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Kora CAC CA-15 - My First Resin Kit


Beggsy

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G'day everyone.

 

The types built at Fishermens Bend continue to fascinate me.  However, many of the more esoteric prototypes have never been tooled in a high-quality injection molded kit.  Crazy, right?

 

So this has lead me down the path of resin.  I try to model the prototypes where possible, so at some point I'll be shortening the tail of a Nomad, grafting a Gypsy Major onto the nose of a Wackett and removing the cowling from a Ceres.

 

However, I had an idea.  Maybe I should try a resin kit straight out of the box before I go hacking up some perfectly good (and somewhat expensive) kits.  This is where the CA-15 comes in.  Every kit's a model of the prototype if they only built 1!  I had the option of the CMR or Kora kits.  I'd head bad things about the CMR one, but couldn't find any reviews or builds of the Kora.  Photos of the parts showd that it had nice surface detail though, so I got myself a copy of it.

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I'm not completely new to resin (having built a Beaufort Mk.V with the High Planes conversion), so I knew to be careful when cutting and sanding the parts.  Lots of slow, careful sawing under a running tap in the laundry, and some sanding in similar circumstances, left me here.  Everything needed to build the cockpit and close up the fuselage is separated from the casting blocks.  Clean up wasn't too bad, and the surface detail does indeed look nice.

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The kit also comes with a few photo etch pieces.

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After a bath in soapy water, I cracked out the super glue and put together the cockpit pieces.  These went together without issue, but a test fit suggests I may need to trim the corners of the rear bulkhead.

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And this is how far I got before the notion of building it without any modifications ended.  I looked at the fuselage pieces, and just couldn't make myself be happy with the outlet duct form the radiator....mainly because there isn't one.  Just a flat plate, which I was presumably meant to paint black.

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So, out came the saw again.  It actually wasn't too hard to cut along the existing contours to achieve this result.

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I've since cut out the other side too.

 

Now, on to some paint.  I hit the interior of the fuselage, and the assembled cockpit, with some black Mr. Surfacer.  Straight from a can, because I can do it outside and not have to ever use laquer thinners in my airbrush indoors.  Despite the high volume of paint, it settled into the details well.  I also sprayed the photoetch sprue at the time.

 

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At this point, I had to stop work on the cockpit.  I've got a delivery of modelling goodies arriving tomorrow that includes some paint for the lurid RAAF interior green.  I could mix it myself, but I just can't motivate myself to do it when I know I'll have the right stuff arriving tomorrow (which is also going to go inside a CAC Mustang, possibly, pending research of colours of the early kit-built Mustangs).

 

But, I wasn't quite done.  I found some clear plastic lying around and glued the paper instruments to it, using Micro Scale Industries Micro Crystal Clear.

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It looks a bit rudimentary like that, but after attaching it to the photo-etch panel, it looks pretty great!  The panel was dry brushed with dark grey and had some entirely fictional splashes of colour added to make it stand out a bit more once the canopy is on.  Trust me, it looks a lot better than my phone camera under indoor lighting could convey.

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The clear plastic worked well, the instruments reflect light at the right angles, and they appear to have depth.

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So that's where I'm up too.  I hope to get the cockpit pretty much done tomorrow.  I'm stuck at home with a (thankfully mild) case of covid for the next week.  I'm luck in that it's bad enough not to go to work, but not to bad to sit at the workbench.  Fingers crossed it stays that way!

 

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Well. the green certainly is lurid!

 

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The gloss finish doesn't help, it made the whole thing look slimy! It looked a lot better after picking out some details in different colours, and some Tamiya washes.  I know the details won't be at all accurate, but they're better than nothing.  I also sprayed some Vallejo matt varnish all over, which successfully killed the slimy look.  I know the Vallejo acrylics don't have the best reputation (though I've never had issues with them myself), but their matt varnish is definitely the best I've ever used.  Far superior to the Tamiya or Mr. Hobby offerings.

 

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I'm also quite pleased with the seatbelts.  Painting them was tricky but the results were good!

