SAC has been a player in the aftermarket landing gear space for a long time now and is quite well known. You can count on the parts to fit and be representative of the kit you’re using them for. I happen to have this kit in my inventory, along with some resin upgrades for a conversion that will add some weight to it in the nose and tail. This SAC set appealed to me for that reason.

Today, we take the ever-present automobile for granted, but as with all things, it too started with a vision and a pioneering inventor. As the legend has it, in 1885 Karl Benz produced the prototype of Benz Patent Motorwagen is widely recognized as the world’s first practical automobile. Patented in 1886, it was demonstrated on July 3, receiving enormous attention. He continued making improvements for years until his wife, Bertha, decided to take matters into her own hands, loaded up the kids and hijacked the car to prove the car’s practicality by driving to a nearby town. That demo was the foundation of the global automotive industry.

Valiant Wings has just released the 26^th volume in it’s Airframe and Miniature series, which is a much expanded and revised edition of the Beaufighter book published in 2018 (Volume 14).

This new edition consists of 264 pages, including over 200 photos (of operational as well as museum aircraft), scale line drawings, color profiles, several model builds, a set of 1/48 plans and more. The contents are printed on high-quality, semi-gloss pages, with heavier stock covers. This book follows a similar format to others in the series. There is a brief publisher’s note on the first page explaining the decision to cover this topic a second time, specifically mentioning that Volume 14 has been out of print for quite some years!

As I have come to expect from the Airframe and Miniature series, the ‘preface’ is an in-depth summary of the development and deployment of the Beaufighter, within the RAF as well as Commonwealth and other countries’ Air Forces.