it.

Since this is going to be a reproduction of a very early Fokker built Fokker D.VII carrying the serial number 2310, the entire aircraft will be painted in this streaky camouflage paint scheme which is typical for fokker before the introduction of the printed pattern camouflage fabric.

Completely covered and painted tail feathers. The paint job is done by hand as they did it back then.

The new Fokker D.VII undercarriage struts.

Achim

For more information and closer details on the progress of this project, feel free to click on this link:

But we will not forgett to update the website. This update tells you what happened lately at our place.

Finally the assembly shed is completed. However it only looks big when viewed from outside. As soon as you enter you will find it filled up with stuff already.

In the flow of this year some better organizing has to take place. Workbenches have to be installed and some mountings on the ceiling have to ensure that only the planes are down on which we actually work right now.

Here now some of the images that we have shot during the past months:

One of the new fuselage frames of the two additional Fokker D.VII´s.

A movie that shows the making of these fuselages is already available. You can learn more when following this link below:

http://www.collectors-edition.de/QAU/Movie3200.htm

As already mentioned, the assembly shed already is full of things. As long as no beter organizing takes place, this is a waste of space.

Some of the new fuselage frames. In the foreground you see the two new D.VII´s, while in the background three Fokker E.III await further process. 

Detail shots of welded joints in the Fokker D.VII stabilizer.

D.VII stabilizers in the making.

Finished Fokker D.VII rudders.

Assembly for a load test on a Fokker E.III rudder that we carried out.

200 kg/sq mtr. is considdered the maximum load at full deflection that act on the rudder. With a total area of 0,6 sq. meters 120 kg is 100% of this load.

This proves that we did not fill the sand bags with whool :-). A Movie showing this load test will be available soon.

A semiliar film on a load test on a Fokker E.III wing rib is already available.

You can learn more about it here:

http://www.collectors-edition.de/f-t-s_buchbestellung_english.htm

According to the original Foker factory drawings the control cables for elevator and rudder have been spliced.

Here you see the control cables installed.

Of course did we also conduct a load test on the spliced control cables. The cable is capable of holding 800 kg. Our spliced cable failed at a load of 708 kg. Pretty safe, don´t you agree?

The undercarriages for the new D.VII´s and the C.I´s are well in progress. Here we see the steel sheet axle boxes.

We will soon start to cover the very first aircraft parts. For this reason we had rewooven some linen fabric with the correct thread number and thickness in both directions.

As a first exercise we have covered the rudder for our Fokker Triplane.

The entire paint job was done in pure handwork, just like they did it back then.

However, since we had more time and have not been in the hurry of mass production, the outcome is much more beautiful as all we know from actual historic samples that survived. Indeed the paint jobs often have been carried out rather sloppy and rough.

Doesn´t that look great?

Achim

Für weitere Information und viele Detailfotografien während der Bauphase schaut Euch doch auch diesen Link an:

A lot happened since the last update.

The assembly shed unforunately still is not completed. What was thought to be errected by August of this year will take until next year. Well, sometimes you have to take things as they are.

Here are the new images of the progress as it goes on:

Jannik and Achim siting in the cockpit of the D.VII for sale. You can see the ammo box and the empty belt box installed.

Fokker E.III elevator control horns.

Brass fuel tank during pressurization of one of the inner chambers.

Airfoil drawings of the Rumpler C.IV are coming together.

Thousands and thousands of radiator core tubes have been made..

Aluminum radiator shutter flaps.

Paper models to determine the wrapping of the radiator main housing.

The very first main radiator housing made from brass sheet.

Stages in the life of a radiator core tube.

These tubes are put together to rows and blocks....

...and then again from the blocks the radiator core acumulates. This system of radiator making originates from race car radiators.

The fuselages of the Fokker E.III monoplanes are coming together.

First triplane ribs are made by Rudi and Conrad. We are woring on two Foker Dr.I triplanes of which one will be for sale against highest bid in the end.

"Only" the hangar gates have to be finsihed.

Achim

For more information feel free to click the link below:

There is hardly enough time available to me to keep this website up to date for you.

