NWT Canadair CL.215

Getting the fun stuff out of the way first. Filling in the ejector pin marks on the interior. I'm using Gunze Mr. Dissolved Putty on each mark. 

This is becoming my go to tool for working in tight spaces. It's a DSPIAE rotary tool with a sanding arbor with a 320 grit sanding pad. It doesn't spin nearly as fast as a Dremel or similar so you don't have to worry about melting the plastic. Really works well. 

I started applying some of the PE to the cockpit interior. I also noticed that my sheet of PE appears to have been over etched. If you look at the rudder pedals (part no 14) and compare it to the diagram in the next photo, you'll notice that the tabs that are supposed to be folded and glued to the floor are missing. You can also see in the upper right that the screen is missing from part 21. There are a few other parts that are missing some material but I haven't seen anything yet that I won't be able to deal with. 

Layout of the PE sheet 

Side console PE applied along with the rudder pedals. 

You are supposed to remove the molded in pedals and then fold over some tabs on the PE pedals to glue them in place. Because of the missing tabs on my sheet, I elected to just glue them directly to the molded in pedals.  

I'm not usually one to get wrapped up in rivet counting, but occasionally I enjoy adding a little detail to my builds. I noticed that the strake on the forward fuselage of the kit looked a little small and the holes weren't there. I think we can fix this with minimal effort. Not my photo by the way. Original photo was found here: nabe3saviation.web.fc2.com/waCL215.html 

Compare the kit part with the previous photo. I penciled in where I thought the hole for the tie down cleat should go. You can also see where the kit has a small indentation which I'm assuming is their representation of this detail. 

Transferred to the other fuselage half to try and maintain symmetry. 

Quick work with a file and knife blade. I also flattened the edge of the strake to give a good gluing surface for the next step. 

I added a piece of 0.040 x 0.040" styrene strip to the edges of the strake with some Tamiya Extra Thin. 

The end result trimmed and sanded to shape. I also added the small hole just aft of the tie down location and filled in the kit indentation with some putty. The PE sheet comes with some tie downs which I'll add a little later. Not too bad for about an hour's worth of work. 

Another easy to add detail on the floats. I drilled out the tie-down holes on the back of each float. 

I decided to tackle this inlet screen next. On the kit it is ok, but some PE should look much better. 

As I mentioned previously, my PE sheet seems to have been overetched a bit. One of the unfortunate casualties are part 21, which is the screen we need for this inlet. The frame survived, but the mesh in the middle is completely gone except for right at the edge.  

Here are the insides of the frame cleaned up with files and small sanding sticks. 

Test fit into position. I had to scrape the bottom of the opening on the plastic a little to get it to fit nicely, but it wasn't too bad. 

And now we make swiss cheese to open up the window. 

Back with the files and sanding sticks and now it is looking like something. 

To replace the mesh, I'll be using this PE sheet from Eduard that I just got in the mail yesterday. 

That should do the trick nicely. I marked the PE with a fine point marker. 

My weapon of choice for cutting PE. They sliced through this sheet like butter. 

PE mesh test fit into place. 

And glued in with the frame on top. 

Before and after. Much, much better. 

And of course we now have to deal with the unintended consequences...doh! 

A few scraps of styrene strip 

Pre-bent a little and then glued in place with Tamiya Extra Thin. 

That should work. 

After an overnight cure, back out with the files and sanding sticks to smooth everything out. 

Much better! Slowly but surely we are getting there. 

Another casualty of the over etched PE are the various levers for the throttle quadrant. There is supposed to be a small dot on either side of the lever that get folded up to make the handles. I ended up cutting off the remaining dots and building them up with CA. 

Installed in the throttle quadrant. You'll notice that one is not like the others... Carpet monster claimed one so I substituted with some 0.008" wire. 

Replacement screens for an intake on the leading edge of the wing. I'm assuming it's for an oil cooler? 

Installed in the wing. 

