The Canadair CT-114 Tutor (company model CL-41) was the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and later Canadian Forces, standard jet trainer, between the early 1960s and 2000. Designed and built by Canadair, it was ordered in September 1961.

The Tutor served as the Canadian Forces primary jet trainer until it was replaced by the CT-155 Hawk and CT-156 Harvard II in 2000. The CL-41G model supplied to Malaysia was built as a ground-attack aircraft. The Tutor is currently still used by the Snowbirds aerobatics team.

This is apparently the only injection molded kit of this aircraft available in this scale. There was one done in resin in 1/144 scale, but it seems that there isn't a huge demand for the type amongst modelers. It has been released three different times by Hobbycraft with other boxings including markings for the Snowbirds.

My kit suffered from basement flooding back in 1997 when we had a deluge and six days without power so I couldn't pump the water out. A generator was soon purchased after the big box stores got in a restock. I pretty well figured the decals would be toast and so they were. Still, the kit was shrink wrapped and I figured the plastic would be ok. Opening it for an upcoming project, I discovered a bunch of mold on the paper parts of the package so those were quickly tossed out. However, the plastic was still good that is what was important to me.

Hobbycraft obviously wanted this kit to be a pretty quick build. There is a cockpit tub with instrument panel, two control sticks and two seat shapes. There is no indication that one needs nose weight, but I'd use some. The wing is a single piece with the gear wells molded in place. The nose gear well is incorporated into the fuselage halves. The tailplane is also a single mold. There are separate nose strakes and in some markings schemes, one will probably want to install those after the decals.

Landing gear each have separate wheels and the gear doors will need to be cut for the 'down' position. There is no option for a raised gear shown nor is a display stand provided. A two piece windscreen/canopy is offered, but again, it is designed for the closed position as there is no canopy actuating mechanism. Other bits are a pair of landing lights, two travel pods or fuel tanks for under the fuselage and a two part nose section with the lower half clear to represent the landing light.

Instructions are on a folded sheet of paper with five construction drawings. No color information is provided for the interior or wheel wells or gear legs. There are markings provided for three planes. Two are overall aluminum lacquer or bare metal with red areas as assigned to 2 CFFTS in 1985 and 1996. These differ in the 'Canada' markings with the older one having the squadron badge on the rudder. The third option is for a CL-41G of the Malaysian Air Force in green over light grey. My decals were toast due to water damage, but since this is a rather early boxing, I would guess that even perfect decals would prove to be useless. 

It certainly isn't a world beater kit by any means and while not really all that detailed, is still, to my knowledge, the only CT-114 available in this scale that is injected plastic. There have been aftermarket decals for it so even a water damaged kit can be built. It is an important addition to any jet trainer collection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT-114_Tutor

2014

Thanks to me for the preview kit.