Our present projects cover four Fokker D.VII´s. One of these planes is the well known for sale repro of the pre production model "Fok. D.VII 228/18". Two others are early production birds of which one will become our friend Oliver Wulff´s reproduction of Willy Gabriel´s D.VII. The second early production bird is not yet planed to get any specific personal markings. The fourth airplane is a late production model for another foreign costumer.

Furthermore we have started to work on three Fokker C.I´s. This is the two seater version of the Fokker D.VII. It was the last war design made by Fokker, although it did not see service any more. The build of these three planes is supervised by our member Hartmut Weber. 

Another new member of our group is Rudolf Beutel. He has started to work on the reproduction of two Fokker Dr.I triplanes. Progress on these will be somewhat slow, since his time is limited.

One more order covers the making of a complete set of engineering drawings for the Rumpler C.IV. The drawings will be developed using the meassurments of Marco Sommerau´s surviving wreckage and other historic documents. The costumer will build the planes himself as the drawings become available. However, we will cut the metric steel tubings for this project here and ship those to him.

Our space problems will hopefully soon be solved, since the construction of our new asembly shed is well in progress. With a bit of luck the hall will be finished by the end of this month. We will have another open house by mid of October. You all are welcome to attent. I will let you know specific date when we have decided.

The progress will speed up immensly once the assembly shed becomes available. There will be only two work stations in it. One will be only for the handling of sheet metal, the other one will be for the splicing of cables.

But now some images of the progress so far:

Some of the routing templates and assembly jigs for the making of the D.VII wing ribs.

Finished routed wing webs for the D.VII´s upper wing.

Construction of wing ribs in the jig.

Cleaning of wing ribs after nailing and glueing.

Glued test pieces for the CAA

This image shows the solid monoplane wing spars to be.

Manufacturing of ribs

Well seasoned wood for the creation of the Fokker D.VII spars.

Wood of the spars to be.

Rumpler C.IV aileron drawing in the making

Laminated wing beam of Fokker D.VII top wing front spar

Fokker D.VII and Fokker C.I control grips coming together.

Construction of the assembly hall is in progress

Fuel fillers

Ammunition box and empty belt box of the Fokker D.VII.

Achim

For further information and more images feel free to take a look at this link:

The rudders for all three of our new Fokker E.III projects are almost completed. We did one additional piece for a future load test, just to pin down what the structure can hold before complete failure.

Furthermore the fuselage side frames for two more Fokker D.VII biplanes and three new Fokker E.III monoplanes of the E.III type have been put together and completely welded including the corner bracing loops made from 8mm diameter steel tubings of 2mm wall thickness.

In the meantime the company of "Engels Flugzeugbau" ("Engels Aircraft Manufacturing") was founded officially.

In the course of the founding of the company, an enlargement of the drawing office quickly turned out to be needed. The new office now really looks nice.

Since work space always is required, we will soon start with the errection of another assembly shed on our area. As soon as this shed is finished, we will certainly invite all of you to another "Open House"-barbeque. We will inform you in time through this media.

Due to health problems I was not able to hold my speach at the OUV as promissed last time. I am hoping that I can attent the meeting next time.

Achim

For more detailed information about the making of the aircraft, please follow this link:

In the meantime the ribs for the E.III project are all completed.

To investigate and demonstrate the strenght of the original Fokker Wing rib design, we decided to conduct a load test.

The test arrangement is identical to the rib installment into the wing structure. The rib is supported by two main spars. The cross tape bracing also is identical to the original wing structure design.

At a wing load of 38kg/square Meter a calculated load of 25 kg must be carried by one rib alone. We tested the rib in load case A in which the major load resultant attack the wing in 1/3 of wing depth meassured from the leading edge. At that time the calculated safety factor of 5 had to be aproved by a achieved load factor of 6 with no failure.

Our rib collapsed at a load factor of almost 9 (but as you can see we took 30kg for load factor 1). If we had taken the real rib load of 25kg, the rib could almost show up with a load factor of almost 11! It might be interesting to hear that at a weight of only 340 grams, the rib could take aload of almost 800 fold its own weight.!

