Wings of Intent: Bell P-63 Kingcobra Sohio Trophy racer

(The completed model is here:

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

What a joy when a mainstream manufacturer joins the effort of the cottage industry pioneers in producing civil kits of quality. Many civil modelers perk their ears when the word "racer" is mentioned. In this case a conversion of ex bonga-bonga planes into a number of exciting racer possibilities (the boxing offers 3 candidates).

I must say I liked what I saw when I started to examine the sprues:

The kit is well detailed, the subjects colorful racers, the small parts delicate and well defined. There is almost no flash (but one of the "additional" spues did have a bit of it), no molding mismatch, no short pours, no sink holes, no ejector pin marks, and the gates are small, mostly conveniently located and easy to clean up. There is no cramming the parts in the sprue in a way that hinders extraction as with other manufacturers. You also get very clear transparencies, a small photo-etched fret and even masks, the later unfortunately in vinyl, that has often proven to be inferior to paper masks, with a tendency to detach and a remarkable reluctance to follow curved volumes. The sprues are strangely stamped "AMG". The fit is good for the most part, and there are locating devices, avoiding the tricky and sometimes frustrating butt-joints. The level of detail for 1/72nd is remarkably high, and there is minute and accurate detail even in places that will end up completely hidden (back of the seat, pan below the seat, etc.).

You will find in the box alternate parts for the other versions offered. There are two "extension" resin wing sections provided (the kit has a very short wing used by the one of the racers) that don't have a good fit. Dora did not bother much checking photos of the actual racers, so watch out for those radios, armored seats, and so forth, as very likely they won't apply (other racers did have a radio, like P-63 #72 NX63941). Another example: one of the versions is #87, it had the aft section of the canopy painted over, a fact ignored by Dora. Version #55 -that is also the box art- did not have in that decoration the shorter wings but is correctly depicted in the instructions' illustration with the somewhat larger span (as photos of the original plane show), it did not have the radio as depicted in the box art (and assembly instructions), nor had the tail regs on the rudder as in the instructions, but on the fin.

Some of the problems with the parts and instructions stem from the usual derivation of the civil boxings from the military ones. Examples: the upper nose part still has the gun holes, that the modeler should fill; the spinner tip has to be reworked to match the racers'.

So, summarizing, do not blindly follow Dora Wings lead, or you may end up with details that are inaccurate, and a tail sitter if do not add nose weight (no mention of this is made in the instructions).

Fortunately I have built Dora Wings kits before. I say that because for all of the good things they do, they also characterize for somewhat lazy/poor research. You may think twice before building a Dora Wings kit exactly as it comes in the box, before checking it against photos and literature of the subject you intent to build. They do look good in the box, and many things about them are indeed good, but there also are construction sensitive points, parts that do no belong in the model but are depicted in the instructions, and occasionally unclear graphics and decals that may contain the odd inaccuracy. What I admire most is their will to produce civil kits, significant and appealing. They may not do well in the hands of modelers with little experience, but more advanced modelers can sort out the issues, and if they bother to check references and are able to fix a thing or two, they will obtain very nice models. Dora tends to omit color calls, and has a tendency (my subjective opinion) to over-engineer, but some modelers may like all those little parts (I do, when and if their fit is good).

Here are my builds of other Dora Wings kits, all nice, but surely not free of issues themselves:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2021/04/cape-cod-distance-record-bellanca.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2021/03/bellanca-j-300-liberty-modified-dora.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2021/05/bellanca-ch300-cf-atn-floatplane.html

Besides buying this kit I bought their double kit of the "normal" Kingcobra, as there are other racers that I want to build, modifying myself the original kit instead of relying on the somewhat confusing part-swapping that this particular racer boxing kit needs.

Believe it or not, I actually bought this kit to build the short wing version. But upon looking at the real proportions in three dimensions, my sense of aesthetics prevented me from doing so, and instead I will build one of the versions with the "intermediate" span, that look racy enough, but not borderline ridiculous.

A note:

Only the shortest wing uses the smaller horizontal tail (provided as extra parts), the others use the one in the "normal" sprues, this is not clarified in the instructions. Step 2 has the two rudder pedal metal parts seemingly added to the control panel, but the next step shows the actual supports they go in (those supports are not provided, someone dropped the ball). Part C46 doesn't look at all like the part depicted in the instructions, because for some reason they put a small section of another part in it.

Better not to add C42, 48 and 49 until you have built the nose gear well structure, or you may knock them off. Parts 50 and 56 are not in the instructions, part 50 seems to be the gun sight and I guess should be omitted, part 56 is the nose leg scissors that they forgot to add in the instructions, but are seen, uncalled, further down the lane. As we go on surely more things will come up.

