Sundry Nations’ Aircraft
Aero L27 Delfin – Doflug D-3802 – CAC CA-15
The arrangement of this museum’s galleries has made it convenient to bundle some of the less well traveled aircraft functions and countries of origin into a couple of galleries of ‘sundries’. We will probably need to add more galleries as the number of exhibits grows, but not yet. So I thought that it might be interesting to have a look in one of the sundry galleries, this time ‘Sundry Nations’.
The Aero L27 Delfin was manufactured in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War and used as a trainer for all the Warsaw Pact countries except Poland. It was a simple and tough little trainer so there are still a few of them in service, mostly in private ownership. This one is in the livery of the Georgian Air Force in the 1990s after the break up of the Soviet Union.
This kit came from the Czech company KP which was the only kit maker in a Warsaw Pact country offering kits that were acceptable by Western standards. It dates from around 1970 and is roughly the equal of kits being manufactured in the West at the same time. From my perspective the major problem with it was the very poor cockpit so I bought and installed a resin after-market cockpit so there is something reasonable to see underneath the large cockpit canopy. The decals for this kit were old and unuseable so I used some interesting after-market ones.
The Swiss Doflug D-3802 is an aircraft that you might consider the ultimate development of the French Morane Saulnier MS406 fighter. It took advantage of a more powerful engine and design improvements to create a fighter that was much more capable but was only ready for service around the end of World War II and so only a handful were manufactured.
Back in around 2012 RS Models released a nice little kit of the Morane Saulnier 406 and then kits of the related Doflug D-3801 – which looks pretty much like a MS406 – and then kits of the related D-3802 and D-3803. Being limited run kits these do not have the feel and precision of your Tamiya and Hasegawa kits but they make up into very interesting little models with the application of little skill and patience.
The Australian made CAC (Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation) CA-15 was, like the D-3802, one of those fighters designed during World War II that was too late to see service in it. Although design began in 1942 the lack of an engine powerful enough for this new fighter meant that a Rolls Royce Griffon engine could not be installed in it until 1946 when the prototype made its first flight. By then jet engines were the future so the project was cancelled and the prototype broken up for spares.
There are few kits of the CA-15 in 1/72 including a vacform kit and a couple of resin kits. More recently Kora have also offered a resin kit of the CA-15which might be the same as the Czech Master Resin kit with some etch parts added. I had the vacform kit at one time but it was too challenging for me so when the Czech Master Resin kit became available I snapped up a copy. I have found these kits very easy and pleasant to make and this kit was no different so I enjoyed making this model.