Impressive, isn´t it?

Achim

For more details about our projects, please click here:

The engine reached 1320 RPM during its acceptance run with the new airscrew without problems. At idle it ran with sweet 230 RPM. The new airscrew produced its own unique sound that could well be distinguished from the run of the engine.

We have now also begun to build the radiator. For this we made a test of the production of hexagonal end brass tubes. 5000 of these tubes are required for the honeycomb radiator and will be hand made each one.

Achim

For more information and images of the project see also:

In the moment we are busy with the completion of the airscrew. It is a exact repro of an 1918 airscrew that was manufactured by the company of Axial and used with many early Fokker D.VII´s, including the two planes we are building.

The airscrew is almost finished and will do its acceptance run on the weekend of 20th and 21st Nowember on the Daimler D.III engine.A short movie clip of the ballanced propeller can be downloaded here:

http://www.collectors-edition.de/Downloads/free/ballanced.ZIP

The Acceptance run, of course, willalso be filmed and published here.

Achim

For more information and much more photographs feel free to study the below Forum:

As you can see it runs perfectly!

Thanks to Dirk Bende and his boys it appears as if we now have the only original Daimler D.IIIa engine in Europe that was so perfectly restored, that it starts up just using the starting magneto! You can learn more about Dirk Bende and his excellent engine restoring company by visiting his website at:

http://www.motobende.de

The Staff of Dirk even shot a short movie clip that shows the first test run of the engine. If you like, you can go and download it from here and let it run continuosly for hours, as I did :-)

MOVIE CLIP

At present the engine runs smoothly up to 800 RPM. Dirk did not let it run at full RPM yet, since the engine at present is equipped with a historic airscrew. Since it is not clear whether the layers of wood are still clued perfectly the long awaited final acceptance run has to wait until I have finished the new airscrew which we will finally use for flying.

However:  The intellation of the engine is a rather big stap forward towards bringing the aircraft into the air!

At present I am seriously thinking of quitting my every day job and start doing this as a business. So, If anybody is interested in owning a Fokker D.VII repro like this one, please feel free to contact me for a proposal.

Achim

For more information about the building process and much more detail photographs, feel free to click here:

Unfortunately, the pictures taken during the exhibition are of low quality. This might have been due to the poor light inside the hall. However, the engine is a real dream! The Company of "Moto Bende", owned and run by Dirk Bende did an extraordinary excellent job on the engine. I can only reccoment him and his company for any engine you would like to have restored! Why don´t you just visit his website right from here:

http://www.motobende.de

The acceptence run for the engine and the airscrew is sheduled for October. For this we need to build an new airscrew first.

This airscrew is for another airplane. As soon as it will be finished we will start working on the one for this project.

Isn´t it a real beauty to look at? The airscrew featured here is one made by Heine in 1918 and will be replaced as soon as our Axial Repro is finished.

By the way: You can support our projects by the purchase of a wunderfull coffee mug that we have produced for you.

To learn more about just click here:

http://www.collectors-edition.de/QAU/Tasse.htm

For more information and closer images of the project, feel free to click here:

Saturday, September 18th

at the Technik Museum Speyer on the Rhine. We are happy to invite everybody to come and see the projects there.

These images show the fusalage that will be shown to the public at Speyer. It rests on its undercarriage that still sports the typical Fokker factory interim wheels made from wood.

The restored Daimler D.III engine.

Detail of the cable that limits the tail skid movement.

For closer information about the progress of the built, please feel free to check this link:

Our open house on July 28th was a true success. There was even a film company there that asked about the possibility of the Fokker-Team-Schorndorf manufacturing some planes for a movie about Manfred von Richthofen they are about to do. Well.....we will see...:-)

The cross wires for the undercariage are also spliced the same way they did it back then. Looks a bit confusing? It is...:-)

Doesn´t it look quite impressive on its legs, even it is just on "temporary, stone age" wooden wheels?

View over the cockpit as it is for now.

The compass also is an original produced by "Carl Bamberg" of Berlin Friedenau.

The whole project slowly takes shape, don´t you agree?  