So, without further ado:

You can see here a mixed bag of parts, necessary to cover the choices for the three subjects:

All military parts were discarded. You can see the two types of horizontal tail, the air intake sections that go after the canopy, and misc. bits:

Not in focus, but the nose guns are plugged with stretched sprue (another miss from Dora):

The instructions contain some glitches. Here the pedals seem to appear as attached to the i.p., but then attached to some supports that are missing:

No radio for these racers:

The throttle quadrant is not behind the door as marked, but actually in front of it, and partially appearing when looking from outside:

Do not cut the aileron as marked if you are doing the any of the two version with the larger span, and of course do not add the actuators at this stage, but closer to completion:

The nose leg scissors are missing in the instructions, but the part is there in the sprue (#56, a bit crude compared wit the rest):

Further down the lane the scissors appear on the nose leg, uncalled, already glued. Remember to fill the guns in the upper nose part:

The pedals are given some supports:

Remember that part C46 is not as described, as the drawing contains, who knows why, a section of a different part, the nose leg mechanism:

C17 does not look like that, and the sides of the box do not have those spigots to latch it, is a butt joint:

Some assembly and airbrushing is already under way. The cockpit/nose bay sub-assembly is complex and not easy to manipulate, be careful and it will pay off. Wheel halves are glued, and the well boxings are added to the upper sections of the wing, where they practically snap in:

Pizza as we know is a good modeling fuel:

I believe it is a good strategy with this kit to chose early on if you want the plane with the very short wings or any of the other two, as this will allow you to put out the way the parts that are not relevant avoiding confusion. As you have seen, I decided to go for any of the longer wing ones (which involves the extra work of matching the wing extensions. I am not yet decided on which, though, and before I do, I need to corroborate if #87 is olive green as deemed by the kit or black as it appears to be in photos. If black, I may go for it, but not for the boring olive.

Why Dora products seem somewhat discombobulated? very good things on one side, and inexplicable oversights on the other. Another mystery of the Modeling Universe. You have entered...The Styrene Zone..

Rod Serling, the presenter and creator of the Twilight Zone, was a keen modeler.

The resin wing extensions have a small tongue that is supposed to fit inside the wing, but as mentioned the fit is not good, so this is removed, and the extensions' contact area is sanded flat. Even so the resin parts are marginally thinner than the wing, and some sanding and re-scribing will surely be in order. I used fast-curing epoxy and made the panel lines coincide the best I could, keeping an eye not to alter the dihedral angle:

Sometimes the manufacturers' logic escapes me. Wouldn't have been much easier for both, manufacturer and modeler, to provide the "normal" wing to be cut and just provide the wingtips? instead of a patch that is difficult to graft and doesn't align perfectly? So just one wing, for the modeler to cut either shorter or longer, and use the kit-provided caps for the former and just resin or plastic much smaller wingtips for the later? (the sprue at the top is from the "normal" kit):

Also notice above the white styrene filling for the light position (the racer did not have the light).

A coat of primer. Now the panel lines have to be restored:

WOW: remember when I said that occasionally Dora Wings would mess-up some decal images? well, what about a 1/48th instrument panel decal in a 1/72nd sheet and kit? I can't understand what happens at Dora Wings, apparently the instructions guys don't communicate well with the masters' guys, nor the decals' guys communicate efficiently with the rest. There are things that are difficult to spot, produce, or solve. I don't think faulty instructions or decals are one of those. I wonder if any other 1/48th images slipped in? Now to check one by one...sigh... really, guys:

In any case, you can see above that weight has been added to the nose. Hopefully it will be enough to avoid a tail sitter.

The fuselage halves are joined after dealing with a few interior details. The fit is good, same for the dorsal air intake insert:

The wing is added. The fit is good, but care is needed. The horizontal tail and rudder are added too. The horizontal tail is fixed in place by a sort of step, not the best way. This leaves a small uncovered area at the leading edge root as it meets the fuselage, because this is molded for the short stab, that is inaccurate for two of the longer versions included as options in the kit. So go figure. Going the Milliput way here:

Another point that doesn't make sense. The axle will not fit as described (or any other logical way). You can provide you own solution here. I keep wondering how Dora Wings mind operates:

I had to modify that to -hopefully- obtain a movable prop:

As another note, it becomes a little bothering to have to be aware of the nose landing gear leg all the time while you work on the main body of the model, puttying and sanding and trying to avoid to knock that leg off (and then deal with it while painting the rest of the model). Either an insert or the addition of the nose leg into a socket would have worked better. The concept of "let's pack everything together in a single sub-assembly" may sound appealing and novel, but, as it solves or helps with some issues, it creates others. I think the designer got a bit carried away regarding that, as the sub-assembly is difficult to manipulate, hinders painting, and does not include the weight -as it does, for example, the Arma kit of the P-39. It actually doesn't even mention a weight.

