OzMods 1/48 Caribou by Cornay Sinac

OzMods' 1/48 scale
DHC-4 Caribou

by Cornay Sinac

de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou

Hasegawa's 1/72 scale B-47E Stratojet is available online from Squadron

Introduction

The Request

A work colleague requested I build an RAAF Caribou in landing configuration. The tail number was to be A4-235 as this was the last flight he commanded during his time in the RAAF.

I had the Ozmods 1/48 Caribou, although I had never attempted vacuform kit.

Construction

The Caribou features dihedral/anhedral wing geometry, with a translating rear engine cowl & full span double-slotted fowler flaps/ailerons. After contacting Greg Anderson from Ozmods, it was confirmed he had never seen it done before. This was my “oh dear” moment and would cause much head-scratching.

Separation of vacuform parts was done using a thick felt pen and the 45° scribing method, followed by careful sanding and test fitting.

Ozmods recommends fabricating a wood or metal wing main spar and provide a useful template to do this. The main-spar would need to be cut, sanded back and drilled as a result of the rear half of the wings being disassembled. Also, running gear, pins and hinges needed to be installed to enable flap extension. Therefore, the wing main spar was constructed using plastic i-beam stock reinforced with evergreen sheet.

Whilst deliberating as to how to extend flaps, I stared comfort eating chocolates. During this thinking time, the flight deck was built. Pilots were sourced from Hasegawa’s US pilot & ground crew set. The aircraft commander needed a moustache and have his right arm & hand up gripping the Caribou’s ceiling-mounted throttles. Much plastic surgery followed.

Chocolate consumption gave me an ‘A-HA!’ moment because the edges of the Ferrero-Rocher box had exactly the right curve for the leading edges of the ailerons & flaps.

Razor saw, glue, filler and much sanding ensued. Test-fitting, consulting reference shots, a visit to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society’s 2 flying examples of ex-RAAF DHC-4’s finally led to the mini Caribou flaps/ailerons you now see.

The underside of the rudder was modified to more closely represent reference material and the prop blades were rigged for 120° separation.

Also, the props & shafts were drilled & replaced with brass sleeves so as to prevent ubiquitous prop-spinners from causing structural failure of a blade.

Panel & rivet lines were replaced as there were many sessions of priming/filling/sanding.

Painting and Finishing

A coat of Future was sprayed, then the RAAF 38 SQN markings were placed, with another coat of Future to seal them in. Detail was picked out with Tamiya brown & black panel line accent fluids.

All position lights and aerials were installed, and the aircraft was made dirty & oily as per the client’s memories of A4-235. Lastly a coating of Dullcote was applied.

Conclusion

The client’s face said it all and he was very happy with the way it turned out. A very challenging build for me as I learned many new techniques and had some great advice from our always helpful modelling fraternity.

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