I was interested when Dora Wings announced this, having tried to do the Classic Airframes kit, which really deserves every bad word ever said about it, being one of the "lesser products" of that company. I was planning on ordering one when I get my payment for submitting the current manuscript, so I was surprised when my friend Eugen, who works at Dora Wings, sent me one for review. I got the manuscript sent off, decided to take some time to just do a model, and decided this would be the one.
So, like all other Dora Wings kits, it is a "high end" limited run kit but the operative terms are still "limited run." The nice thing is, with "some modeling skills" applied, it goes together very well for a limited run kit, with only a bit of filler needed, and the result looks very good. So before I proceed further, if you've been thinking about getting this, go ahead and do it. If you have experience with limited run kits, you'll get a great result. Be sure to test fit three times before gluing once, and yes, you will have to modify little things here and there to get good fit. Nothing an experienced limited run kit builder doesn't know how to do.
I did a little research, and found out some very interesting history of the airplane in ROCAF service. The Chinese liked the airplane where the USAAF didn't, and got the US to provide 100 to them through Lend-Lease in late 1941/early 1942. They got to India, where they were assembled and delivered on to China flying over the Hump. Some 20 didn't make it, another 20 or so didn't survive their Chinese pilots learning to fly them, but the 60-some left gave good service until the fall of 1943. Prior to the arrival of the P-38 in China, the P-43 was the only airplane that could get up to the Ki-46 Dinah's operating altitude and catch it. They were also used by both the ROCAF and the USAAF 23rd Fighter Group for recon, since they had the Seversky "wet wing" and good range. They were regularly flown from Kunming down over northern Indochina as far as Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as out to the coast as far as Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the Japanese didn't have a fighter in China that could get to the altitude they were flying at (35,000 feet plus). The airplane did well against the Nate and Oscar so long as it did dive-and-zoom on them from an altitude advantage. At least one ROCAF pilot was credited as an ace flying the P-43. They only stopped using them when they ran out of spares and the USAAF took the R-1830 engines for C-47s. Robert L. Scott Jr. liked the airplane and flew one up to Mt Everest once, where he took the first photos looking down on the mountain.
So, the end result of the research was I decided to do a well-used ROCAF airplane. From photos I saw I could use some of my AVG decal sheets to get insignia and such.
On to assembly.
One thing: there are a lot of sprue attachments, but fortunately they are done so they won't harm the outer surface if you are careful in cutting the part off the sprue. Be very certain to get all the sprue nubs sanded off the parts, because even if this is a limited run kit, it was designed with pretty precise parts fit and you want the mating surfaces nice and smooth.
I started with the wing. The upper wing has the full trailing edge with it, which insures a knife blade trailing edge, but you need to sand down the area of the flaps inside the lower wing part to thin it down to get as close a fit as possible. This is the only place you'll use any filler, if you take care on the rest of the assembly, You can see the area where I applied Mr. Surfacer to the lower wing in the upside-down shot below.
The cockpit is nicely detailed. The callout is for Interior Green, but I suspect (but cannot be absolutely certain) that the painting of the early P-47B was likely a holdover from the P-43, and I know those cockpits and all other P-47 cockpits are dull dark green, so that is what I went with here. The kit-supplied photo-etch is nearly useless, so I used Eduard seat belts. Once assembled and inside the fuselage half, the fuselage came together nicely, and by being careful (since there are no locating pins) I got it together such that I only needed a light scrape-down of the fuselage centerline seam.
You do not need to assemble that ferschlugginah engine mount, since you don't need to use it and you won't see it in the end. As to the engine, this is probably the nicest R-1830 engine model I've ever seen. Very delicate parts, and you are guaranteed to break some of the pushrods cutting those off. So I concentrated on getting one set, and then only detailed the front face, since once again, you won't see the back. The cowling was fiddly to assemble, but again take your time, be certain the sprue nubs are cleaned off completely, and it fits. You can glue the engine inside to the cowling, so you really don't need that engine mount. The p-e cowl flaps were useless, so I replaced them with .010 Evergreen sheet, opening them a slight bit as it appears they always sat that way on the ground in China.
The wing to fuselage join was easy. I got it in position, then glued the areas of the lower wing that attach to the fuselage fore and aft of the wing and wrapped those with rubber bands after being sure they were positioned right. Then I wrapped a rubber band around the wing, wingtip to wingtip, to increase the dihedral and get a nice tight fit of the upper wing to fuselage. Do this right and no putty is needed anywhere. Let the model set up overnight and when you remove the rubber bands, the wing will take correct dihedral with everything nice and tight and no gaps anywhere.
You need to widen the slots for the horizontal stabilizers to attach to the fuselage, but if you do that right and test-fit, you won't need any putty there either. The rudder is a bit of a pain because it has that business of one side has the trailing edge and the other doesn't. Again, sand the "inner" part till it fits perfectly to the other side, then run glue around the inside of the larger half, and attach them, squeezing them together to get a nice tight fit at that trailing edge. Then "paint" that joint with liquid cement and you can get things smooth enough you don't have to sand down and lose the rib detail. I rounded the leading edges of the elevators, so they could be posed drooped.
Painting:
I decided to try the "marbling" technique for this, since I wanted to do a very faded paint job, like an airplane that had gone through two south China summers. I gave the model an overall coat of Tamiya semi-gloss black, then "marbled" that with thinned Tamiya X-2 gloss white. I have painted the camouflage tonight, and will show photos taken tomorrow in daylight. Suffice to say I am now a real fan of this technique - the perfect way to pre-shade without ending up with that cartoonish "Spanish School" look.
So, here are photos of the model assembled and with the marbling done. Did I mention I really like this kit? Well, I do.
UPDATE: and here are four photos of it painted. Love the result with marbling.
UPDATE FINAL: Here are some photos of the finished model. I liked finding photo proof that many ofr them didn't have a lot of markings in ROCAF service. So I only have a faced insignia on the upper wing and full color on the lower. Pro tip: the tailwheel is done "in scale thickness" of the leg and wheel, making it very fragile and subject to bending under merely the weight of the model. I straightened it, ran some CA down the leg to stiffen it, and some CA around the leg/wheel joint. You can't see it even in close examination, but the tailwheel is now strong enough to survive.
Full review at Modeling Madness next Thursday.
13 attached images. Click to enlarge.