The plan shows that the lower part of the fuselage front is closed, but it isn't:

It will leave a hole as shown. By the way, I removed the too coarse scissor linkage from the LG front leg and replaced it with a photoetched part from the spares:

The opening is closed with a shaped piece of styrene:

Now the filling, filing and sanding:

Now that I have to add the transparencies to be able to prime and fix the blemishes, I realized that, in spite of needing masks for the TWO SIDES of BOTH DOORS, if you want to pose them open as is an option in the kit, the masks provided are only for the exterior. You don't need to be an astrophysicist to realize that. SO, a pair of masks will have to be home made in order to paint the green interior of the doors. With this kit I have the sensation that modelers have to work a little bit for the manufacturer, instead of them for the modeler:

Needless to say, a few hours after applying the masks on a perfectly clean surface, the ones on curved surfaces started to peel off by themselves. The worst is the one "head" of the front part, that seats on a double curvature. When will manufacturers understand that the only good use of vinyl masks is on perfectly flat surfaces? Paper masks for curved surfaces, please!:

The fit of the transparencies is not optimal, and some filing and adjusting was in order:

I think that one possible definition of Dora Wings kits is: Good kits with a bad kit inside. Once more: why a potentially very good kit is plagued with annoying issues that could have been easily avoided? I am building in parallel an Academy and a 72Topia kit, no issues, pleasant builds. Now, this is supposed to be a manufacturer who cares, so why are there so many things that make the build not the pleasant experience it could be, with just a little more effort on their part?

First coat of primer and there are some things to attend to, as I expected:

Work on the surface due to the alternate parts used on the model continues, the ailerons are cut to size, the spinner has the military tip deleted:

Getting closer to a fair surface. Other parts are primed in preparation for the paint. The vinyl masks edges on the curved parts of the canopy keep lifting, over and over again. No doubt I will have to deal with some "underspray" at the moment of finally removing them:

A reminder: the short span horizontal tail is accurate ONLY for the very short wingspan option. If using the resin extensions for the other two options, the LARGER HORIZONTAL STAB is accurate, as per photos of the originals. This is omitted in the kit instructions, and the larger horizontal tail has to be "grafted", as the fuselage is molded to only accept the shorter-span horizontal tail. In fact, if you want to avoid most of the headaches that this build could entail, the easiest way is the build the very short span option. Dora tried to make it work for the larger-span racers, but it works only half way, and that with an amount of elbow grease.

Prop and spinner are given a gloss white base for the yellow that will follow (the prop tips will be masked and the blades painted):

As predicted, and it's invariably the case with vinyl masks on curved surfaces, they lifted. So I had to remove them, clean the underspray the best I could, and open other kits I have of the P-63 from the same manufacturer to use those masks to be able to apply the color. Could you please Eduard or similar release a set of paper masks for these kits? The vinyl masks they have are useless for the curved sections!

Getting closer to completion. As mentioned already to exhaustion the crappy vinyl masks again lifted at their edges, so after removing them yet another session of carefully dealing with the underspray took place. This grief needn't be there, if the manufacturer had provided good ole' paper masks. Hey Dora, Eduard does those, maybe buying from them? Passing the buck to the modeler because vinyl masks are cheaper is not the way to go:

As I work my way towards the completion, here are some notes: the main landing gear doors are thick, their position on the legs is marked, but the fit is a bit indifferent. The nose LG doors are again thick, their "hinges" big and their fit not ideal, they interfere at the front with themselves and with some little curved section on the fuselage at the back. The sockets for the main LG legs in the bays are larger than the plug on the leg itself, thus the fit is again indifferent and wobbly:

The photoetched fret in the kit has linkages for the control surface tabs, but I couldn't see any in photos of these racers, so I did not include them.

The decals for the prop blades, at least for this specific plane, are not seen in photos of this plane, so I left them out. They were present on this plane when it had a three-blade prop, a larger rudder and another decoration. The decals behaved quite well, the color is solid and the carrier is ok. They take a while to slide off the backing sheet, so do not force them. On application, one number 5 broke in half, but was rejoined:

Here is sort of completed. "Sort of" because the way the nose LG doors seat is not accurate, so I will remove them, modify them, and re-attach them. In retrospect the too prominent front hinges were missing in the sequence from the instructions, so I wonder if this was an afterthought due to their not so good fit. The addition of nose weight -basically occupying all available space- saved the build, as the model now stands on its nose leg as it should. Once again, the nose weight is not mentioned in the instructions: