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Introduction: The primary organization of the IPMS/USA Review website is by IPMS/USA National Contest Class. Within each Class there are sub-menus by kits, decals, books, etc. The Miscellaneous Class is for items that are not class specific or that cross two or more classes.

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Manufacturers, publishers, and other industry members: IPMS/USA is pleased to offer your company the opportunity for product reviews. All product reviews are performed by IPMS/USA members, and are posted in the publicly-accessible section of our website. With very few exceptions, we perform full build reviews of new kit releases, aftermarket products, and supplies. If you would care to provide product samples for review, please contact John Noack, IPMS/USA 1st VP.

To learn more about IPMS/USA, please see our About Us page.

Review Author
Rod Lees
Published on
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/32
MSRP
$34.95

First, the usual “thank you greatly” to SAC for providing this set to IPMS USA. We appreciate the continual, long-term support from this manufacturer, and it’s always a good day when a package arrives from SAC HQ.

This metal gear is exactly what SAC says it is; an improved version of the kit gear. From their website: “The Trumpeter main gear is too long. Our set corrects this problem. Also, we recommend the modeler purchase a set of ResKit wheels because they have much better detail and they lower the model by an additional 1 mm”.

Out of the box, the kit has two different landing gear options; Plastic gear parts for a standard build, incorporating brake lines and other details, (which will begin to fail over time), and a cast- steel copy of the plastic gear without the brake lines. These lines are provided for by black vinyl add-ons in a bag containing the vinyl/rubber tires for the basic kit.

Book Author(s)
Bert Kinzey
Illustrators: Rock Roszak
Review Author
Frank Landrus
Published on
Company
Detail & Scale, Inc.
MSRP
$21.99

Detail & Scale published its first two books on North American’s P-51 Mustang in 1996. Thirty years later, a new set of three publications, P-51 Mustang in Detail & Scale, significantly revises and expands the original coverage of this iconic fighter. This latest series of Detail & Scale started with Volume 1 in 2018 with the F3H Demon.

Review Author
Michael Reeves
Published on
Company
ICM
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$29.99

ICM has been releasing quality kits, figure sets, and recently paints to support their vast library of releases. This is a new sort of release for me as included in the card stock envelope are sheets of decals that the modeler can use to add unit patches, shoulder boards, and ribbons to your Ukrainian 1/35 figures, as well as digital camouflage for the Kozak-2 models in their line. The cover art of the envelope lists the set has 468 combat unit patches of AFU, 56 patches of AFU, 34 shoulder boards, and 2 sheets of decals for the Kozak-2. For a little bit of bling, the set comes with a Ukrainian patch as well.

Review Author
Ron Bell
Published on
Company
OKB Grigorov
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$18.00

OKB Grigorov is a modeling company headquartered in Bulgaria. They do 3D printing, resin and photo etch items. Their inventory includes complete kits, track sets, figures and detail sets. I have now built two of their resin kits and have found them to be of the highest quality. There is no flash, no huge molding blocks to remove and the detail is very finely executed. Don’t go here looking for another Panzer IV or Tiger kit as they specialize in some rather esoteric subjects.

The subject of this review is their 1/72 scale kit of the U.S. Honest John missile. This was the first missile the U.S. produced capable of delivering an atomic warhead, although it could also carry a conventional one. It was ballistically “guided”, launched from a truck-mounted launching rail and was used by numerous countries, only coming out of the front-line U.S. inventory in 1983.