While meandering through the vendors rooms at the Omaha Nationals, I bumped into Ernie Gee while visiting with Gordon Kwan of Sprue Brothers. For those of you who don’t know, I consider Ernie to be the living GrandMaster of lost brass castings such as landing gear, boat propellers, and a multitude of other stuff. He handed these to me and asked if I might review them. Well…here is the review. EXQUISITE! There really isn’t much more to say about the absolutely beautiful work this guy does. (The last Fisher kit I reviewed, the RB-51 Red Baron Racer, had Ernie’s landing gear included, as does the F7U Cutlass I’m currently knee deep into). There can’t be enough good said about the quality of these products. If you haven’t tried any G Factor products, it’s past time. These can be ordered in the U.S. at https://spruebrothers.com and in the United Kingdom at https://www.hannants.co.uk.
Welcome to the IPMS/USA Reviews site!
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.
IPMS/USA Members: We encourage you to submit reviews, both here and to the Journal. To volunteer for membership in the IPMS/USA "Reviewers Corps" and submit your own reviews, please read the Guidelines For Submitting Product Reviews.
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.
With a title like this and John writing that the text was in French, I assumed this book was going to be all about French Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Yep, I was wrong! As I started thumbing through the book and scanning over the included vehicles, I realized that this was a nice collection book about Infantry Fighting Vehicles all over the world. This is very neat “recognition handbook”. A slight word of warning….This is not a definitive collection of infantry Fighting vehicles by any means. Though a great book, it needs to be more defined by the title.
First, let me thank Squadron Products for these review samples an IPMS/USA for allowing me to review them.
The recommended model for these two sets of decals is the Revell 1/48 A-6E Intruder. Revell first released their A-6E 23 years ago in 1988 (kit # 4578). They have re-released it in 2011 (kit # 85-5626). The new kit includes decals for VA-85, the Black Falcons on the U.S.S. Forrestal and VA-35, the Panthers on the U.S.S. Nimitz. The old kit contained decals for VA-196, CAG, on the USS Coral Sea and VA-85 on the USS Saratoga.
Squadron Products has issued two new decal sheets for this old, but popular war bird. Decal set MS481254 contains markings and tail art for Marine squadrons VMA-121 and VMA-224. Decal set MS481253 contains markings and tail art for VA-196 and VMAT-202. You may have noticed a repeat, VA-196, with the old Revell kit. The decals for VA-196 were added after the release of the movie, Flight of the Intruder in 1991.
When this model set became available in the Reviewer Corps back in March 2009, I got all excited, and I thought I had reason to be. This seemed to be a project made for me, as a long time ago I was a Doctor Who fan and knew the Daleks probably better than your average IPMS/USA dude. But now, I look back at this project and wish I had never taken it. Frankly, I was going to get cute and throw in all sorts of in-jokes and trivia in this review, sort of like I did with the Lamborghini Jota review I did a few years back. This kit does NOT deserve it.
Nor does it deserve a "slam job".
This is the second volume that deals with the Polish Air Force after the German invasion in 1939. Pictures of Polish aircraft are very rare, especially before the pre-war period. This was a security protocol implemented by the Polish government. Because of the success of this protocol, there are very few photos of the aircraft used by the Polish Air Force. The conquering Germans are therefore the best reference for the airplanes. Needless to say, most of these pictures are previously unpublished.