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Keith at Midwest R/C Meeting, Nov. '98

Keith Shaw, besides being the guest speaker, brought in his fabulous Fokker D-VIII. Many of you have had a chance to see this plane fly at eflies and big bird flies in the area. Keith is still putting on the finishing touches, which is another nice thing about an electric.

The model name is a Fokker D-VIII in 1/4-scale. It has a wing span of 82.5" and wing area of 1100 sq. in. It weighs 13 pounds and is powered by a Maxim MegaMax3.7 (prototype) electric brushless motor. The motor swings a HIGHLY reworked Zinger 24X16 at 3500 RPM. (Prop speed approximately 56 mph - according to Keith, power comes from 30 cells with a MaxCim brushless, prototype high cell count controller providing the speed control. The radio is Keith’s favored Airtronics using 102 servos on the rudder and ailerons and a 102BB servo conversion on the elevator.

The radio and servos are under the pilot's seat and they directly drive the control column and rudder bar. Scale push/pull cables drive the surfaces. A flexible full-body pilot "operates" the controls. He’s working on a scale engine to rotate with the prop, ala a rotary.

The plane is modeled after Ernst Udet's postwar airshow plane (unarmed). He and a fellow named Greim "borrowed" two planes from the confiscated aircraft after the war and flew illegal airshows during the fall of 1918 and the spring and summer of 1919. The color scheme was pieced together from various written descriptions, no photos exist of his plane. The standard D-VIII had dark green doped wing, struts, cowl, and landing gear sub-wing, lozenge fabric on fuselage, wheel covers, and horizontal tail, white fin/rudder. Udet painted the cowl, fuselage, upper struts, and wheel covers dark red, white stab and LO! lettering on side of fuselage in honor of his girlfriend, Lola Zink. I found a photo of her, a real beauty in any time.

The model received a third place in Monokote at 1998 Toledo show.

Reprinted courtesy of "The Future is Electric" by Ken Myers