Developed at the Curtiss-Wright St. Louis factory, the CW-22 was developed from the CW-19 via the single-seat CW-21 light fighter-interceptor. The prototype first flew in 1940. With less power and performance than the CW-21, the two-seat, low-wing, all-metal CW-A22 had retractable tailwheel landing gear, with the main gear retracting rearward into underwing fairings.

The CW-22 was seen as either a civilian sport or training monoplane or suitable as a combat trainer, reconnaissance and general-purpose aircraft for military use. The prototype CW-A22 Falcon (U.S. civilian registration NC18067) was used as a company demonstrator and is one of four of the type still in existence. An SNC-1 is on display at the U.S. Navy's National Museum of Naval Aviation, at NAS Pensacola, Florida.

The main customer for the aircraft equipped with the Wright R-975 Whirlwind air-cooled radial engine was the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force and 36 were exported. The aircraft had to be delivered to the Dutch in Australia due to the advancing Japanese forces. A developed version, the CW-22B, was sold to Turkey (50), the Netherlands East Indies (25) and in small numbers in South America. Some of the Dutch aircraft were captured and operated by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. The CW-22 and CW-22B were armed with two machine guns, one fixed.

An unarmed advanced training version (CW-22N) was demonstrated to the United States Navy. To help to meet the expanding need for training, the Navy ordered 150 aircraft in November 1940. Further orders brought the total to 305 aircraft which were designated SNC-1 Falcon.

THE KIT

Kora started out doing resin kits and has since graduated to mostly injected plastic kits. This one is fairly recent and has a bag of resin parts. It still has a vacuformed canopy, of which two are supplied. Resin is used for the seats, landing gear oleo scissors, wheels, engine and the mounting areas for the wheel wells.

This is basically a one sprue kit and so there are not a lot of parts to it. The cockpit has the aforementioned seats, control sticks, rudder pedals and bulkheads. A roll-over pylon is situated behind the front seat. There is plenty of detail on the inside of the fuselage half as well. The front and rear instrument panel are to have the instrument areas drilled out and a provided paper dial piece placed behind them before gluing them in place. I should mention that the fuselage halves, wings and some other large pieces have ejector towers that probably should be removed to get the parts to fit.

A single piece cowling is provided into which one fits the resin engine. Though the instructions have you attach the prop at this time, I would hold off until the end to do that. This fits onto a firewall that is trapped between fuselage halves. Interestingly, the instructions never show you when to install the interior. I'm not sure if it fits from below or not, but it might be worth seeing if that is the case.

Wings are the usual full lower piece with upper halves. The spot to which the gear doors attach are in resin and attach to the wing. Then each of the three piece landing gear legs/wheels is installed followed by the doors themselves. Then this is attached to the fuselage along with the tailplanes and fin/rudder. Personally I'd attach the flight surfaces first before dealing with the landing gear. A radio mast and vac canopy complete things.

Instructions are well done and provide a nice side detail shot of the completed interior to help you.  Colors are provided in either Humbrol or Gunze references (the numbers start with H), as well as generic names. Markings are provided for five planes. Three are Uruguayan and differ by fuselage codes. They are bare metal fuselage with yellow on the whings and tail, though one has no yellow on the tail. The other two are from Bolivia and are overall yellow. They differ only by serial number. The decals are nicely printed and should work just fine. Kora has also included a set of masks for the wing walk areas.

It looks like a fairly straight-forward short run kit. Perhaps not for the bare beginner into these types, but nothing really difficult for the experienced. I like that you get two canopies as it is good to have some insurance just in case. If you like trainers, then this would be worth considering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss-Wright_CW-22

June 2019

Copyright ModelingMadness.com. All rights reserved.