For closer information on the project and tons of images during construction, feel free to follow this link:

In the meantime we have built the first seat for the aircraft.

The undercarriage ball and socket attachments are also finished and the ball ends welded to the streamlined undercarriage struts.

Even the "turtledecks" for both planes are completed by now. The whole thing slowly replicates and aircraft now!

We will try to to bring up both planes to the same standard by July 28th. It is even planed to finish the undercarriages for both planes by that day.

We have planed an open house for July 28th, starting at 2 PM  and would love to invite all of you - who are interested in the project and will go to the trouble of traveling to Schrondorf - to come and see the planes at our workshop.

In case of interested; here is the address:

Remsstrasse 22 - 73614 Schorndorf - Germany

phone: Achim Engels - ++49/0172/6333607

It will be very funny and interesting - for sure!

As a sideline: It might be of interest to you to hear that we have now decided to extant the registaration and certification process of the airplanes from the cathegory of "Normal" to "Aerobatic". This means that the aircraft now, once certified, is capable of doing aerobatics!

Make sure to check out more information about the process of the construction of both planes

by checking this link as well:

But this is not all! We are now also able to do almost any shape and size of streamlined struts you may need for your project. In Case of interest just contact us via e-mail.

Here you can see the image of a cut through a original Fokker D.VII center cabane tripod strut. At the right you see the result of our replication of the exact shape.

Up to now we can offer to produce tubes of a lenght of 2100mm.

Using these tubes we have by now finished the first cabane strut tripod of one of our two planes.

We Germans started in 1917 to concentrate on the developing of standardisations for parts needed for the production of aircraft. For this there was an institution established that was called "Normenausschuss der Flugzeugindustrie" or "Norm Commitee of the Aircraft Industry". This commitee developed norm sheets that have been called "FLUGNORMEN" or "Aviation Norms"

We have some 60 of these norms in our archive and will make them available as downloads in steps.

A first Download is already established and comprises some 20 sheets. We will continue in steps until all 60 are available. Members can find the download concerned in the MEMBERS SECTION - DOCUMENT ARCHIVE - INDUSTRY.

The build of our D.VII´s also is well in progress. Only a short time ago we have spent most of our effords in rebuilding the chistorically correct turnbuckles. Now that we have completed them, we braced the first fuselage already by now. We have also finished the seat mountings for both aircraft and will soon start to do the seats themselves.

The main throttle device which attached to left cockpit side now is also completed and one of them is already installed into one of the frames.

Alles Gute! Happy holidays and a happy new year as well to all of you!

Achim

In the following I want to show you the latest images that document the progress of the build:

Adjusting the engine bearers using a laser.

Front fuselage section with the engine bearers in place.

Both fuselages are side by side in the workshop. The discrepancies in the pre production machine and the early production D.VII are well in advance. The initial first run - including the first three pre-production aircraft - had the MG´s situated slightly higher. In the later version these have been lowered and therefore it was neccessary to dent the cowling bow underneath the gun muzzle to make space there. Even later in the production run the MG´s have raised again to a point higher as on the initial run.

Almost completed fuselage of the later version. This fuselage represents one of the later 300- numbers. Left Achim Engels, right Katrin Schreyer

As another news I have to report that we might soon be in a position to offer limited edition posters and postcards of colorized old B/W WWI aviation images. Please find a sample attached below. This one is a well known image showing Manfred von Richthofen playing with his dog Moritz in front of a Fokker Triplane. This is one of the last shots showing Manfred von Richthofen alive.

If there is interest in such prints, please let us know since your feedback will provide the basis for the decision if we will do this or not. There are more images like this that we will offer if it comes to it.

Alles Gute!

Achim

The next big step is "finishing" the aircraft and to conduct the static load tests then which are part of the second report on the projects certification.

Here are the latest images of the projects stage:

Make sure to check out these links as well:

The Aerodrome Forum

Fokker D.VII for sale

 
We are furthermore very happy to announce the release of another book. This time it is a German one that is of interest to our readers in English anyway for some reason. Check out more details by clicking on the cover image below.

Alles Gute!

Achim

Achim Engels welding a fuselage side frame in the jig. As back at that time using oxyacethylene.

