u/MojoBob

The AirCo DeHavilland DH2 was a "pusher" scout, introduced into RFC service in February of 1916 in response to the depredations of the Fokker Eindekkers with their interrupted forward-firing machine guns. Though in fact it had been in development for some time, before the so-called Fokker Scourge eventuated.

Not having access to a reliable interruptor or synchronizer for their guns, the British simply put the engine and propeller behind the gun instead of in front of it.

It thoroughly outclassed the Fokker monoplanes, but was in turn outclassed by newer German tractor biplane types, and was eventually withdrawn from service in 1917.

This 1:144 scale model was built in Blender and printed on my Mars Pro resin printer, just before it went irretrievably bung. It's taken me a while to get around to painting it, but here it is at last.

Here we have a Sopwith Triplane, an aeroplane that sparked a craze for triplane and quadruplane designs amongst all the powers involved in WW1. As it turned out, the multi-plane format provided no real advantage over biplane designs, and the fad eventually faded away, but the Sopwith's performance originally excited many designers, most notably Antony Fokker.

This model is a design by Capn_Ahab, on Thingiverse, and I've done very little to it except smooth out the faceting. It's a simple model with almost nothing in the way of surface detail, so things like wing ribs, ailerons, elevators etc. have just been painted in.

It was FDM printed on my old and increasingly cranky Ender 3.

When I was a kid of about 10 or 12, a friend of mine had a copy of this game. I lusted after it so badly, mainly because of the little toy aeroplanes.

Skip forward many, many years, and I found a copy second-hand, and bought it immediately. 

It is by no means a simulation of aerial combat in WW1. It is extremely simplistic. But it holds up better as a game than I really expected. 

I wouldn't play it in preference to an actual aerial wargame, but I wouldn't turn down a game as a moderately entertaining way of passing the time.

I've made myself a display board for my 3d printed 1:144 scale WW1 aeroplanes.

It's just a piece of 5mm MDF, with an array of 3d-printed magnetic pillars glued to it. There are only four spaces left on this one, but I can easily make another.

It's sitting in a plywood stand, so it can go anywhere it will fit. Alternately, I could easily hang it on the wall like a picture.

It puts all my little planes on display, but more importantly, it makes them easily accessible for when we want to play a dogfight game.

It's taken a while to get around to it, but I've finally painted this 1:144 scale 3d printed Fokker E-III Eindekker.

Now it's ready to go out and shoot down that BE12. Or maybe get shot down by it. It could happen.

It's FDM printed on my Ender 3, and the undercarriage needed substantial post-printing repairs.

I successfully FDM test-printed one of my 1:144 Albatros D-II models, and slapped a bit of paint on to it. All in all, I'm reasonably satisfied with it.

The printer is my old Ender 3, printing with a 0.4mm nozzle at 0.1mm layers in eSun PLA+.

Just finished printing and painting this 1:144 scale Junkers D1 for playing Canvas Eagles.

I was tossing up, when designing the thing in Blender, whether or not to add corrugations to the wings and fuselage (the original aeroplane's skin was corrugated duralumin) but decided against it, since I thought it would be more trouble than it would be worth. To be visible at all in this scale the corrugations would have to be so coarse that it would look like it was made of corrugated roofing iron.

I'm on a bit of a WW1 aerial kick at the moment, so I'm taking advantage of it while it lasts.

My next two models are a Siemens-Schuckert D-III from the end of the war, and an Albatros D-II from 1916-ish. I built them in Blender, and both of them have test-printed without issues, so now they go under the paintbrush.

The next teensy aeroplane in the queue is this 1:144 scale Fokker D-VIII, nicknamed "the Flying Razor". It appeared late in 1918 with spectacular performance, but it came too late and too few were ever put into service for it to affect the course of the air war in WW1.

This model is FDM printed in PLA+ on my elderly and creaking Ender 3.

I'm experimenting with a drastically simplified model, a Sopwith Triplane. Absolutely minimal detail, and nice chunky easily printable struts and things.

The original design was (I think) from CapnAhab on Thingiverse. He has done a lot of models, designed in 1:100 scale, but intended for printing at 1/300. The geometry is always very simple; no wing ribs or anything like that, and sized to be able to be shrunk down without issues.

I've just smoothed out the faceting of some (most) of the elements, and provided it with a socket for a flight stand attachment.

