For the ANZAC campaign I am building a pair of Special Hobby 1/48 Boomerangs


Resin Parts, CA-12 on left CA-13 on rights

The CA-13 also has the main landing gear in resin rather than the plastic of the 12.

Main visual difference between the two versions is this hedgehog exhaust for the CA-13


Plastic sprues appear to be common to both kits


Resin cylinders, 4 sets of 4 per engine, each set has two front and two rear cylinders of which I immediately screwed up two by cutting too much off the bottom. So have to fix that...



First impression, overall the detail is there but a bit on the soft side, and the plastic of the CA-12 has an odd texture on the inner surface of parts. Haven't checked if it's the same on the CA-13 yet.

Resin engines look good, bit of flash cleanup on the cylinders.
Plastic parts seem to have very few definite locating pins, so there's a bit of care required to get things in position with the flat mating surfaces.

Ian,
Looking forward to your duel build. We don't often get to see any Boomerang builds these days.

Joel

Wow cool! I absolutely love the Boomerang (I'm not really sure how that got started) I have an old terrible kit in 48th that I keep pretending to myself I will build and the incredible Montex one in 32nd.

Subscribed

Matt when you say terrible is it the Kiwi wings version of terrible of the Boomerang? I've built two examples and you need some serious modelling skills to build those suckers!

I got this

Febraury pics 099 by Chris WIlson, on Flickr

from this

Febraury pics 015 by Chris WIlson, on Flickr

My apologies Iain for posting this here but I was curious to know which of the other "coughs" offerings of the Boomerang Matt is referring too.

That's cool, looks like you finished up with some decent looking models out of those kits.

Hi Ian

I'm really looking forward to your dual-build. The Boomerang is one of my favourite WW2 aircraft.

@ Chris - Great job on the Kiwi Wings kit! I actually love it as a classic example of short-run kit production. There's a real gem lurking in the kit. I've built one and the second one I still have is slightly different to yours, being all moulded the same colour. I must admit it was the first kit that convinced me of the value of a power-tool to mill off all the (I don't know quite what you'd call them) "flow tracks" on the inner surfaces.

But, with that done, I was back on pretty familiar territory. I do remember at the time (this being when I produced a few resin conversion/upgrade sets of my own) being knocked out by how comprehensive the instructions were. Happy memories!

All the best

Rowan

No, the even older LTD kit! Squadron had it on sale a while ago for something like four bucks lol.


Those look GREAT though!

Looking forward to following these builds, subscribed.

I really need to fix up the image issue in my Boomerang Thread and get back to those builds soon !

Cheers, D

I can confirm that the odd plastic texture is present on the CA-13 as well, not surprising since they most likely came from exactly the same mould.

Here are some examples of the parts attachment:

Horizontal stabilisers, no alignment pins just two big flat surfaces. They went together ok with a bit of care.


Cockpit parts. Again, no alignment pins or tabs, just flat surfaces in the shape of the part to be installed.


The cockpit for the CA-12 is mostly done now and getting ready for paint



Got a fair bit of work done on the engines.
Fortunately my initial stuff up with two cylinders didn't matter as you get 16 cylinders per engine and only need fourteen.







Have added the intake pipes, and made the pushrods using some nichrome wire.


I used nichrome because it was what I had handy and has decent stiffness for quite thin wire.
I cut quite a few over and undersize and had to muck around getting them sorted.



Made life a bit difficult for myself so will need to do a few paint touch ups before the engine is installed.

Things to do differently in future:
1. Drill out the pushrod holes on the engine body to make them deeper. Then you dont need to size the rods exactly, and can just slide them into the hole then raise to position on the cylinder. It would also provide a more secure mounting for them.

2. Paint all the engine parts up before assembly. Will be much easier and it's all superglue or epoxy so won't dissolve the paint.


There is also room for adding extra detail to enhance the look of the engine for those who really want to. The kit lacks the ignition harness, and there's plenty of room to add the inter-ear and inter-cylinder oil transfer pipes, though it wuld be fiddly and time consuming. I have added the return oil ine from some copper wire at the bottom front of the engine.

Hi Iain

Great progress - and a lot of fine work going into the engines.


I'll ask a question about the colour of the crankcase before you go too far. Shouldn't it be grey rather than black?

All the best

Rowan

The colour photos I have seen mounted in Boomerangs show the crankcase being either black or a dark grey-blue, but they are from current restorations so I don't know how accurate that would be for a period aircraft. I do plan to weather it a bit so the current stark black will tone down to be more of a dark grey (I hope).

What you see here is just after spraying the whole thing black and painting the tops of the cylinders.

