The Predator was developed between January, 1994, and June, 1996, as a medium-altitude-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle. The complete Predator system has three components – the air vehicle, the ground control station, and the date dissemination system. One system is made up of 4 RQ-1A air vehicles. Each has a max weight of 2250 pounds, and is powered by a 115-horsepower Rotax engine, so no wonder it needs a 5000-foot runway to take off.

The kit consists of 2 sprues with about 23 finely-molded and flash-free parts with recessed panel lines, and includes a nice decal sheet by Cartograf. To start, I removed the major pieces and was wondering what the pieces of cardboard around the stabilizers were for. Well, be careful – they’re to protect the fine protrusions which stick out of the stabs, which I believe are either counterweights or vibration dampeners.

Always on the lookout for a good book on my favorite hobby I stumbled upon this book in my local Barnes & Noble and purchased it right away, as the new logo colors, photography, and use of the rich “painting”-like illustrations drew me in.

The latest regeneration of Airfix has brought about not only great new tooling of kits, but also reissues of classics, a full line of paints, tools and finishing equipment, and now the resurrection of publishing efforts. First, they brought us Airfix Model World on a monthly basis, but now we have their first new book, “The Airfix book of SCALE MODELLING”, by Jonathan Mock. This book weighs in at 176 pages chock-full of color photos and state-of-the-art CAD paintings just like those in the new Airfix magazine.

Osprey is a prolific publisher that has coupled excellent authors with fantastic artists that have combined their talents, mostly under Editor Tony Holmes’ direction, to produce hundreds of mostly soft cover “must have” books for serious modelers and history buffs. Any ‘good’ model show will have someone selling Osprey books and any modeler who has started his own reference library, owns Osprey books. Over the years, Osprey has divided them into several subcategories like ‘Aces,’ ‘Elite Units,’ and so on. One of the newest categories is the “Duel Series” where for example, one famous aircraft or tank is pitted against one of its contemporary enemies. I own many titles authored by IPMSer Steve Zaloga and every one written by Chris Bucholtz. I’m sure many more authors are IPMS members too that I’m just not aware of.