Another nice upgrade over the kit. 

So one of the minor fit issues with this kit is that the lower wing halves are both warped slightly. This is one, and the other is pretty much the same. With such a high aspect ratio wing, I was really worried about it coming out straight and not drooping over time. 

So I decided to fit it with a spar. Initially, I had thought of square brass tubing to help with twisting, but I couldn't find any without mail ordering some. I was looking through my stock of R/C airplane stuff and I found a piece of Carbon Fiber kit tubing that fits perfectly. Plus it is nice and lightweight and very rigid so I don't have to worry about bending it. 

Procedure for cutting CF tubing is to wrap a piece of tape around the tube at the cut location to help keep the tube from cracking or splintering. 

I then cut it with a very fine toothed razer saw and then give the cut end a quick sanding. If this was going in an R/C airplane, I would also soak the ends in thin CA just in case there were any cracks in the tube. I don't plan on pulling any massive G's with this one though, so I'm sure it will be ok. 🙂 

Here is the CF tube cut to length laying next to some of the wing assembly. 

The CF tube will need to go through the center section, so I marked the bottom of the wing panel as well as the location of the tube on the side of the plastic. This was then cut out with a grinding bit in a rotary tool. 

And here we are checking alignment with the upper wing halves. 

The CF tube was tacked in place on the center section with some medium CA. The lower wing halves were glued to the center section with Tamiya Extra Thin and then the CF tube was glued to the lower wing halves with 30 min epoxy. Clothes pins act as clamps to keep things straight and not twisted. 

So back to some of the more interesting stuff. Part no.s 44 and 45 are the inner and outer skins for the door right behind the cockpit. The kit fuselage side is solid in this area, so if I like the way the door comes out, I'll have to cut open the door. 

Here is a photo (not mine) of what the door is supposed to look like. Compare it to the previous photo and the PE looks ok, but I think I can do better.
Photo credit: primeportal.net/hang..215/index.php?Page=2 

Another angle showing how thick the door is. The PE set has you sandwich a clear piece of sheet for the window between the two PE pieces and that is it. I think it would look a little too thin myself.
Photo credit: nabe3saviation.web.fc2.com/waCL215.html 

I traced the inner door skin onto some 0.015" thick styrene sheet. I then used a punch and die set to help cut out the window. 

Outer frame was built up with 0.040" square strip and the inner frame was pieces of 0.020 x 0.040" and 0.010 x 0.030" strip stock. I think that is looking much better than the PE sheet. 

I'm going to use the PE sheet as the inner skin of the door because it already has all the small holes cut out and it is much thinner and stronger than the styrene sheet. I used a punch and die set to start the process of cutting away the area that I just reproduced in plastic. 

And the bulk of the material was then cut away with PE snips. 

And then smoothed out with files and sanding sticks. 

Here is the PE piece glued to the plastic inner framework. 

Some details added with lead wire and scrap brass from old PE frames. I also drilled holes in the edges for locking pins that will be added later. 

Another view. I'm really happy with how this came out, so now I guess I have to open up the hole in the fuselage! I'll add the clear sheet and the outer PE skin later after painting. That way I don't have to do as much masking. 

Spent some time with a scriber and an Xacto and worked on opening up the fuselage. I scraped away the hinges and door handle first to make it easier to scribe around the door opening. I went really slow and was very careful to not over stress the fuselage at the front of the opening because there isn't a lot of plastic between the opening and where the canopy fits and I didn't want to snap it. 

Success! I'll clean it up with some sanding sticks and it will be ready to go. 

I recently purchased this book directly from Eagle Aviation. It's actually a squadron history of 355 Squadron in the HAF, but the bulk of the book centers around the current mission of flying the CL-215. Lots of beautiful scenic shots and some pretty good detail stuff too. Really good reference for the CL-215, highly recommended. 

