Miniwing 1/144 Fokker S-11 "Instructor"
By Matt Bittner
Introduction
From the Miniwing E-Shop page: "The Fokker S-11 Instructor is a single-engine two-seater propeller aircraft designed and manufactured by the Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker. It first flew in December 1947 and went on production, serving in several Air Forces in the late 20th century, including with Dutch, Italian, Israeli, Paraguay, Bolivian and Brazilian armed forces."
The Kit
The Miniwing 1/144 Fokker S-11 consists of five pieces of black 3D printed resin and one clear 3D printed canopy. For this release - "mini107" - decals are for only one Dutch S-11, "E.38", finished overall in yellow with red/orange day-glo panels on the fuselage and wings. The decals are printed on a single-piece decal film so each will need to be cut out separately.
Unfortunately Miniwing no longer contains masks in their 3D printed kit; however, they do have "true-life" templates on the instruction sheet you can cut out, apply to tape and then cut the designs out. Definitely better than nothing at all.
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The cockpit is a single piece consisting of the two, side-by-side seats and an instrument panel. And nothing else. No decal seat belts and no instrument panel decals so you need to source those elsewhere. I'm not exactly sure how anything will be seen through the 3D printed canopy, but maybe adding more detail would help.
The other parts in the kit consist of the one-piece main wheels/landing gear and the propeller. That's it; that's all the parts. Prime everything, paint the cockpit, glue it in then glue the canopy on. You'll want to leave the prop and landing gear off until after decaling and final overcoat.
There's one aspect with the kit that the modeler should be aware of: the kit does NOT have any representation of the fabric-covered fuselage sides. Some could argue that it's moot in this scale, but 3D printing should be able to handle it. The flying surfaces on this model are extremely thin so why not have "something" to represent the fabric? Starving-cow ribs need to apply. As it is, I will represent the fabric "ribs" via paint.
Conclusion
Aside from the lack of any fabric-covered representation, the kit is very nicely done otherwise, and will be a quick build. Take your time removing the supports, since they attach to the super thin flying surfaces, and you'll have a Fokker S-11 on your built-model shelves. Note that you can buy this from the Miniwing E-Shop page.