Having smooth wing surfaces should ease the application of decals, and I can paint on wing ribs, as I've done on 1/300 and 1/200 models. 

For gaming purposes, the silhouette is much more important than fine detail, which seldom gets seen at tabletop distances in any case. I have one on the printer at this moment, so we shall see how it turns out. 

Here's Fokker #2.

They're both still gloss varnished, and they may well stay that way, since it makes them easier to keep clean. Maybe not though; time will tell.

The next addition to my 1/144 scale air force is this Fokker D-VII, which I've been putting off because I wasn't looking forward to painting the lozenge camouflage.

As it turned out, it was easier than I'd expected, mainly because in this scale the lozenges themselves aren't really discernable as geometric shapes, but just resolve to blobs of colour, so as long as they're about the right size and in the right pattern, the finished effect is not too bad.

Reviresco used to produce sheets of 1/144 lozenge camo decals, but they've been out of print for some time, and I don't think they'd be all that easy to apply on a one-piece model, especially on the lower wings.

I recently found the home-made version of Avalon Hill's Knights of the Air that I made back in the '80s.

This was way back before computers and scanners were readily available to anyone who wasn't a hard-core computer nerd, and digital cameras hardly existed at all. Colour photocopying was pretty much non-existent, and if you could find it, it was mind-bogglingly expensive.

I drew plan views of all the aircraft with my trusty Rotring pens, and photocopied them to size for the aeroplane counters, and then coloured the counters individually with watercolours. I drew out the aircraft statistics sheets by hand, and filled them in by hand for every type of aeroplane, and coloured them with markers.

Looking back, it was an incredible amount of work for a game that I played probably half a dozen times. I must have had amazing stamina back in those days.

And now I have absolutely no memory of how to use all this stuff.

In the 1980s, I occasionally played a game called Knights of the Air, a WW1 aerial combat game played on a hex grid like Canvas Eagles (or Blue Max, which it was rewritten from) but rather more detailed in terms of keeping track of altitude and aircraft statistics. I started out by making hexagonal card tokens printed with a plan view of the aircraft, but soon decided that what I wanted were actual models, so I started making some.

Initially they were scratch-built in 1:300 scale from cardboard, wire and wood, but later on I found I could get cast metal models from Heroics and Ros, which, though lacking in interplane struts and the like, were generally okay in terms of silhouette, and much less work. Later still I got into 3d printing, though I've printed very few aeroplanes in 1:300.

I've since focused my attention on 1:144 3d printed planes, as they're easier to paint and to see with my increasingly decrepit eyes. However, the larger models require a hex grid of 50 to 70 mm. That's fine for small scale dogfights, but the smaller models can be used on a 25mm grid, which gives you a much larger battlefield, and can therefore accommodate more players at need.

These models are as follows: 

1. Gotha bomber (scratch-built) 
2. Fokker E-III Eindekkers (metal)
3. DH-2 (one metal, one scratch-built) 
4. Sopwith Camel (metal)
5. SE5a (metal)
6. Sopwith Pups (metal)
7. Albatros D-III (3d printed)
8. SPAD 7 (metal)
9. Fokker Triplane (metal)
10. Albatros DV (metal)
11. Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter (metal)
12. BE-12  (scratch-built)
13. Hannover CL-III (metal)
14. Albatros D-II (scratch-built)
15. BE-2 (scratch-built)
16. Halberstadt D-II (scratch-built)
17. Halberstadt CL-II (metal)
18. Bristol Fighter  (scratch-built)

I think it highly unlikely that I'll do any more aeroplane models in 1:300, though I do have a few more metal casts awaiting assembly and painting. Still, never say never. 

I'm doing a bit of solo gaming, to learn a bit about the rules and mechanics of Canvas Eagles before a friend comes around tonight to play the game.

I've chosen a Fokker D-VII and a SE5a, because they're very similar in capabilities — the Fokker climbs better, but the SE5a can fly higher. They're each of roughly the same maneuverability and speed.

The Fokker only has its black undercoat on at present. I'll get around to painting it properly one of these days.

These are all 3d printed on my Ender 3 FDM machine, and they're all 1:144 scale. They're intended for playing Canvas Eagles.

In the first photo, from top to bottom: SE5a, Fokker D-II, SPAD 13.

The second photo is the most recently completed, a SPAD 7.