Fitting the tailplane to the fuselage for the first time.

The completed fuslege end with rudder attachment.

The throttle quadrants are also finished in the raw stage.

Our making inspector also was in the workshop in the meantime and controled the parts made so far. He was very pleased with what he saw and gave green light to complete the fuseleges.

Inform yourself in more details about the process of the construction by following these two link as well:

The Aerodrome Forum

Fokker D.VII for sale

We are furthermore very happy to announce the release of another book. This time it is a German one that is of interest to our readers in English anyway for some reason. Check out more details by clicking on the cover image below.

Alles Gute!

Achim

Here are a few images of the present stage of the project.

The first tailplane put together.

The kits for the elevator and the rudder and fin are now developed to a stage where we can make them avaialable to you on request..

Please keep you self informed about abaut the progres of the project by also following these two link:

The Aerodrome Forum

Fokker D.VII for sale

In the meantime we also got a new computer. We do hope that once it is set up correct and is running as it should, the scanner also will resume to work with us. This means nothing but that we will by then continue to update our online archive of historic dokuments and photographs.

All the best!

Achim

Below you can see some shots of the parts done so far.

The Kit also makes good progress.Since we offer every part of the aircraft individually we are able to offer the ktabilizer kit and the tail fin by now. Inn case of interest, please request prices directly using our e-mail address. The following is a photograph of the stabilizer kit as we will do it.

Alles Gute!

Achim

The first parts are also finished. You can see some images of the stabilizer below.

We do also seriously consider to offer a kit for this full size aircraft which could contain pre manufactured pieces. The degree of pre manufacturing could be decided by you. A kit of the stabilizer of the aircraft for instance could consist of all metric tubes cut to lenght and pre manufactured ribs. The rest could be welded by you.

In case of interest, just drop us a line. We will go on and develop the kit along the construction of our two aircraft.

Our new workshop is up and running now. We still need to invest some work until everything works fine, but wecan get some work done in it now.

We will soon inform you about a new webpage that will be linked to this one which will report on the progress of the construction of our two Fokker D.VII´s. As you know one of these will get the air traffic certificate according to the German law and will be registered as an "Experimental". The original Mercedes D.III engine is allready purchased. It was overhauled by Mercedes and is now with a British aerospace company for a second general overhauling. It is engine Number 41050. It was first delivered on April 1918.

The second airframe will be executed to the same standards but without air traffic certificate. We are offering this airframe completely finished and covered less engine at a starting price of $ 50.000 US. It will go to the highest bidder once completed. We expect both aircraft to be finished by early 2005. Inspection of the airframe under construction is possible at any time.

We will let you know about further details once the new website is set up.

Unfortunately some of our other activities must be set back a little bit through this. The website and the archive is operated by myself alone and I only have two hands to work with. I hope you understand. But don´t worry too much. With the help of some friends I will be able to provide further interesting documents as downloads as time goes by.

However - I have one for you right away. Thanks to our latest member Piotr Wilbik from Poland, we have been able to provide you with a copy of a polish handbook for the Albatros D.III. The book can be found in our archive document section. It is a very interesting thing and although written in Polish, it is usefull because of many drawings that explain themselves. Perhaps Piotr will do a translation for the comunity as well???

New books on CD -Rom are also under preparation. My friend Michael Aten for instance is working on one on the Ryan "Spirit of St. Louis" and on another one on the San Diego Aerospace Museum´s Spad VII. Both will be in our "Aviation - In Detail" series. I have also almost finished the translation of my book on the aerodynamics of the Fokker Triplane which I hopefully will be able to release by early next year.

That is the news so far. Me and the rest of my staff wish you a very nice Christmas season and happy hollidays as well. Be well and take care of all of you.

Achim Engels

Anyway, we have done the first 100 pieces! These are the so called "Fokker-Nadeln". Security needles to prevent nuts and bolts from getting loose. Here is a first image:

A start has been made ;-)

We have also only recently released our latest CD-Rom book of the "Aviation - In Detail" series. We are very proud of this one. For the first time it also contains a historic caption including historic background information and images. A beautiful thing, indeed. A real improvement in this series. We will of course keep this quality with all subsequent volumes.