Ian,
You're making excellent progress for sure. Both engines should look spectacular when painted. painting them looks to be a little tricky with all those nooks and crannies. Are you going to be wiring up the engines for just a tad more detailing?

Joel

Thanks, yeah I definitely should have painted most of the engine before assembly to make life a little easier.
I am not sure if I will wire up the first engine, but will probably do something for the second one.

Neat and little done topic Iain. The engines are looking quite nice thus far.

Ernest

Hi again Iain

I think I'd err towards the dark blueish-grey as a more typical colour for a crankcase.

All the best

Rowan

Rowan,
I just checked and indeed the C12s & C13s used the Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp R-1830 engines. The USA versions all had their crankcase covers painted a dark blue/gray which matches up pretty closely to FS36076. I was fairly confident that the Austrailian engines weren't made in the States as manufacturing was maxed out. the Australian engines were made under license at the CAC plant in Lidcombe, Sydney as per Wikipedia, so what color the crankcase actually was is conjecture at this point.

Joel

Found some pictures that show a medium blue grey, and Wikipedia had a picture(albeit black and white) of Cac built Twin wasps that appear to show the lighter colour, so I think I might go with that.

Hi Iain and Joel

Yes - it was period B&W photos (rather than the colour shots of restorations) that I was going by to try to judge whether it was grey or black, but the shot Iain's posted is clearer than any I came across (great find! ). I think the type of film used can cause a difference in contrast (it's stronger here than in most of photos I've checked), but my feeling after looking at a variety of sources was to go for the blueish grey.

All the best

Rowan

Added the ignition manifold. cut a ring from 0.4 or 0.5 sheet, cut a notch out at the bottom and glued it around the crankcase.

Just need to add the wiring and finish painting.



There are also two areas on the engine that shouldn't be there, outlined in red below.


Most boomerang photos I have seen also show something tall mounted to the central raised portion, but I can't find what the item is called, and it's not included in the kit. It can be seen along with the prominent ignition manifold below...

Iain,
I'm not sure, but it might be a governor for the twin magnetos.
Joel

Work continues, as you can see here the front cylinder exhausts are to short to reach the main exhaust ring.


Next time I think I need to install the front exhausts after the rear have been attached to the main ring, that way you won't be able to see the gap they will leave at the cylinder.

The fuselage is too narrow to fit eveything properly, which also gives it the wrong shape overall, so some shims are required:


Not sure what Thickness I used as it was some scraps I had that looked about right with some testing before glue.

Even with care I still ended up with the engine slightly askew:


The upper intake also needed reshaping with epoxy, as it didn't look anything like the real thing.

Most of this stuff will be visible through the main gear bays for anyone that cares to look:


The engine mounts are terrible. They are different lengths and poorly shaped, and I ending up cutting them back off the cockpit firewall as nothing would fit properly with them installed.

Even with the shims you can see some of what doesn't quite fit with the fuselages closed up, starting with the left upper cockpit bar:


and the armour/headrest got pushed askew:



Fuselage assembled


Putty over the shims


Wings needed care to assemble correctly, had to take time to ensure everything was aligned. Ports for the resin machine guns needed to be cleaned up and checked.


Undersides, the three clear lenses had to be installed before the upper wings were attached, which took a lot of cleaning and test fitting, as there is a lot of flash around some of the ports, and around the ammo chute ports as well:


Lots of clamps and take your time to get the wings on the fuselage:


Lots of fiddly photoetch thats easy to damage:



Masked up and nearly ready for paint


Resin exhausts are painted and awaiting a completed model to attach to.
CA-12:


CA-13:

Iain,
Nicely painted exhausts.
Joel

Nice work Iain, great to see some progress here!

Cheers, D

Very nice work thus far Iain, I don't know if I have either the skills or the patience to tackle a kit like this. The exhaust pipe looks very realistic by the way!

Ernest

So paint is on:

Lifecolor Foliage Green with some Neutral Grey to give it a bit more faded appearance



and Sky Blue Azure for the undersides, again with a tiouch of grey to reduce the brightness. Could have used some more grey in the blue.



Decals are also started, and here you can see I have been experimenting with chipping fluid to add the worn look to some panels.


It's a little overdone than I wanted but I may go back and fix that once everything else is completed.





Overall the decals are excellent. They require only a brief dip in water to wet the paper and in about 15-20 seconds they are ready to slide off. They settled into the panel lines quite nicely, with a little help from some decal solvent just to make sure. Some care should be taken, I did manage to break a small piece off the very edge of one of the roundels.

The white is sufficiently opaque on all except the right side fin flash which has a little bit of translucency to it.

Just have all the stencils left to add now.