Bell P-63 Kingcobra "Hosler" Sohio racer - Dora Wings 1/72nd

 

 

I love manufacturers that release civil kits and support them buying and building their products, in that regard I am grateful for Dora Wings offerings. I have built three of their Bellanca, and bought their Percival Gull and Proctor, and their civil S.55, besides three Kingcobras. They are an Ukrainian manufacturer, and as such deserve all the support they can get. But I can't understand Dora's on one hand excellent detail included in their cleanly injected sprues, marred by accuracy issues, errors in their instructions, decal issues and vinyl masks that are only suitable for completely flat surfaces, but invariably detach from curved surfaces during priming and painting ruining the job.

Dora has the potential for being a relevant manufacturer of very appealing kits, but they need to adjust their production in some areas.

When you look at the sprues of this kit you are in ecstasy.

When you start to build it, part of the romance is gone.

As usual, the approach of one-kit-fits-all-variants happened to be hindered by some issues. As you may know, the kit as tooled originally later turned into many incarnations, including different variants, different spans, tails, details, etc. between racers and military. Things perhaps got confusing for the manufacturer, and therefore eventually for the modeler. So in spite of being a truly well detailed kit, with much to admire, the  fact that you have to fix several issues and do your own research to avoid inaccuracy traps kind of lets it down in part. I mean, the art box of this multiple-choice kit describes the model I finally built, but with the much shorter wing belonging to another of the kit options, and a radio which it didn't have. Like an omen, one could say.

The step-by-step build article in this blog details many of the good things and the not so good things regarding this boxing. If you are interested in this kit, by all means, go ahead, I think it's worth it at the end, but it's not going to be a stroll in the park. Read the building article and you may save yourself a headache or two, and the occasional head scratching. Do not blindly follow the instructions, or you may end up with some inaccuracies. I have two more of these Kingcobra, and hopefully will be building them too into racers (with commissioned decals), but in spite of its many pros, there are instances that seem to be the product of lack of attention, oversights, and confusion. Why the criticism, especially of an Ukrainian manufacturer that I otherwise support? well, if this would be a crappy kit -of which I have built dozens upon dozens- you already know they are crap and that's that. But some aspects of Dora Wings kits are so promising, if they would only carry it right to the end...Hopefully Dora Wings will learn from their mistakes. Their to-be-improved areas include research, (so those beautifully detailed sprues will also be accurate), instructions (that frequently contain mistakes and some confusing areas), masks (not vinyl please, and interior masks when needed s'il vous plait), and so on and so forth. They are almost there, but the different aspects of what constitutes a kit are not in harmony yet. Some mistakes are minor, and some are frankly inexplicable.

To build #55 you need to know:

a) The resin extensions will be a challenging step due to their poor fit, don't underestimate it.

b) The smaller stabs are not accurate for this version according to photos, and the larger stabs -which are provided in the sprue- will not fit into the fuselage without the necessary modifications.

c) All military equipment -even that erroneously present in the instructions- should be deleted.

d) You have to add nose weight, or you will have a tail sitter (not specified in the instructions).

e) The vinyl masks will persistently have their edges lifted during priming and painting on the curved surfaces, they will be ok on flat surfaces. I wish Eduard will release a paper masks set for these series of kits. There are no masks to paint the interior of the doors, even if these can be posed open.

Summarizing: regarding this specific boxing, if you want to avoid most of the headaches, go for the very short span option. Even so, it will be a somewhat challenging build. If you go, like I did, for the somewhat larger span options, be prepared for a bumpy ride, as you will have to deal with -and fix- some important issues, all described in the step-by-step building article:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2023/08/bell-p-63-kingcobra-sohio-trophy-racer.html