Way back in the 1960’s, McDonnell Aircraft had a winner with their F-4B Phantom II and it enjoyed a long production run in several versions. The plastic model manufacturers kept pace releasing and re-releasing many of these versions. Fine Molds is the latest modeling company to offer a line of F-4’s including several JASDF machines as well as the F-4E, F-4D, and F-4J. The F-4C is one of their latest releases and it is a winner.

This set provides white metal replacements for Airfix’s new MiG-17F kit. The set consists of five parts, a new nose strut with integral wheel, two main gear struts and two retraction/extension actuators and are one-for-one replacements for the kit parts.

The parts are well cast with just a minor casting seam to be cleaned up. I then polished each part with a wire wheel in my Dremel to smooth out the cast texture and get the parts ready for painting.

As the landing gear on the aircraft I am modeling was unpainted, I sprayed the struts with Testors aluminum and then painted the tire Tamiya NATO black. I highlighted the retracting sections of the retraction/extension actuators with Testor’s chrome silver.

As the parts are cast copies of the kit parts, they fit exactly as the kit parts would, except that they have to be installed with superglue instead of model cement.

This set is a nice replacement for the Airfix kit parts. Recommended.

Value Gear resin stowage products have long been among the best resin additions for modelers looking to detail their builds in nearly any scale. Spanning stowage from WWII through more modern and even sci-fi settings, these pieces really pop with detail and add immensely to the scenes they’re placed in. In this case, we are looking at set #11-- another stowage set for your StuG in 1/35 scale. While many of the sets are geared towards certain manufacturers’ kits, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t place them nearly anywhere, as you’ll see below.