The PE sheet includes these really nice wing fences. The profile matches the kit parts really well, but the PE parts have the small locating tabs to help secure them to the wing. I used a pencil to mark the locations of the tabs on the plastic part so that I can transfer it to the wing. 

And here I'm transferring the mounting tab location to the wing. I used a small drill to put a couple mounting holes in the wing for the PE parts 

The PE wing fences fit perfectly. For these I used thinned down Gator's Grip Acrylic glue to attach the parts. I did this so that the glue would flow into any potential gaps between the parts, as well as fill in the holes that the mounting tabs go in to. 

I had planned on replacing the kit engines with the R2800's from Aires, but I found these really nice units from Resin2Detail. The Aires versions are really nice, but they are little kits in themselves, and I really only care about the engine face for this model. I'll save the Aires engines for something else with the cowling off. These are nice 3D printed single piece units that just represent the front of the engine. 

Here is the Resin2Detail engine with the kit engine. Significant upgrade in detail. 

The resin engines are a little larger in diameter than the kit engine, so I did have to sand it down slightly to fit in the cowling. Sanded engine in front, as received in the back. 

Another comparison of the new engine in the cowling compared to the kit unit. No comparison really. 

And both ready to go. I will need to come up with a couple spacers to mount the engine to the firewall, but it shouldn't be too difficult. 

I also started working on the rest of the engine nacelles. The kit has some really nice raised detail on it and the parts fit really well, but smoothing out the seam is going to destroy some of the detail. 

I decided to go "all in" with the nacelles and sanded the entire thing smooth. I picked up some 3D printed rivet decals from Quinta and Eduard that I plan on using to restore the raised detail. Because of that, I sanded the nacelles all the way down to 4500 grit which gives it a nice smooth surface to decal to. 

Before and after shot. 

Finishing up work on the wings. All of the flap actuators have been glued in place. 

Another casualty of the PE fret were these two pieces that were supposed to make up the oil cooler vent door. They are supposed to be a single piece that is folded up into a deployed position. However, most of the pictures I've seen of the NWT CL.215's have them retracted on the ramp, so I'll just use the large rectangle to represent them in the closed position. 

And here is one of them installed. 

I added some spacers to the back of the engines to get them sitting at the correct depth when attached to the firewall of the nacelle. These were just made from some large styrene tube. 

Here are the spacers CA'd to the back of the engines. 

I don't know why, but I decided it might be fun to try and scratch build the top hatch above the cockpit. I think it's because the main cabin door turned out pretty well. That and I'm probably just not right in the head. Like the cabin door, I figure I'll attempt the scratch build first and if it comes out ok, I'll cut open the hatch in the plastic. 

I cut a new hatch from a piece of 0.005" brass sheet and then formed it to roughly match the curved contour of the top of the fuselage. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to represent the curved surface. 

Then a piece of styrene sheet was cut to represent the inside surface of the hatch. I believe it was 0.020". 

Some small pieces of styrene strip were cut to represent the brackets holding the locking mechanism in place. 

Here's the completed assembly with some wire for the locking bars, a small piece of plastic rod and a sliver of brass from a PE sheet for the handle. I still need to add the handle on the outside of the hatch, but I'll do that later after I paint this part to keep from knocking it off. 

Well, I'm happy enough with the new hatch, so now for the nerve racking part. Cutting the hatch into the clear plastic. Trusty hand drill to the rescue. 

I drilled a series of holes around the inside of the hatch to be removed.  

And then I used a fine grinding bit in my DSPIAE moto tool to "connect the dots" and remove the middle. 

After that I cleaned up the edges with small files and sanding sticks. 

And here's how it will look when assembled. 

I also noticed a small scratch on the inside of the side windows that will need to be removed. 

Out came the sanding and polishing sticks. I worked my way up to a 4000 grit polishing stick and I'll dip the whole thing in Future later. While I was dealing with the scratch, I decided to remove the molded in windshield wipers as well. I have some PE ones that I'll add later that will look much better.