Ah, yes, and make sure to participate with our second Christmast lottery. With a little luck you will win one of these books on the E.III. Just follow the popup window that opens when entering this site. Have fun!

As a piece of further news we can announce that the Fokker Team Schorndorf has only recently signed contract for the construction of two Fokker D.VII biplanes. We are still in the preparation phase and on the search for a suitable workroom in our neigborhood. We will, as soon as the practical works have started, establish a special page on which interested people can themselves inform about the advances of the works.

In connection with this, we also would like to point out, that, as soon as our workshop is established will also take orders for the production of parts of the aeroplane for others - no matter whether for a complete reproduction project or just as decoration piece for your living room wall. We hereby hope to refresh our register a little. At interest, please contact:

engels@fokker-team-schorndorf.de

With this communication we also would like to point to a discussion started by us about the Fokker streaky view protection in the English-speaking forum "The Aerodrom". Who is interested to take part in it is cordially invited for it to contribute information? The discussion thread is here:

Fokker Streaky Factory Finish - Duration Experiment

To be able to get at least partly back into business again, we have recently decided to finally aquire a digital camera. With the help of the camera we have been able to put another contemporary book into the shelves of our online library. This time it is a very interesting book that is called

("sketchbook for aircraft designers"). It contains a lot of usefull information on structural details of both, German and Allied WWI aircraft and includes 40 plates of sketches with dimensions. We welcome our members to download the book directly from our  library. It is provided there in a zipped file that contains both, a MS-Word and a Acrobat PDF file.

As being of great interest I have to mention our latest visit at the last remaining factory building which saw production of Fokker fighters during WWI. During this visit we have been able to aquire a factory sign reading "Halle 2" (shed no. 2) that hung from the wall for the last 85 years there. After this we finally meassured the sign closely and did reproduce it in the original way. We have by now decided to put it up on auction at E-BAY. It is a very decorative sign. In case you want to learn more about the sign or even wish to place a bid and support our work with the purchase of it, just feel free to click on the image below.

We will - by the way - also be going to offer reproductions of this sign in our shop, but for sure these will not be available as cheap as you might be able to get it on E-bay if you bid now :-) !!!

This nice little book contains some 45 pages. Unfortunately there is no date of publication given, but we would place it somewhere around 1912/13. The download contains all pages of the book in the following file formats: .gif, doc and .pdf. It for sure is an enrichment of each library dedicated to the technological aspects of early aviation.

Our members can go and download this book for free from our library section.

We should not miss to express our greatest thanks to Martin Dürrwächter who was kind enough to spend his time in scanning and forwarding this book to us to let us share it with you out there!

Besides this we are busy at present with the creation of 3D models of all the various versions of rotary engines produced at Oberursel. These models are intented to illustrate the English edition of our book on this topic. Please find a sample of the Oberursel U.I 9-cylinder 100 PS engine attached. Although the model is not completely finished yet, it might be fun to look at:

For our English speaking friends we have therefor in the meantime started to add translations to the documents concerning the Fokker Dr.I´s type evaluation testings. These can be found in the document section of the archive. The related documents can be located by looking out for the word "translation" standing next to the file link.

We also would like to point your attention to a new web address established by one of our latest members. Laserlloyd only recently started to develop a website dealing with all the Fokker Triplanes that saw service. It will include a list of historic photographs of all available triplanes. Take a look at his site at: www.fokkerdr1.com. The site is very new and there is a lot of work left on it, but we think it will become a valuable source, so book mark it!

We finally also released our latest books:

Just click at them to get closer information.

For all those of you who did not know about yet, we have just launched a new series of books bearing the subtitle "In Detail". The first one of these was only recently released and is called "Fokker Dr.I - In Detail". This series will be composed digital books in CD-Rom format which should provide lots of detail photographs showing the technical features of early German aviation. The upcomming next two booklets will be the following:

1. "Halberstadt CL.IV - In Detail"

2. "Phylax 1911 - In Detail"

We will keep you posted. Further detail you may find here: http://www.collectors-edition.de/QAU/dft_english.htm

Apart from that we are busy with the translation of two more books. The first one is our "Fokker - and his aircraft" and the other one will be about "The synchronized l.M.G.08/15". Both of these will include amazing 3D artwork. So watch out for news on these!

