Background
In march 1966 the Royal Malaysian Air Force(RMAF) placed an order of 20 Canadair Tutor. The Canadair CL-114 Tutor has been converted into CL-41G Tebuan for tactical ground support due to the RMAF’s requirement. It featured strengthened landing gear ,`zero-level’ ejection seat, six hard points ( 2 under belly and 4 under wing ) for ordnance and fuel tanks and build more powerful GE-J85-J4 engine. The Malaysian called the aircraft Tebuan (Wasp).The first batch received by RMAF in 1966 to form No.6 Squadron as pilot - trainer and the second batch in 1969 to form No.9 Squadron as tactical ground support. The Tebuan were in service with RMAF for nearly 20 years, the entire batch faced out in 1983.During my childhood this nostalgic aircraft used to fly over my hometown couple of times at low level and sometime in formation. I always wanted to build one and finally Belcher Bits made my dream came true by producing the resin kit in 1/48 scale. I heard that Hobbycraft is going to release it in 1/48 scale sometime this year in plastic injection! Just can’t wait for it. 

Kit
The kit is produced by Belcher Bits and it is the only kit available in the market in 1/48 scale. Most of the body parts for the kit are mainly resin. The resin landing gears are reinforced by steel rod and the two sets of canopies provided are in vac-formed. I bought this kit couple of years ago and it took me for quite sometime to compile the pictures of tebuan as reference.

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Preparation
As usual the resin kit need to wash first with a bit of detergent in order to get rid of the mold release agent and gave towel dried to all the parts. This is the first kit that I made from resin. 

Construction .
Dry fitting between the fuselage and wing section showed that it needs a piece of styrene sheet sandwich between them in order to flush the bottom fuselage and the under wing area. Then I glued the fuselage and wing together with super glue. Considerable amount of filler needed between joints. To make the jet exhaust look realistic I carefully drilled a hole. By looking at the photos available as reference some extensive additional details were applied, especially at the cockpit and intake areas. The modifications and kit bashing are made as follows:-

• Modified ejection seats using plastic cards, spruce and guitar string to add details.

• Plastic sheet and spruce were used to add details on cockpit’s tub.

• Details were added on the vac-formed canopy frame using plastic stripe.

Further modifications were made to convert this Tutor Snowbird into RMAF’s Tebuan, the conversions are:-

• Radio antenna just behind the canopy is made from plastic card.

• A modified sensor dome from 1/48 Monogram dragonfly is fitted below the cockpit just behind the nose gear.

• Fuel hose made from plastic strip.

• Under wing pylons are made of plastic card.

• Mini-guns from 1/48 Monogram dragonfly.

• Plastic cards and wire mesh were used to add details for air intake.

After completed all the works above, I gave few coats of gray color to the entire body which act as primer base cote. Then prior to painting - sanding, touch up and rescibing works are applied until satisfied.

Painting and marking
The color scheme of RMAF’s version is quite simple, top body color is olive green and the under carriage is light grey. Most of the colors applied for the model were Gunze-Sangyo lacquer paint. Prior to the applications of decals, the entire body was sprayed by clear gloss and finally matt cote to give it a semi gloss look. The markings are custom made and the serial numbers applied are dry transfer (letraset). 

Happy Merdeka Day 2012

Raja Jamil Ariffin

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