Special Hobby's kit does Australia's diminutive stopgap fighter justice.The kit's major components are molded in a soft, medium gray plastic. Surface detail is a combination of fine, shallowly recessed panel lines with a few raised panels. Clear parts are thin, but there is a little waviness visible in the larger pieces. Yellow resin parts include the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engine with separate cylinders, cowl flaps, seat, gun barrels, exhaust, and tail wheel. A small photoetched-metal fret provides harnesses, a spar for the landing-gear bay, and control surface actuators.
The 24-step instructions are black-and-white, exploded-view diagrams, and are easy to follow except for a couple of imprecise locations. Aviprint decals provide four Royal Australian Air Force CAC-12s, one foliage green over sky blue, the rest foliage green and dark earth over sky blue. Color marking diagrams for each aircraft are supplemented by a drawing for common stencil placement.
As a measure of the interior detail, the first 16 steps involve cockpit and engine assembly. Most of the cockpit is plastic, but photoetched-metal levers dress it up. I painted the walls, floor, seat, and bulk-heads Model Master Acryl RAF interior green, picking out details with blacks and grays. Mating the resin seat and photoetched-metal harness was fiddly; pay attention to how the various straps connect through a hole in the seat back. The finished cockpit looks good, but it's delicate; the armor back plate connects in two small spots, and it popped several times during handling. The five-part instrument panel is too wide to fit where indicated. I left out everything except the main panel.
The resin engine needed cleanup, especially the cylinder fronts where some flash is present. After attaching the cylinders, I made push rods from styrene rod according to the instructions and added the intake manifold at the back. I mounted the exhaust ring to the firewall, then glued the engine in place before adding the pipes from the cylinders to the ring. Some are too short; I filled shortfalls with super-glue gel. The prop shaft in my kit was crooked and snapped off when I tried to straighten it; I replaced it with brass rod.
Inserting all the detail inside the fuselage was a trial. The instructions indicate gluing the engine assembly to the cockpit bulkhead before sandwiching the interior in the fuselage, but it came up short. I fitted the assemblies separately.
The cowling wouldn't close around the engine. At first I thought the interior was too big, but dry-fitting the assembled wing showed I needed to close the top of the cowling. This left a 1/8" gap under the cowl which I filled with strip styrene and putty. I couldn't make part No. C26 fit, so I left it out. I filed away part of the wing root on the fuselage to eliminate a step at the join. The wing wouldn't fit with a duct (part No. C24) in place so I removed it. The resin cowl flaps are scale thin and very fragile. (Both of mine were broken by the time I was ready to attach them!) They fit with finesse, super glue, and accelerator.
The remaining parts went together easily, but I needed putty at the horizontal stabilizer mounts.
I painted the three-color camo with Polly Scale RAAF colors, and applied the decals. They are thin and responded well to Micro Sol.
After attaching the landing gear, prop, and exhaust, I defined the panel lines with Mig Productions dark wash.
The model captures the stubby lines of the Boomerang.
It measures slightly oversize in span and length according to
Profile Publications No. 178: The Commonwealth Boomerang, by Rene Francillion. This Boomerang is not for the faint of heart, but I'm glad to have one on the shelf and I hope Special Hobby follows up with later versions.
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