Bucket Bracket

HMEE-1 (High Mobility Engineer Excavator)

Engine Front

Henschel Hs-129B-2/RIII - Part 1 - Cockpit, Engines, and Fuselage

Parts and Pieces Sprues

Messerschmitt Bf109E Sept. 1940

Finished 3

Mirage F-1 CT/CR "Special Edition" with Tru-Color Paints

Left Front

German StuG IV Sd.Kfz.167 Ver. Early

Front

TBD-1A on Floats

Sprue "B"

F4F-4 Wildcat

Pic

Wooden Gate - Round

Rear Rotor & Fin Detail

H-21C Shawnee "Flying Banana"

Right-rear

Russian AT-T Artillery Prime Mover

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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.

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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.

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Product packaging

Douglas F3D-2 Skynight Landing Gear
Review Author
Frank Landrus
Published on
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$19.95

Scale Aircraft Conversions has released replacement landing gear for the Czech Model 4814 / Encore EC48004 Douglas F3D-2 Skynight. The 17 parts supplied include the nose gear bay, nose gear, main gear, and additional retraction arms and braces. One of Ross MacMillan’s passions is the Douglas Skynight, and he spent several hours taking photos underneath one to get this set right.

A side by side evaluation of all the SAC parts shows the initial similarity with the kit parts. The nose gear bay, in addition to helping keep the Skynight on its nose gear, has been modified by including mounting points for the nose gear strut and the nose gear retraction arm. The nose gear torque link, missing in the kit, has been provided. The nose gear strut has been lengthened. The nose gear retraction arm has been modified and relocated to where it belongs.

Cover

Images of War Special: T-34 The Red Army’s Legendary Medium Tank
Book Author(s)
Anthony Tucker-Jones
Review Author
Andrew Birkbeck
Published on
Company
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
MSRP
$24.95

Was the Soviet T-34 the most important tank of the Second World War? It certainly was produced in the largest numbers, 57,000 between 1941 and 1945, more even than the ubiquitous M4 Sherman series. And it was undoubtedly superior to the Sherman in many areas, including armor protection and main armament. And without doubt the most massive and arguably most important armored battles of WW2 took place on the Eastern Front, where the T-34 dominated Soviet tank strength numbers. Did in fact the T-34 “win the war” for the Allies, responsible as it was for inflicting massive damage to more Axis divisions than any other Allied military vehicle? Whatever your answer to this question it is undoubtedly true that the T-34 was an extremely important cog in the Soviet military machine that crushed the Germans and their allies on the Eastern Front.

Box Art

OS2U Kingfisher
Review Author
Rob Benson
Published on
Company
Kitty Hawk
Scale
1/32
MSRP
$99.00

Thank you to the great folks at Kitty Hawk Models for bringing a welcome new large-scale kit to U. S. Navy propeller aficionados. Kitty Hawk subjects are starting to fill out my collection more and more! Thank you also to the IPMS Reviewer Corps staff members who do the hard work in getting us kits to review.

This new release from Kitty Hawk fills a long-standing gap in 1:32 scale early USN aircraft. The Kingfisher is represented in the scale modeling world by very old but generally still available smaller scale 1:48 and 1:72 kits, which can be upgraded and corrected by a wide variety of after-market components. However, I am unaware of any injection-molded Kingfisher kits in 1:32 scale, let alone a modern release. Bravo Kitty Hawk!

This review is a pre-build review or scrimmage, where I am reporting on construction planning, kit option choices, evaluation of the kit, and preliminary observations. A full build will follow soon!

Box Art

PanzerKampfwagon II Sd.Kfz.122 (F) w/UE Trailer
Review Author
Eric Christianson
Published on
Company
Bronco Models
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$45.99

Summary

Newly offered in injection-molded plastic by Bronco Models out of China, the Sd.Kfz.122(F) Flammpanzer is a real gem of a kit. Bronco had previously released an all-new version of the gun tank, but this is the first Flamm version since the discontinued kit from ICM/Alan in 2006. It comes with a (captured) French tracked trailer and enough jerry cans and oil drums to make any diorama-minded modeler happy. The fuel and water cans and the oil drums are straight from a separate Bronco offering reviewed by Eric Christianson.

Front cover

2F.1 Ship's Camel
Book Author(s)
Colin A. Owers
Review Author
Frank Landrus
Published on
Company
Albatros Productions, Ltd.
MSRP
$17.61

Colin Owers has generated a new look at the Sopwith 2F.1 Ship’s Camel. Jack Bruce’s Datafile number 6 was issued in 1987 and has been long out of print, so it is about time that Albatros revisited Sopwith’s shipboard Camel. The cover features a Paul Monteagle painting of Sopwith 2F.1 N6602 flying over HMS Furious during take-off and landing trials in April 1918. Ronny Bar contributes seven large color side profiles, including N6818, an eye-catching red and white sun-burst paint job as flown by Major W.G. Moore. I counted 64 black and white photos and three tables.

Mick Davis grabs the pullout centerfold with 1/48 general arrangement line drawings of the Sopwith 2F.1 Camel. For those of you that still dabble in that odd 1/72 scale, Mick Davis also provides you the same drawings on a single page. The bonus is three pages of 1/32 detail and structural general arrangement drawings.

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