Last but not least we have established further downloads. These are of the Fokker D.VII photofile and can be downloaded in the members only section following the links to these aircraft: Fok D.VII 2009/18, 2010/18, 4097/18, 4174/18 and 4464/18.

Have fun and take care! 

Alright then. After a short brake I can announce that we have finally released the last load of photographs of unidentified Fokker D.VII´s. These 19 images can now be downloaded by our members for free in our Photo archive section following the link "D.VII 33-51".

We will soon continue to set up the remaining images of identified aircraft.

I appologize for the delay, but your webmaster has been busy with the preparation of a new book and apart from that he finally moved and will marry soon. So all I can do is to ask for your patience. Thanks a lot!

In adition we have established a download of 7 small .avi movie files of original movies showing the Fokker D.VII in action. You will find these there, too.

The participation with our first lottery is by far not what it could be. Are our German books on CD-rom that uninteresting that you out there don´t even want to get them as a gift? Or is the question too difficult to answer?

Participate by following the pop up window when entering the website.

According to a request by member Charles Gosse we will continue now to upload photographic files.

We started this with a first bunch of 20 downloadable files of photographs of the Fokker D.VII. Members can go and download these from the member section of our photo archive. To get them just follow the two links "D.VII 1-10" and "D.VII 11-20".

There will be more soon - hopefully!

Members are encouraged to feel free to download these pictures from our pphoto archive whithin the members only section of this website.

A Small Contribution, Please!

The Fokker-Team-Schorndorf received an offer to buy an original Oberursel Ur.II rotary engine.

The Engine concerned is in good condition and can easily be brought to running condition again.

Since we can not afford the money needed to make a serious offer for the purchase of the engine, we are now asking you to support us by donating some money for the purchase of the engine.

Our plans with the engine are the following:

1. Returning it to Germany,

2. Overhauling it to running condition,

3. Taking close meassurments of every part and to develop a complete set of drawings for the engine.

4. To preserve it from getting lost.

To any donation higher $ 200 US for this project, we offer the following:

1. One full copy of the set of drawings we will create with the promised right to use it in any way the donator likes to.

2. Access to the engine on request here at our homebase.

If in any case the deal might fell through, we will return any made donations to the donators immediately.

Please contact as soon as possible in case you are interested in adding a contribution at: engels@fokker-team-schorndorf.de

Get your self a download of some photographs of the engine concerned here!

Among these is one very interesting image showing the front fuselage with omited engine covering panels.

Members can go and find this update when downloading the Fokker D.IV file from the photo archive of our member section.

So all I can do is to ask you for some sort of patience in this field.

Anyway, you should not miss to visit our 3D-Project site to see many new models. This time even including a .avi motion file to display the movements of the control system.

Be sure to take a look.

This page is accessable through the below link "3D-Project" and displays a small galery of images of 3D graphics. Be sure to keep an eye on that one - or better yet go and sign the special mailing list for news about that project directly from the galery page.

This page is accessable through the below link "3D-Project" and displays a small galery of images of 3D graphics. Be sure to keep an eye on that one - or better yet go and sign the special mailing list for news about that project directly from the galery page.

We have some new 3D graphics done. Here is a sample of the D.VIII´s undercarriage. Go to see more from our "3D-Project" link below.

I hope you enjoy these new amazing graphics!

1. Verspannungsvorschrift (Assembly order). This document covers orders for the assembly of the aircraft. The sheet was glued to the left outside of the fuselage. The download covers two versions of the documents. The first represents the one used by the Fokker company, while the second is a somewhat modified version used by Albatros for their license built D.VII´s.

2. A detailed Report by the american NACA that was done in 1921 under the file Number 254. This reports shows the findings of a wind tunnel test of a model upper wing with aileron attached to determine the pressure delivered over the entire wing. This report is in English.