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Beggsy,

 

Will follow with interest. Great tip on the Vallejo flat coat too - I've always sworn by Tamiya but will give it a go as I do like their acrylics. Good luck with the build,

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

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17 minutes ago, Dunny said:

Great tip on the Vallejo flat coat too - I've always sworn by Tamiya but will give it a go as I do like their acrylics.

Just be fore-warned that you'll want a lot of thinner.  The stuff has the consistency of PVA glue straight out of the bottle!

 

I made a bit more progress this evening, and got the main fuselage components glued together.  Unfortunately, I had to cut the sides off the instrument panel to make it fit.  It's still a bit tall too.  In fact, the bottom edge of the panel is almost behind the rudder pedals.

 

Oh well.

 

I'm going to crack on with filling and sanding all the gaps before I attach any more parts, to avoid the very real possibility of breaking them off again.  If you don't hear from me for a few days.....I'll still be filling and sanding I suspect.

 

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The interior is pretty hard to see...

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...except when using the flash on the camera

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Good enough, I reckon!

 

 

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Hi Beggsy,

 

I'll be watching this topic with interest as you can tell by my avatar that I'm pretty interested in the CA-15😀.

 

I have the Kora kit so any experiences in your build will be very useful. I have built the CMR kit in the past as this kit was the only one I knew about (other than the Eagle Talons vacform and the NKR kit which is the same breakdown as the CMR but in different resin) at the time of the build. I only found out about the Kora kit later and I found it very hard to obtain at the time (mine is from a Aviation Megastore in the Netherlands). The CMR kit is ok, the main area needing attention being the wings which take a bit of effort to align and blend.

 

A link to my build is here but the photos are gone due to "photobucket" issues. I should update it with new photos on a new hosting site.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/72nd_aircraft/viewtopic.php?p=26279#p26279

 

Cheers

 

MIchael

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Michael louey said:

(mine is from a Aviation Megastore in the Netherlands)

 

Same here. It was a mid-lockdown "I-haven't-spent-much-money-recently-so-I'll-try-and-ignore-the-eye-watering-shipping-price" kind of a purchase.

 

6 minutes ago, Michael louey said:

The CMR kit is ok, the main area needing attention being the wings which take a bit of effort to align and blend.

 

So far, I'm pleased to report that the wings of the Kora kit were dead straight.

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Good work so far. I agree about opening up the scoop. Good result for not much extra effort.

Looking at the best reference on the type, the Kora shapes are close but not quite right. The nose looks a bit bulbous.

https://www.redroomodels.com/product/australias-lost-fighter-the-ca-15/

It looks very similar to the CMR kit - but so it ought to, being the same aeroplane, which was never called a "Kangaroo" until just before it was scrapped.

 

PS - For other builders - the cockpit interior is, as per this model, an apple green colour RAAF K3/322 which is about FS24110.
 

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10 hours ago, Beggsy said:

 

Same here. It was a mid-lockdown "I-haven't-spent-much-money-recently-so-I'll-try-and-ignore-the-eye-watering-shipping-price" kind of a purchase.

 

 

So far, I'm pleased to report that the wings of the Kora kit were dead straight.

 

You're right about the postage costs from Aviation Megastore - I managed to amorphize some of the postage by buying some other items which were hard to source.

 

The Kora kit has the advantage of a one piece wing compared to the CMR which has 2 separate wings which need to be set to symmetrical dihedral and pinned for some strength. I've seen this kit built with uneven dihedral though the overall finish of the kit was very good - so it isn't a trivial job.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

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And so it begins:

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The first round of sanding wasn't too bad.  Most of the putty was easily accessible to the 800 grit sanding stick.

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However, there was one gap that was too big for putty.  I could have closed it up by squeezing the fuselage halves a bit, but then I'd have had a massive step to the wing piece.

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.040 inch Evergreen styrene to the rescue!

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Once the super glue holding that in cures, it will be trimmed back and another round of putty applied.  I suspect I'll need one more after that too, before these gaps fully disappear.

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           Hi ALL ,

 

                              yes, the Numbnuts that ordered that this  Aircraft's  future use to be

             obsolete  and has to be trashed, should have been .........  💩 🔨

             

                                                                 G.G.M.S !

 

                                                                       Geoff SAUNDERS

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