A major step forward is achieved with the covering of the fuselage of our Fokker D.VIII. Most of the original E.V/D.VIIIs have been covered with four colour printed aircraft fabric, only very few ones can be seen with five colour printed aircraft fabric in historical photographs. For our reproduction we decided to go with the five colour pattern, since it is the last surviving piece of this plane, the Italian Caproni D.VIII that sports five colour fabric on the seat and the wrapings of the longerons. 

The fuselage in the process of being covered.

The entire cover is made up from a bag that is sewn together from single sheets cut to fit the shape of the fuselage.

Two nice shots illustrating the difference between the upper and lower five colour printed aircraft fabric. The term "Lozenge" as often heard today is not correct and was not used for this type of aircraft cover at that time. The official term for this kind of fabric was "Flugzeugstoff" or "aircraft linen". The media was pure unbleached linen of a relatively course type. We tested covered aircraft parts using this fabric with a Maule Tester and at the maximum pressure of 80lb/square inch, the only impression left on the fabric was a very tiny indentation that was gone again a few minutes later. We should probably point out here that the fabric we used is especially manufactured for us according to old WWI German aircraft linen using the same thickness of threads and number of threads in both directions. The German CAA is more than satisfied with that fabric to be used on our Experimental airplanes. 

Prepared lacing for the fuselage bottom.

Shirley Girard and her "Mudflap Aviation" signs rsponsible for the very nice job on that cover.

Gerry Mos, an Australian born to Dutch parents living in the UK is working on a German airplane of WWI.

Leather patches reeinforce the holes through which the control cables pass.

This image gives a good idea of how the colours of the printed aircraft linen darken just because of the application of the dope. They will darken and turn yellow even more as soon as the varnish goes on.

Still a lot to do, but it is comming along nicely.

As per the orignal! All markings are hand painted, the only templates in existance are used to outline the markings with a indigo ink pen.

There is no such thing a s a nicely masked and taped line on a war time production plane. Any replica or reproduction should look like hand painted. Anything else provides a very wrong impression of what it actually looked like. These planes never left a fectory with a show room condition paint scheme applied in a car body paint shop!