The Canadians must have a thing for noses. When you go to the Canadian Aviation Museum just outside Ottawa you will find all kinds of interesting thing including the only surviving parts of two of the country’s most intriguing aeroplanes, a CF-105 nose mounted on a wall and a C-102 nose sitting quietly on the main display floor. Like everyone, I rushed over to gape at the CF-105 nose and only paid the C-102 passing interest. I probably have a photo of it somewhere in my boxes of old photos.
The next time I came across the C-102 was on eBay. A little resin kit from a company I’d never heard of, but not too expensive. I did a bit of reading and found out the C-102 came within a few days of being the first jet airliner to fly in the world and that, like the CF-105, it had been killed off by Canadian politicians. What is it with politicians, can’t they recognize a good aeroplane when they see it? I put in a bid and, a couple of weeks later the kit arrived.
The CF-102 kit was, as I later discovered, like all F-RSIN kits, simplicity itself. It had only a handful or well moulded parts that still needed some work. Assembling it was easy but I soon discovered my lack of experience with Alclad II and that using gloss yellow paint is as trying as gloss white.
The result was a disaster that went into hiding until I could face it again. Later I discovered that you can attack the paint work on a resin kit with the most savage paint thinner and it comes off very easily and nicely, without effecting the resin. So I stripped the model off and started again. This time I had more success and although the model still bears some of the marks of my first attempt, it is a pleasant little replica of the original.
Leigh Edmonds
October 2008
